Must get work...
Jun. 27th, 2008 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetWow, I'm getting really lax about this, aren't I o_O Ah, well. Such is life.
Passed bus driving evaluation on Monday, so all I have to do is make sure that my paperwork got through and I should be able to sing up for charters and earn a little money against moving, etc. Also for bike repairs (and purchase, since it's currently bought on loan from the Bank of Mom ^^a). My moped can be seen here, in its garage-confined glory. For names, I'm currently torn between The Hoopy Frood-Mobile and the Heart of Gold, because I just need my entire life to revolve around Hitchhiker jokes like that. Anyway, repairs needed include a fuel leak, the speedometer, and the horn. Hopefully nothing else (knock on wood) -_-a
My brother is continuing his search for "foods that go with everything". So far he's found ranch dressing and flax seed (meal), but he's open to other options - such as craisins. Thankfully, he didn't find the taste of them on mint chip ice cream as appealing as he thought it would be, so I probably won't have to live with him pouring them on everything, or eating them all.
Played the Good Karma Game on Wednesday and Thursday; got some good feelings out of that. Hopefully it'll spurn another round in the future. But then, I always hope that...
Passed bus driving evaluation on Monday, so all I have to do is make sure that my paperwork got through and I should be able to sing up for charters and earn a little money against moving, etc. Also for bike repairs (and purchase, since it's currently bought on loan from the Bank of Mom ^^a). My moped can be seen here, in its garage-confined glory. For names, I'm currently torn between The Hoopy Frood-Mobile and the Heart of Gold, because I just need my entire life to revolve around Hitchhiker jokes like that. Anyway, repairs needed include a fuel leak, the speedometer, and the horn. Hopefully nothing else (knock on wood) -_-a
My brother is continuing his search for "foods that go with everything". So far he's found ranch dressing and flax seed (meal), but he's open to other options - such as craisins. Thankfully, he didn't find the taste of them on mint chip ice cream as appealing as he thought it would be, so I probably won't have to live with him pouring them on everything, or eating them all.
Played the Good Karma Game on Wednesday and Thursday; got some good feelings out of that. Hopefully it'll spurn another round in the future. But then, I always hope that...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 04:20 pm (UTC)What's the model year of your new beast?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-07 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 07:51 pm (UTC)Socchan: *checks* Oh hey, here it is!
Year: 1977
Model: Maxi Sport
Obviously, I need to be checking the paperwork more often -_-a
no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 01:21 am (UTC)(1) Is that leak apparent on your garage floor a gas/oil mix coming from your moped?
(2) Does your leak appear to emanate from any particular part? (The gas tank, the carburetor, the combustion cylinder, the fuel hose...)
(B) Speedometer doesn't work
(1) Could be speedometer itself, or
(2) Could be speedometer cable (which should attach to back of speedometer).
(3) Could even be in engine where cable connects (but I doubt this).
Does anything look amiss with the cable or cable connections?
(C) Horn doesn't work
(1) Could be horn
(2) Could be switch (horn button)
(3) Could be wiring problem
Is anyone looking at this to help you fix this?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 01:10 am (UTC)B) I have no idea if anything looks amiss! I haven't looked at it all too closely. I'll have to rectify that.
C) It's a wiring problem; the wire slips out every time you turn left (IIRC), so it works, it just doesn't tend to stay working for very long.
No one's particularly helping me with this, no, but Chris volunteered to give it a closer look once he has time (read: when his summer job gets out).
no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 02:16 am (UTC)(or, if you like tiny URLs, http://tinyurl.com/6f2rma )
Does this look like the switch thing to which you refer for the fuel leakage problem?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-17 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-17 01:17 am (UTC)The petcock probably has three tubes sticking out of the body, although only two of them appear to be visible in the photographs.
The tube that appears to be copper (sticking out the top of the petcock) is probably actually two tubes. Motorcycle petcocks generally have a setting for "on", a setting for "off" and a setting for "reserve". "On" will draw from a tall tube in the fuel tank. When the level of gas is lower than the tall tube, you're out of gas, at least for the regular "on" setting. When this happens, you switch to "reserve", which drains the tank out of the shorter (lower) tube, thus allowing you to get home or to a gas station. If you forget to set the petcock back to "on" when you refill the tank, next time you run out of gas, you won't have any reserve and you'll be stuck. Each of these two tubes has its own fuel filter (the fine screen mesh visible on the copper tube, upper and lower).
The third tube is the one on which your fuel line to the carburetor will be attached. See how the tube is circularly barbed around its diameter? That is to help hold the fuel line in place. You want to find the "off" position of the petcock, set it, and then pull off the fuel line from this tube. Or perhaps it might be better to pull the other end of the fuel line off from the carburetor, that way you will have some fuel line hose that you can draw around into position. Then you want to put a clean can or milk jug or something to hold the fuel up to the opening (either the petcock or the fuel line, depending on from what you removed the fuel line) and switch the petcock to the "reserve" position to drain the tank.
After the tank is drained, remove the fuel filler cap and let the final moisture evaporate out for a day or two. After all this, you want to remove the duct tape and play-dough from the petcock. Here will be the important thing; you need to see under all that stuff whether the leak is actually from the petcock or from the fuel tank itself.
If the leak is from the petcock, this is very good, it is easily replaced. I don't really expect this, though, petcocks don't leak very often in my experience. If it is leaking from the fuel tank, I suspect you're likely screwed. Old tanks that have sat around for years with fuel in them (and likely at least a bit of water in the fuel) sometimes rust in the bottom (in the petcock area). If they rust through, the tank can be difficult (at best) to impossible to repair. I'm not really familiar with Puch mopeds, but it kinda looks in the picture like the fuel tank may be integral to the frame. If this is the case and the fuel leak is from there... Well, let's just not go there, at least not yet.
Oh, by the way, don't fill your fuel tank with straight gasoline. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure you need to mix gasoline with two stroke engine oil in a 50:1 ratio and use this mixture to fill the tank. People sell two stroke engine oil in small plastic bottles such that if you pump a gallon of gasoline into a gas can at the gas station, you then dump in one bottle of two stroke engine oil into the gas and that makes your 50:1 ratio. If your tank leaks, don't refill it at all.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-17 08:56 pm (UTC)We did get the heads-up on the gas-oil mix when we purchased the moped, so I don't want you to worry about that, but it looks like I might have enough to worry about aside from that anyway. *sigh* I'll leave a new comment when I've finished doing stuff.