cowpuc

NOW we are cooking with hot grease Tuffy!!! Telling ya brother,, the Beretta 92F has been in my sights for many moons now so I totally get it!! CONGRATS!! One of these days my gun room will also welcome such a fine piece of shootin machine!! Just BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NICE!! ,, probably my weathered ol eye balls but that Kimber looks like mini 1911 IMHO:178:... Any idea if the internal's are similar Monster? I only ask cause,, again IMHO,, that John Moses Brown guy sure did an amazing job with the 1911 design,, wonder if the designers at Kimber also came to that conclusion..

WOWZY WOW WOW WOW:178:,, AND SHE IS GORGEOUS BROTHER, NICE JOB BOSS !!! ,, Can't help but wonder what one of really coot club 3d medallians would look like stuck at bottom center of that purdy H arley's windshield though.. I know if I had a great big gorgeous HD like that I would not miss one opportunity to with my Harley riding buddies everywhere in letting them know that even though they may struggle getting to be 1st in the chow line at a VR club event, they are still welcome !!! Come to think of it, a really good friend and fellow clubber sent me a couple of those medallians a while back and I actually chrisened our Trooper, our car, with one to protect it while we were at the Sturgis rally a while back, worked great! I may have an xtra if you need one !! Seriously though Don, she is beauty! Congrats!!

Did you remember to bleed the system from the highest spot of the rear brake system up on the neck?

copy/paste from the response section of the review whether I embarrass you or not I just tell it like it is my brother!!!! ******************************************************************* ""The first thing I noticed when opening the box is that Sena put a top ring"",, I would have looked at my wife Tippy and said "look sweetheart,, our gorgeous new hats have PULL STARTERS!!" LOL!! As always Mr. Wyenn,, another awesome review!! We riders out here in the real world absolutely appreciate your, from the hip, consistent honesty and real world perspective.. Personally, I LOVE the look of this hat,, it has a lot of class for very little money IMHO. While not being one, as yourself, who is into modern techology when it comes to my motorcycle touring (I am one of those old school fool's who, if he finds the need to hear music will just sing to himself LOL) I do greatly appreciate a company like Sena who focuses on air flow cooling thru a helmet. I have personally spent an enormous amount of time riding the west coast of the USA and the deserts surrounding it and can tell you from 1st hand experience,, air flow thru your hat is a REALLY BIG DEAL in keeping the far rider from experiencing a killer = heat fatigue. THANK YOU for not only focusing on the awesome tech side of this hat but also going right back to basics (like you always do) about air flow and sunlight/fog management!! VERY VERY WELL DONE SIR!! KEEP EM COMING!!!

ROCK N ROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:clap2::dancefool: I LOVED my 29!!! It was a 6 inch and WOWZY WOW WOW WOW was it accurate!! I used it for hunting deer and did very well with it (have harvested with my 1911 too).. It was also during a time when I was loading and ended up stretching the strap above the cylinder out so bad that I had 14 thou of slop in the cylinder so it went bye bye to a gun smith.. My Dad shot the 629 stainless like yours Sly but also in 6 inch.. I should have gone stainless too (fine weapon) as I would probably still be shooting it BUT I loved Harry's "go ahead punk,, make my day" shooter and loved carrying that great big bad to the bone blued machine!!!

Nope Patch,, Puc just learned something new today too:thumbsup:!!!! THANK YOU @Condor for going out of your way to, once again,, teach this lop eared beat up old varmint one more new trick!!! YOU DA MAN!!!!

EXCELLENT JT,, JUST FLAT OUT EXCELLENT:thumbsup:!! I redid a couple Yamaha V-Star 650's a number of years ago and spent some time on them.. I seriously LOVED the way that little V-Star sounded. I have a pretty decent history with HD,, been riding em since I won a brand new back in 78 (Low Rider) and have always loved the "potato, potato, potato" sound = music to my ears.. I will never forget the 1st 650 I redid and when I lit it up for the 1st time I looked at one of my employees, smiled and said "this little sucker is tater masher!!! About your inability in picture posten.. IMHO, 99% of the time picture issues are somehow connected to the pics being to large. I resize all my pics with Paint,, very easy to do, and resize to 1000 pixies each max and that always solves the issues.. Hold on,, I got a vid I did a while back you might be interested in,, seeing if I can find it,, yep,, here ya go!!

EC I am with you 100% EC but since my 45 shooter is the 5 inch GI which I find a little bulky for a CCW,, I would probably just default to my drum fed AR12 12 gauge and take advantage of Michigans open carry laws.

I always tell my wife that too Brat but she just shakes her head when I do cause she still thinks VR is like motorcycling to me,, more of an addiction and a great place to practice my ways than anything else...

Actually I have a hunch that Don hangs back purposely like the rest of us lop eared varmints cause he, like us,, LOVES to watch the cow manure fertilizer spray all over your Spyder as you unknowlingly lead the crowd thru the stuff

Close @silverado,, my actual dream scoot back then was the one like that only with the Hodaka ACE 100,, 100cc two stroke motor.. They came OEM right from Bonanza with an open pipe exhaust system.. Can you imagine the wonderful tune that little puppy would sing out for all the world to hear/see as a young lop eared wrench spinning gearhead varmint kid went ripping thru the hood pulling 0-60 at 5 seconds on a full blown mini bike chopper (looked just like the pics you posted only had the Hodaka motor) with 8 inch tires on it .. I will have to browse thru my huge collection of my childhood bike brochures and see if I can find a pic of it for you.. It was AWESOME!!

INDEED @bpate4home,,, much adVenture lays in the soul of a good ol tank shiftin, foot clutchin,, ignition timing at the grip scoot!!

When I was a young lop eared grease monkey varmint who had no clue (still dont) about any of this I used to goof around with octane differences in fuels and ignition timing in my cars.. I was always amazed by performance differences between OEM ignition timing/octane specs and the gains I would see in performance just by advancing (moving timing away from TDC) my ignition timing to the point that it would just start pinging and back er off a degree or two to keep er from self destructing,, soooo much fun in those early days.. Wish modern machines all came with programmable tuners like HD got fined for selling cause I miss those old days.. Like @Casey955,, I have ran 85 octane in my V-4's all over America CTFW 2 up and fully loaded,, especially out west where it is plentiful and never ever had an issue one with it and remember - the early Yam V-4's I/we have been running for hundreds of thousands of miles are a 10.5 to 1 compression motor fully capable of turning 12's in the quarter with absolutely no issues.. From this I have a hunch that there are gains to be made in performance on our V-4's just by tossing some advance at it like days of yesteryear as I have a hunch that those engineers at Yamaha retarded the ignition some to allow for low octane fuel usage.. Also,, looking at the ugly pics of the carb having sit wayyyy to long,,, I have seen similar in 2 strokes indeed but I have also seen similar in 4 strokes that have been stored to long with heavy doses of SeaFoam/other fuel stabilizers. Gasoline will evaporate off over time no matter how much its doped up IMHO..

OUTSTANDING THREAD HERE @SilveradoCA,, absolutely love it !! Also absolutely LOVE your story and admire your wish list:clap2:!! Here is short story of how I got started into this madness which has now plagued my entire life. I was born with some defective chromizones so my dad (he was a sports guy) didn't have to energize my bike addiction - I came from birth with it.. I was born during the day and age when "liking" motorcycles was taboo. While attending kindergarten I got into a lot of trouble cause I didn't "fit" well with the rest of the children my age, they were all into collecting base ball cards and stuff while I would sit at my desk and draw pics of choppers (sounds funny but I am not kidding - it really happened this way). My parents had 7 children (I was second born - have a sister 1 year older than I) all of which, other than myself, were normal - playing sports and all that. Wasn't enough money to go around so my severe needs of spinning wrenches always got set on the back burner.. My early years of wrenching found me dragging home bicycles, cutting front ends of hollow forked Huffies and sliding the cut Huffy fork tubes onto Schwinn solid forks to manufacture choppers. I probably had over 20 neighborhood kids with choppers by the time I was 8 years old. I also noticed that my neighbors old rototiller had a side shaft Clinton motor on it and I came up with the genuis idea of finding one of those motors and mounting on my pedal bike. There was a store called "Strevel's" about 7 miles from our home in Fruitport Michigan whose owner was into selling used mowers out front of the store. I would ride my chopper bicycle up there at least twice a month just to look at the side shaft mowers. At first, old man Strevel would actually come out and start the mowers for me to show me they would run (I would just sit there smelling that burning fuel and dreaming). Wasnt long though and he wouldnt even come outside. My parents bought me a used 10 speed pedal bike for my 9th birthday. A few weeks later my grandfather, who was actually the only person who really understood me back than, gave me an old kickstart washing machine motor (probably all of 1 horse power - wish I still had it - it was COOL) and I went about the task of cutting the center post out of my 10 speed to prepare it for the wash machine engine. My dad came home from work, saw what I was doing and thats when I received my 1,000,000th whoppin from him. He later came out of the house (had apparently talked to my mom about anger management), apologized for smacking me. About a week later I was helping him on his linen route, he got a big smile on his face as we pulled into a tire company (Atlas Tire in Grand Haven Mi) where he had rugs on their floors and said he had something to show me. We went inside and there sat a GORGEOUS 1959 Sears/Allstate/Puch moped!! My dad told me that if I paid for 1/2 (I worked unloading trucks at his linen company and I also had a paper route) he would pay the other half. I will NEVER forget loading my new (to me) Sears moped into the back of that old linen truck - I FINALLY HAD A REAL MOTORCYCLE because guess what,, it had a clutch and was a two speed = wayyyyyyyyy coollll!! There were rich kids in our area who had mini-bikes and stuff that I would ride any chance I had but, THERE IS NOTHNG LIKE A GEAR HEADS FIRST BIKE. About 2 weeks after we got the bike home the old girl decided it didn't want to run.. This time it was my mom who walked over to the high school parking lot (our yard was all sand and we had no garage) where I had the top end off my moped apart and started yelling things like "that thing will never run again" (the old Sears mopeds had a lot of shrouding on them so the pile of parts she started yelling at me about was actually 85 percent shrouding - it wasn't that big of a deal). I had torn A LOT of mowers apart during my early years and I just KNEW the old bike needed a set of rings and sure enough it did. Most folks probably will never believe this but Sears actually sold quite a few motorcycles back in those days and their parts supply was second to none!! After my parents had calmed down and I had stuffed all my moped parts into a box, I talked my mom into taking me into sears where I bought a new set of rings, a base gasket and the cutest little tin head gasket that a gear head has ever laid eyes on. I roughend her tiny little bore up with sand paper, cleaned everything up real good in gas, lubed it all down and stuck her back together.. I will NEVER forget the look on my parents faces as I drove across our front yard on my freshly rebuilt, first motorcycle . Having finally found the real me, I purchased my second bike - a gorgeous 1967 Bonanza BC1300 two years later. It took me a while to save up for that one cause every time I could gather some pennies they seemed to go into running costs of my Moped. What I really wanted at the time was the full fledged chopper that Bonanza offered with the Hodaka Ace 100 motorcycle engine it - I simply could not come up with the money for it and the sharing costs that my parents did on the Moped was a one time shot. My Bonanza was ok but the 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds that Bonanza advertised in their flyer was really where I saw myself (oh yea, I collected bike flyers back than and also sent away for info that was found in the bike mags of the day - I still have a LOT of the flyers I collected as a kid - I can probably dig out the poster of the Bonanza Chopper and take of it if you would like - I used to DRUEL over that thing). Here is a pic that my little sister took of me way back then. I still have the frame of my first bike - the 59 - sitting in my basement. Not to long ago I noticed a later model of the same bike for sale for a couple hundred bucks. Tip and I went over to Grand Rapids and drug it home. My plan is to use this later model Moped as a parts bike to restore (not repaint and all that - just put it together in its perfect patina state) my original first bike to rideable condition and then use it as a daily rider.. My defective chromizones never did get better and I have suffered with it my whole life. I have owned hundreds of bikes thru the years of many makes/models and engine configurations including ground up Choppers I have hand built and ridden cross country on - I came full circle in life and actually found true love with the long bike.. Oh yea, I raced bikes starting at 16 years old starting on Yamaha and actually graduated to MXing and Harescrambling a brand new - first in west Michigan (I know cause I worked spun wrenches for Honda at a local shop where I ordered it from in late 1972) Honda CR250M Elsinore.. Wore it out in 1 year of track time in 73 and bought another in 1974.. I then went on to enjoy a lifetime of tracks and woods racing open class on both the CR500 and also KX500 open class.. LOVED MY DIRT BIKES!! Back to early days,, the final embarrassment for my parents came about when they saw my High School Graduation picture (shown below), as in Kindergarten many years before, everyone of my peers appeared with a suit coat, my choice of clothing was, well,, me..

,,, oh sure,,, wait till my laying on desert dirt in the outback of the Mojave desert to do my daily air pressure check on Tweeks before heading out for the next 1000 mile day of CTFW days have come to an end before finding such an AWESOME find @VentureFar !! IMHO,, tire pressure maintenance and management is one of the most under fulfilled and over looked items in modern motorcycle touring. I know this is strong language but I also have a gut feeling that this is also behind a lot of flat tires and crashes caused by them and also for many ill handling loaded up for touring motorcycles.. And another of my IMHO's (I am one opinionated brother aint I ), the normal MO for old schoolers such as myself has been using my trusty pressure gauge to do the morning check and ALWAYS follow up with a spit check (learned wayyy back as a kid fixing my own bicycle tires to ALWAYS spit check that shrader) on the shrader valve cause opening the valve is wearing the valve and/or possibly letting dirt into it.. WOWZY WOW WOW WOW Neil,, think of all the shrader valve changes and even spitting you could have eliminated if you would have found this awesome device back in the mid 60's when we started riding :guitarist 2:!! Another GREAT REVIEW, definitely deserving of yet another embarrassing :bighug:from your Mom Puc

PRAYERS UP it comes back negative my brother and THANK YOU for gettin er done Jack!! About the water out of the nose routine,, I know this does not apply in your case cause mine happened without drinking water but the all of a sudden dripping nose is how they found my brain fluid leak in my case.. Goofy thing would just start dripping,, and it tasted salty. I ended up at the U of M to get it taken care of.. I am tellin ya @Condor,, it is amazing how quickly this stuff can pop up out of nowhere and cause a pause in a normally uneventful retiree's day.. Hope you are feeling much better my friend and getting back to your normal everyday lop eared varmint :witch_brew:self!!

WOWZY WOW WOW WOW!! Awesome story and extremely well written Don!! THANK YOU for sharing and looking forward to more of the same my Kanuckian brother!!!

One of these days I would really like to make this rally,, even though far riding Tweeks is now a distant memory for us I still think Tip and I could do some damage on the golf course... Can't speak for Tippy but I have become a great putterer in my old age.. Sure looks like you folks had a really good time!! Hats off to all for being willing to participate with your time and also for the willingness to share with these awesome pics!!!

Take 5 scoops,, take a 5 minute break,, take 5 more scoops,, take a 10 minute break,, take 5 more scoops,, go in and take a 2 hour nap

I am entering into week 5 of this project Jack!! What use to take me minutes now takes me hours brother!! Tell you one thing for absolute sure,, this getting old business is not for those who are into instant gratification,, slow - easy - patience is the name of the game IMHO.. I may be getting old but by cracky,, those ol lop eared varmint and going out without a fight !!

I discovered very early in life that while being the adventurous type, I was not cut out for sleeping on a park bench or living full time in a tent. Besides that, I had my doubts as to whether or not my future wife or my future children would appreciate having to bathe in the middle of the night in the sprinklers at the Village Library or Old Kent Bank like I did a numerous times after leaving home at 15 to live on the street.. Those early adventurous years did in fact teach me a couple great things about being an American though, one being that American freedom is all about being able to take advantage of being a do-it-yourselver (in America,, no one is gonna do it for you,, may as well grab yourself by your bootstraps and get er done) and the other is that with minimal tools and a small amount of creativity a person really can accomplish some awesome tasks. This video is about one of those minimal little tools that I purchased long ago to assist me in building my first home.. A home that, later in the years as I matured (took a while,, I did not marry till I was 24 but when I did I had a home all built/bought and paid for to raise my family in), would find even my children learning about digging in sand and using this little gadget as we added on a huge garage and expanded our home.. It has been many many years since I had held my little Line Level that had served me so well during those years and I smiled greatly as I found this little jewel of a tool right where I had left it many years ago. I was also well pleased to find out that even though its time/value of usage had long since been replaced by the current digital world that I find myself still trying to understand, it still functioned with the regal precision that it always held.. Ladies and Gentlemen,, introducing the return of the mighty Line Level!!

One of the things that criss crossing America and Canada on a motorcycle thru the years has taught me is that the infamous Murphy and his endless supply of treachery is not necessarily limited to odd failures of the mechanical type.. Weather anomalies are also well within Murphies reach as pointed out in this next installment of my French Drain series.

Earlier this year Michigan got hit by over 6 inches of rain in under 24 hours of time. We are on the west coast of Michigan and, while we did not sustain the damages that the east coast of Michigan did when some of their dam's failed (search youtube for dam's breaking in Midland Michigan if you want to see some REAL crisis!!), we did in fact suffer from the loss of several houses in our area and anyone who had a basement had issues (over 40 houses in one subdivision).. Thankfully my daughter had dug a small trench in our backyard and stuck a sump in it (see make shift sump housing in video) when we moved in while I was still in my body cast from breaking my back or we would have gotten water in our basement too. That small trench was overcome several times during the 500 year flood on that fateful day earlier this year though which prompted this project as preparations for any future 500 year floods that Murphy may decide we had earned.. I decided to record and post here on Youtube my headway on this project with the hopes that maybe some of this series would help some other lost soul out there floating around and trying to deal with flood waters as a 1 man operation.. I am now starting on week 5 of this process as I can physically only do a little at a time but it is progressing nicely for 1 old geezer and a shovel IMHO. If you can't get out and ride,, get out and dig - hopefully you will find just being able to get outside and do something as refreshing as I am = seize the day and not your chain saw!! Godspeed, Puc

:You_Rock_Emoticon: THANKS MY BROTHER!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE ESSENTIAL AND LOVED!!!:bighug::bighug: