Belly Button Lint: Rick Ramsey's Weblog

You know those guys you see strutting down the middle of the hall all confident and stuff with half a dozen people vying for their attention and an intern walking backwards holding open their laptops for them? Well, I am one one of those guys, now. Yes, I am a bonafide Tech Guru. The award was given to me by the Clearwater chapter of the world-renowned Deuce Owner's Group after an exhaustive review of the technical contributions of its members over the years. Here is the award letter:

Methinks you've hit da nail on da head. That is, Rick is da ONLY technical guru on here. We rely too much on Rick to buy, install, experiment with, and bleep up motorcycle accessories/riding garb and then report back. Perhaps a coupla da rest of us could actually go out and buy a REAL motorcycle and then maybe we'd have something to contribute. But NOOOO! We're content with just ridin' da key-BORED while bad-ass ruffians like Rick do da dirty work.

There you have it. I am so proud. The paper that earned me this accolade:

I was installing 16" apes on my 02 Deuce, and I needed to solder in some extensions to the wires so they'd reach. I'd disconnected the wires a couple of times before to run them internally on different bars I tried, so I was kinda tired of lifting the tank and working underneath it. I decided to remove the tank entirely.

First thing I needed to do was drain the tank. I had enough sense to walk the bike outside of the garage onto the asphalt driveway, but that's as far as it lasted. I got a big ol' bolt and a big ol' bucket and a sharp pair of scissors and a itty bitty rag to clean up the drips. I cut away the plastic sheath and the retaining clips from both sides of the crossover hose and loosened it. Don't ask me why. Maybe because the tank was full of gasoline.

My plan was to cut the crossover hose beneath the tank, slip the bolt into one side as a plug, and direct the flow of gasoline from the other side into the bucket. A simple plan, indeed. Flawed, but simple.

When I cut the crossover hose, gas flew out of both sides like piss out of a race horse. I panicked, and stuck with my plan even though it made no sense. While the gas flew out of both sides of the hose onto the frame, the engine, and the asphalt, I tried to plug one side with the bolt. The bolt slipped out of my fingers. I picked it up and tried again. After a couple of tries, with the gas tank half drained, I realized I didn't need to plug one side of the hose. I could just direct both sides into the bucket. Doh.

So that's what I did. Or tried to do, rather. The hose halves weren't quite long enough to both hit the same bucket, so gas continued to drain onto the bike and the asphalt from one hose while I tried to stretch the other. After a good amount of frantic pulling, I managed to yank the hose off the tank nipple, and watched, with a hose segment in each hand, as the gasoline poured out of the bottom of the tank.

I was so disgusted with myself that I dropped both hose halves and sat on a chair to watch the rest of the gasoline drain from the tank and run down my bike. There is a certain relief in admitting defeat. That's when I noticed that the gasoline was eating its way through the warm asphalt. Understandably alarmed at the sudden appearance of a large hole beneath my bike in my once solid driveway, I ran for the garden hose. If I could wash away the gasoline from underneath the bike, I might be able to save my driveway and keep my bike from sinking all the way to China.

I turned the water to full on and aimed it at the sink hole beneath the bike. As expected, it washed away the gasoline. Then the tar, then the rocks in the sink hole. The more water I poured into the hole, the bigger it got. So I stopped. That's when I noticed that the entire bottom half of the bike was coated with warm tar. It had separated from the asphalt, and the water had splashed it onto the bike. I believe I made a sound like a hound dog getting his bleep caught in my pickup's transmission.

I did manage to patch my driveway and get the Deuce cleaned up, as you can see:

















You can see more pics of the Deuce at Vagabundo's folder on Smugbug