Recent content by Ash

I use an EZ-Drain valve on the car and it works well. It protrudes about an inch and a half, although you can get ones without the hose nipple if you want a shorter one, but running a drain hose right into a jug is really nice. It doesn't help with the mess from the oil filter though.

If you have a jigsaw and tons of room to work, you could shorten a jigsaw blade (grind it down on a belt/disc sander) so that it isn't long enough to contact the bike bits behind the plate. I'd still want to remove the plate to clean up the edges of the cut with a file, though.

Do you have enough room under the bike to even use a drill? How much clearance between the skid plate and the expensive stuff behind it? If you don't want to dismount the plate you might want to grab your wife's best cutting board and jam it behind the plate just in case. I haven't had great...

That sprint was a very encouraging start to the season. A whole bunch of non-Ducatis in the top 5 and multiple riders able to stuff MM93 in the corners is a good sign.

Yup, it's clown shoes. The website works okay in mobile browser, but desktop browser won't log me in. I assume they just hire a brand new dev team every year and fire them all at the end of the season.

Chromecast integration with the Android app is broken (again).

My brain decided it would rather delve into this rather than start my taxes. So, here's onboard of the old F1 layout, which is closer to what MotoGP will be using: That old F1 layout looks like this in black (the SuperCar layout from the previous video is the dotted red "Short Course" line)...

Thinking of running a MotoGP race here is insanity:

Check the size that's marked on the current ones, measure them to see if that number is accurate, then squish them under a couple of heavy books or a clamp for a couple of hours. Re-measure the squished size, then give them a try before they rebound to see if the squished size is in the right...

On older versions of Android I made the default ringtone silent, then manually switched everyone on my contact list to a real ringtone. Not ideal, but it worked. On recent versions of Android you can now get the same effect with an always-on 'do not disturb' mode which only allows notifications...

A single-bolt RAM ball would work, and looks nice when you unmount the accessory

At least it still sounds like it will continue to be motorsports-related. Pitt Race was just sold to someone who intends to turn that site into an AI data center. There's apparently a big electrical substation right next to the track.

A lot of shoes these days have hard plastic heel cups. That plastic breaks down after a while and stabs me in the ankle before the sole wears out. When that happens, I now cut off the back of the heel cup to turn the shoes into a pair of mules which last another 5 years. I have also cut off the...

The clinking of metal zipper pulls on jackets or bags bugs me, so I always clip them off and replace them with shrink-wrapped cord.

On a couple of my bikes I've swapped all of the fairing fasteners to these bolts with captive washers: https://fortnine.ca/en/bolt-hex-head-flange-nuts-with-fender-washers In some cases I've drilled out M5 threads and re-tapped to M6 so that every fastener is exactly the same. It's really nice...