Modern Vespa

Complete blackout here. A thunderstorm is passing through. Why don't I have any candles in the house I don't know! No AC no fans nothing.

Well guess what the bearings finally showed up today June 12th! Only 18 days from Florida to central NY.
Anyone who knows bearing sizes these are two 6204-2RS bearings, just 20 mm id!

Now if I had use of right arm I could assemble the mower spindle!

Ken in NY

Kind of delayed response here:

Friday I went to check the air pressure in my rear tire because it felt a little squishy the day before. I set the inflator and turned it on, and the pressure read 0.0 psi. It started to inflate, and I thought, "WTF?" I started to slowly rotate the wheel to see if I could see anything, and immediately found a nail bent over and stuck in the tread. So I drove in to work instead of riding.

Since I had to take it in for the 200km service anyway, I called the shop and made sure they had a new tire in stock (they didn't). The next morning, I checked the tire, and it had lost 20 psi in 30 hours, so I reinflated it, and rode it the 30 miles to the shop. It seemed to do ok. It now awaits getting the scheduled service, a new rear tire, and state inspection.

What pisses me off is the rear tire is only about a year old.

Almost brand new tire. It looks worn out because I rode the scooter few miles.

My new Sprint went back to the dealership after only 80km on the clock. Steering bearing nut seems to be loose because there is lots of play when braking and its also making horrible clunking noise when driving on rough surfaces.

That's not good, something like that should have been picked-up on the PDI. Make sure you check that that all the fluid levels are correct and the wheel nuts are tight.

Opened up Facebook last night, and the very first thing in my feed was the post below from my brother. I can't describe the emotions that hit me the moment I read the first line. But I can describe how pissed off I was/am at him once I reached the last line.


My brother's Facebook "joke"

Yeah - funny dude, your brother. That would piss me off too.

They say to every gray cloud there's a silver lining. Apparently that work in reverse order as well.

What's making me happy? I just found a killer deal on a Shoei RF-1400.

What's pissing me off? Backordered. Arrives in 30+ days.

Hopefully that means it's brand new, not old stock.

What's pissing me off?

Was riding a normal 2 way road (1 in each dir) with parking plus half a gap between the moving vehicles and parked cars (just big enough for bicycles).

As I approached a turn off I indicated a normal difference before turning and when I went to start the turn a f'n car cut me on the inside!!! Luckily I had seen him in the mirror sitting half in the lane and half in the gap - ie, barely a gap to the parked cars. I was keeping a close eye on him. When I head checked right as I was about to start actually turning I saw him right beside me, lucky I didn't turn right into the side of him.

F'n bloody idiot, I wish I had a big 4x4 so I could have rammed him. Best I could do was give him bucket loads of horn

Been on vacation ( is it vacation when you are retired?) for a few days. In the middle of those days I got news that a good friend had died from complications of COVID. He went into the hospital in November, and bounced between rehab and the hospital for months. He thought he got it at the VA, but who knows. He was a car guy, so no one here knew him but me, but it still pisses me off. Fuckin' COVID.

At a cottage all week with beautiful weather and great riding conditions. Today we go home and it's pouring rain AND I thought I brought full rain gear but... yeah not so much, just the top portion and gloves. Going to a long 4 1/2 hour ride home with soaking wet pants.

OK, I'm an engineer, I majored in maths and physics.

Why, O fucking why, are USA heating and cooling appliances never shown as having a power requirement, but merely measured in BTU, just a measure of energy? BTU/hour I can understand, but BTU by itself is just a measure of energy, not of power.

So how much power does a 30,000 BTU air conditioner require then, and how do I calculate the wire and breaker rating for it? Oh, read the manual - none of them show the actual maximum power requirement. Fucking idiots.

BTU per millisecond? BTU per century? FFS.

That is so they can blame somebody else when their product burns down the house.
Even Chinese stuff has power requirements.

In this context, it is BTU per hour. But this is a measure of output, not input. Nothing at all to do with wire and breaker requirements.

Sounds like you bought the unit? There must be a nameplate (with current rating) on the unit itself?

Some of the people writing these claims/spec's could claim such and such car gets 200 mpg while going 100 mph. But the trick is to get that performance you need to drop it out of a plane at 30,000 feet! Or something as ridiculous!

This turned out to be the answer. Hidden away - 230V, 1ph, 60Hz, min circuit capacity 20A, max fuse/breaker 30A. And that's the *only* place with that info. Not in any installation manual, not on any website, no-one else seems to have asked the question with over 1,200 queries on their forum. Sheesh.

At least now I can get on with finding the right bits needed.

Then WTF don't they write it like that. BTU/h (or better still kW) would make sense. Gotcha. But they do mention efficiency percentages, so one could be inferred from the other. However, almost universally not using the correct units seems really weird. They might as well express acreage in furlongs per fortnight, or time in volts.

Please accept our condolences for your loss. ~HUG~

The short and most obvious answer is that the BTU ratings are primarily for comparison. As long as all the products use the same units (and, in general, they do) then it's a fairly simple matter to compare one to another.

A slightly longer and less obvious answer is that the BTU ratings are for sizing: in a given abode with X square footage, how many BTUs (per hour is implied) do I need?

BTU, then, is not about energy consumed, it's about capacity. Like horsepower, it is used as a market comparison more than anything. In practice, I think this would be a bad idea. Better to look at the data plate on the actual device for that information.

Just to illustrate that BTU is not being used for the purpose that you seem to want it to be used for, how would you calculate the breaker and wire gauge for a gas furnace that is 85% efficient and puts out 10,000 BTUs per hour?

You wouldn't. The BTUs of a gas furnace tells you NOTHING about the electrical power requirements, even when the efficiency is taken into account. One of the inputs is electrical, yes, but the input that matters the most in that context is not.

And it is in this context that BTUs are meant: as a rough gauge of the output of a thermal-modification device, not as an energy input of an appliance.

OK, I can (just about) accept that. It still grates hugely that they leave off the 'per hour' - I'm one individual who didn't know that was implied - and had to come here to find out! Dear old Google gave no hints.

Being British, I have never in my life before used British Thermal Units. kW would do me fine.

And I think it's madness to rate a device that produces heat (e.g. a boiler) in kW. It makes no sense!

Well, at least you're on your way now!

You likely know all about this, but I found it interesting to learn from a quick read that hvac equipment can only use 80% of circuit capacity. So 20A equipment needs 25A (or next larger AWG) wiring.

https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/136792/sizing-circuit-for-mini-split-heat-pump

Which confirms my choices. Thanks for the input.

The remote-controlled electric lock on the small gate on the side of the main gate got rusted on the outside and the mechanism needed to be lubricated internally so I had the insane idea of doing home maintenance.
But ... badly it took me away ...
After cleaning the rusty surface I was going to paint using a can of spray paint and ...
BOOM!
After removing the outer protective cap, it exploded on me, flooding me with paint! (# &% * !! @)
Evidently the small button to spray had given way inside the external cap which, being sealed, contained the compressed paint and when I removed it I was ... painted!
I then spent two hours getting the paint off my skin using a petrol can and had to shave my hair clean.

All you need now, jimc, is a permit for wiring, a permit for installing, and a permit for permitting.

I'm sorry, I laughed when I read this!

Not in a mean way! Only because you are ok and the situation is impossibly ridiculous!

It's all OK Berto, don't worry ...
It's just that the smell of petrol still doesn't go away and I can't sleep in it ...

Heat index here will be 105 degrees

Then I'm glad I graduated in mechanics and hydraulics.

It's just shy of 10 am and it's 100° in my garage. This temp is fine for sitting around, but not for doing scooter stuff and I wanna do scooter stuff.

We're burning up today...

As everyone knows, furlongs per fortnight is velocity, not area.

And a corollary to Murphy's Law as it pertains to physics is:

"All measurements will be made in the least useful units, e.g., velocity will be reported in furlongs per fortnight".

Mostly what pisses me off today is what pisses me off every day, stupid people who don't know how to drive make life a great deal more time consuming and hazardous than it needs to be. Locally folks have taken to apex-clipping when making left turns, that is, nearly grazing the curb on the Left side of the street when making a turn, even though we are supposed to stay to the right. If you happen to be sitting there waiting for them to get out of the way, too bad for you. Easier than putting down their phones and driving, though.

Although recently a new pet peeve is folks clogging up the self-checkout lines at stores. They have no idea how to work the scanner, no idea how to pay, and are in no hurry to move along. A local grocery store has nothing but self-scanners. A standout was a fellow who, with three people waiting in line behind him, took a phone call about nothing in particular, obviously could not scan and talk at the same time. And was in no hurry to end the call.

I swear, people have lost any idea of cooperation during the pandemic.

Here (Latina) 35 ° C but a lot of humidity ...

What kind of stuff? Wrenching or riding?

Wrenching, maybe with some super short test rides. At 103° with 30% humidity, it's gonna be miserable in the garage. It is nothing that can't wait because it's more experimental than maintenance.

Lots of humidity here too, 30% - 45% all day...

I had to put the jet helmet back on because with the modular I was sweating like a fountain...