Modern Vespa

Addenda: 10/18/2008

I ride until I see a Shell Gas Station. Then I stop and top-off, stretch, and take a swig of water.

I stopped in Santa Barbara (226 miles) for lunch enroute north. I stopped there enroute south(72 miles) for breakfast.

I never exceed 6,000 rpm because of the red-line. I try to cruise at 5,700 rpm which is approximately 75 mph on level ground.

The PIAA 1100X Dichroic Platinum Hi-Intensity Lamps are illegal in California. I have one hooked up so as not to fry the alternator and/or battery.

At 3,000 miles the Michelins still have the tabs on them and show no appreciable signs of wear. Pressure cold: Rear 41 psi / Front 40 psi.

Alan


Just arrived home (Chula Vista, CA) after traveling to San Luis Obispo, CA along the California Coast. Approximately 680 freeway miles. Flawless economical performance! Shell Premium and Mobil 1 T-4 10W-40 Racing Oil.

Wow! What a beautiful view. I've got a red 500, are those fog lamps ?
Alan, How many miles a day can you handle before you stop and rest. I bet
you found some nice canyons to lean on! What kind of tire wear are you seeing? And MPG avg.

Beautiful picture but no windshield on that long a trip? How fast did you usually go?

Gentlemen,

I ride until I see a Shell Gas Station. Then I stop and top-off, stretch, and take a swig of water.

I stopped in Santa Barbara (226 miles) for lunch enroute north. I stopped there enroute south(72 miles) for breakfast.

I never exceed 6,000 rpm because of the red-line. I try to cruise at 5,700 rpm which is approximately 75 mph on level ground.

The PIAA 1100X Dichroic Platinum Hi-Intensity Lamps are illegal in California. I have one hooked up so as not to fry the alternator and/or battery.

At 3,000 miles the Michelins still have the tabs on them and show no appreciable signs of wear. Pressure cold: Rear 41 psi / Front 40 psi.

Alan

IDEFENDM:

For the life of me, I can't figure out why you keep posting your images as GIF images instead of JPG images. GIF's aren't able to display all of the colors that your digital camera is capable of capturing. Notice how there are a bunch of white dots? That's because there isn't enough color information available when using GIF image types to display all of the colors.

What piece of software are you using to edit your images? If you save them as JPG instead of GIF, the wonderful images you are capturing will look much, much better.

Here's an example. The first picture is a JPG. The second is a GIF. Can you see the difference?

Oooo! I can, I can! I'm good at these, let's see.....in the second picture there's only 5 shrubs!

BTW, IDEFENDM, I noticed your mods and accessories. Why no topcase? It seems like it would fit your trips perfectly and alleviate all the strapping you have to do. Also, what stickers is that on the side?

Good trip. You posted about adding an oil treatment and noted a power boost. Does anyone else do this? Also wondering about choice of oil.

https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic35446?highlight=oil

The jpg's from my iPhone are too big to post. I don't know how to reduce them. Any thoughts?

Stickers: Shell, Mobil 1, NGK, Prolong

Its likely a setting you can adjust on your phone before you take the pictures. At least thats how mine works.

I've been sending the iPhone pix to my yahoo.com e-mail and, without using iPhone or PhotoShop software, merely saving the jpg. to my desktop. The pix contains too many pixels to attach here, so I've simply been converting them to GIF.

If I deal with the photo using the iPhone or PhotoShop software I can reside the jpg. I found this excellent article by Michael Carr, and thank you for bringing this to my attention.

http://cameras.about.com/od/printing/ss/resize.htm

Time permitting future pix will be in jpg. format.

Alan open the pics in paint first and then reduce the size and save then up load to the forum

Alan, you can resize them in Photoshop. Once they load from your iPhone then click on one to edit. It should be a standard edit. Then click on "image" and a drop down box will open and then you can click on resize. Another drop down box will appear and you will click on image size. You will see another box with Pixel dimension information. In that section (top section) it should automatically show pixels. Click on the arrow next to that word and select "percentage". That will automatically change whatever number it was to 100. Just above that are the words "Pixel Dimension: xxxK" The xxx is the number of the file size. You change the percentage to make the xxx to be less than 200k so that you can load it onto the forum. If xxx at 100% shows 576 then I would change the percent to 75 to start. You can go down from there. After you make all the changes save your file.

Hope this is clear. If not then PM me and I will do what I can to answer your questions.

Dale

Thank you both VERY much!

Better yet, download Picasa. It's free, fast and very easy to use. It has an Export feature that lets you pick the resolution of the pic. If you pick 640 as your resolution, it will turn 2.5MB pics into 130K pics. Should be the perfect size for the forums.

BTW. I've been riding 3-wheelers since the late seventies. My factory-sponsored Harley at the AMA Nationals, Laguna Seca, CA, 1981.

Nice story . Thanks for posting . Do any members know any good tutorials on posting pics. on forums. Would really like to share mine. By the way I guess I'm the only one that noticed that fog horn you've got mounted on your left fender! Also did you cruise Big Sur? I hope to ride the coast some day .

Thanks

I didn't make it to Big Sur. The road from Hearst Castle north to Carmel is awesome! The horn is the smaller of the two 115 decibel Wolo Electric Horns. VERY loud! You can listen to all the Wolos at www.wolo-mfg.com.

Hey Keith..thanks for the quickie lesson on jpg vs gif...I never knew why some of my pics came out grainy and what benefits one style would have over the other... now I know!!