Re: *The 76er* (Tank & Tach update: 7/20)
Day 80
Is it hot out here to anyone else? (not talking to people on the left coast)
Anyway, it was hot and I decided to do something I'd been putting off. I set off to light up my, ummm... lights.
I use to love to do this sort of thing, now I look at it as a task:
First with the headlight, I ripped the halogen bulb out of an H3 mount and got some LEDs ready:
Then I found a little piece of wood in the house (too hot to even walk across the yard to the shop to get some proper plastic):
Once fitten I soldered some LEDs together and put them in place and went mad with the hot glue gun to create something super ugly. If you remember back when I first planned this front light I wanted to make use of the light's reflector, so that is why I have forward facing LEDs along with 4 that are facing the sides:
Yes, hideous looking, but it works:
The 2 forward facing LEDs are wired together in a series, and the side facing LEDs are 2 to a series. Then those 3 sets of seriesed lights are wired in parallel.
So the headlight will run off of 1 nine volt battery mounted inside the light housing with a switch running out to another location. Now, the taillight, I started with the piece of plastic I cut that fits inside of the stainless steel thermos light housing I made. I drilled 8 holes in it:
Then I fit the red LEDs in the holes. All these LEDs were things I scrounged up from thrown away items. Amazing what all contains LEDs today, and I dare you to find one burned out. I did blow up about 10 today just playing around, warning: don't breathe the LED smoke. Here are the LEDs pushed into position:
Here is how I wired them together, all in parallel:
That looks nice and clean, too bad I'll probably never see that side of it again.
These reds are bright:
Still bright behind the lens:
Since I'm running the rear lights off a 9volt as well, I don't know if I will build the battery tube. We shall see, I like it, but without the C cells in it, it wouldn't be serving it's correct purpose.
Yes, and finally, I am working on the rack with Cody's help. I asked him to drill a hole in the wrench mount I made a long time ago. Well, turns out tool steel is VERY stong. haha He tried to drill a hole through the wrench, then I did, then we worked together and managed to melt a drill bit filling in any hole we had already accomplished. Today he came by the house and picked up the wrench and took it to his work's shop where he cut it back apart, notched it and welded it back together with the hole made from the notches:
That's what I get for using wierd parts and insisting on everything being customized.
Did you know that in 1976 July 22nd was on a Thursday instead of a Friday? So if the build-off was in '76 I'd still be way behind, and probably wouldn't be using a brand new bike, haha.
