Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Harley Clutch Assembly Blue Prints

Bit of a personal project for my, I was restoring some small illustrations of the clutch assembly for my Harley. In a slow process of creating a series of pdf files to use on a tablet I can pull up when I'm working on my bike. I got a little creative on this project and turned it into some blue prints. I might have to get a actual print made and framed for hanging, as I kind of liked how things turned out.

Nice crisp lines all in vector art done in AI.

Monday, March 21, 2016

HDoS Visit

Did a little bit of photography fun before work this weekend at the dealership. Some big events were going on. I also needed a quote for a new tire.
Neat women's jacket.
Lots of interesting new bikes, clothing and loads of other odds and ends. Stuff that made for excellent opportunity to photograph.  I lucked out with the sun shining through the top windows a bit today.
Interesting paint job. Golden fire.
 I didn't stick around for the event of the weekend though. Didn't have much time, but there's always another time. ;)

But then, it quickly became time to head out, and go to work... luckily Bike Week is right around the corner!

Friday, March 18, 2016

New Clutch Cable

Well, today was a fun day. I wound up finally replacing my clutch cable with one of the cables made by Magnum, in black pearl. Never took Rose apart so much before. Sure was lots of fun. Even with the joys of apartment living... and lugging tools downstairs. Really wish I had a house!
Removing the slip-on exhaust was a bit of a pain at first. Once it was removed carefully by hand, the rest became pretty straight forward for the dismantling and removing of parts.
The old gasket was cracked on the far side, not enough to cause a leak, but it was a good split down the side.  A few other signs of replacement needed were shown throughout the gasket.

Having the transmission exposed and opened was a good opportunity to clean any gunk and residue out.  With everything cleaned and ready to go. I reinstalled the clutch cable cover. Oh, I should mentioned I used some 'big' Craftsman ring pliers to remove the snap ring on the ball/ramp assembly. What a pain... I think it was the tool. Sadly I couldn't find any Knipex in my area. I'll probably return these pliers as I felt they were... But they did the job... and in the end it doesn't matter.

Then came time to reinstall the lever handle to the clutch cable... this is where it all went south rather fast for me. For some reason I couldn't get enough slack to get it back on the housing. At it's loosest I was still unable to get enough slack. I wound up reopening the cover and manually feeding it through. I wasn't expecting this to happen. Not really sure why, but it worked in the end. I wasn't pressed with time I'd have examined what was going on a little better. Darn work... in 30 minutes.... time to call in "I'll be running slightly late!"
Tightening everything back down, and double checking my torque specs and steps to make sure everything was back in place, things went real smooth afterward. .Even the slip-on exhaust slipped back on hassle free. Might have helped that I cleaned all the contacts off prior.
Note to self: Get a set of deep sockets! It would have come in handy on the ring clip for the exhaust.

Sadly with all the rush at the last bit of this project I was unable to work on polishing the cover like I had planned to do. I'll be doing that in the next day or so. Haven't really had one day off from work this month. Bike weeks around the corner though and I've requested it all! Can't wait!!!
Very fun and relaxing project. Hoping for more down the road.

I'll post some photos of the new cable when I get a chance, as mentioned earlier I had to haul it to work and didn't get a chance to do so. After a test ride, I must say the braided cable vs stock OEM is a world of difference, a lot smoother, and more responsive. I need to make another adjustment to the cable to bring the sensitivity to a similar feel to what I was using prior. Or just get used to the new feel haha.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Lidia Scene I

A new dollfie project! I've just started pre-work on a new CG Scene. It's going to be FFXIV themed. haven't fully decided on what background I'll be doing but it'll be an interior lighting test, and something that fits Lidia.
Hoping to get a chance to work on this more over the next few days. might do a 2 - 3 series of renders just for fun. Hate matting though, so I might only do just 2 for now to experiment with.  Been a while since I've done a full run on. We'll see where it goes!

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Marianda II


Finished! Sort of.... I might polish a few areas. Or not. I had planned to paint this, but then I remembered I tossed all my paints a while back to prevent me from doing such again. Glad I still did. :P Over all this was a pretty fun project though! My concept for Marianda is now complete, some day I hope to make a dollfie version of her. She uses a pretty big shield and mace/hammer type weapon.