Things I can do again

 boingboingboing!, ecocruz  No Responses »
Aug 122009
 

Now that I’m not worried about internal bleeding I’ve done two things this week I’ve avoided since I started being on blood thinners. I rode my scooter, and I rode the Giant Dipper.

I was worried the scooter would be in bad shape after no riding for almost seven months, but the batteries don’t even seem to  be any worse after the long period of neglect. The front tire can use some air and it’s more dirty, but it’s almost like there wasn’t a break in there!

We rode the Giant Dipper on Monday (1907 night). I avoided it before because it can be jarring and I just didn’t want to risk it. Here it is:

 Posted by Douglas at 7:26 pm

Messed up

 ecocruz, Pet trauma  No Responses »
Mar 102008
 

The haircut we gave to Grover: We have our dogs shaved fairly regularly because they get too hot in the summer otherwise, they bring in WAY too much dirt, and it cuts way down on the dog hair. Why not get some clippers and try it ourselves? How hard can it be? I think the sides are fairly ok, but the back, how do they do it? It’s long hair that lays flat so the clippers won’t touch it. You can’t go against the lay of the hair because, well, the clippers just won’t go that way. So Grover has a funny looking and incomplete shave. We didn’t even want to get started on Sage.

My scooter lights: I haven’t been riding the scooter because the headlight hasn’t been working and it’s been dark when I leave work. I spent a couple of afternoons two weekends ago looking for what I figured was a burnt out wire from when smoke started pouring out of the front when I was installing new batteries. I looked at the old parts scooter for how things were wired up and found a few burnt wires there as well (yay for cheap Chinese stuff?). I found the burnt wire and put in a new one, still no headlight. I followed more wires and found two more burnt out. More patches and still no headlight, but now I see the battery level go down when the headlight is on which means there’s a short and it’s definitely not good. I look but I can’t find anything else so I pack it up to look for the problem later. Now thanks to daylight savings time it’s light when I leave work and headlight isn’t an obstacle. So I ride to work today but I notice that when the turn signal blinks there is a major draw on the battery gauge so the short is more serious than I thought but should be easier to locate and now I’m down to hand signals.

 Posted by Douglas at 1:15 pm

Battery goodness

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Jan 122008
 

My old scooter (the one that I was clobbered by the door while riding) had it’s batteries fade to unusable. The new scooter that was the replacement had a motor problem that took a year to get a new one and I didn’t think about the batteries going bad but they did. Today I finally pulled the 8 batteries (4 from each) and also brought along the two batteries from the UPS that died in December and headed to BatteriesPlus for replacements.

They took the old ones and they took my money in exchange for the replacements I desired. I managed to get the scooter re-assembled with only one mishap. The main power was off but half way though I heard a pop and  magic smoke started pouring out of the front end of the scooter. The otehr end of the batter lead I was attaching made momentary contact with the frame and fried something. When I got it all together everything still worked except for the headlight so I’m guessing that’s what got the bonus juice.

The UPS was trivial to re-assemble after that and it’s now happily charging.

 Posted by Douglas at 5:19 pm

Cold wind

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Mar 272007
 

The crazy cold wind
Makes scooter rides angular
But my hair looks good

 Posted by Douglas at 2:28 pm

Replaced my scooter’s front brake cable

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Nov 042006
 

When I was leaving work last week my brake cable broke and the motor wouldn’t run. I called Rick at the Folks Cafe (formerly Volks Cafe) and he explained that power gets cut to the motor when the brake lever is pressed so unless I was holding it up it wouldn’t run. Good to know that I only needed to replace the brake cable.

Anyway, it was a really easy procedure. Unscrewed where it attaches to the wheel, removed the inner cable and taped the top of the new one to the bottom of the old one. Then I was able to pull the old one out the top and bring the new one up with it without taking off the front panel.

After that I just had to insert the cylinder end on the top in to the lever and feed the cable through the handle. Then attach the new cable end on the bottom to the front wheel. The longest part was walking from the bike cage to the office for some tape and scissors.

 Posted by Douglas at 8:19 pm

How I roll

 ecocruz, Funny!, Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Oct 122006
 

When I’m not reading while brushing my teeth (I take a long time) I often hum along to my Sonicare. Sometimes it’s the same tone, usually it’s harmonies. Today on the way to work on my way to work on the electric scooter, I found myself going not at full speed so the tone of the electric motor could match that of the leaf blower I was passing.

 Posted by Douglas at 8:21 am

Scooter accident!

 bummer, ecocruz  5 Responses »
Dec 082005
 

I was riding home to meet the window guy so he could measure all the windows. I crossed the Cayuga intersection and then a door was open in front of me. I think I tried to swerve some, but I hit it and went down. I think I hit my left side first and then bounced to my right side since both my hips are bruised and the left side has more damage, scraped ankle and leg and a scraped and bruised elbow.

The right side I have a hole in my jeans and a scrape on my palm and a blood blister on my thumb. Also a spot scrape/bruise in the back of my right calf.

I didn’t hit my head at all and luckily I was across the street from the fire department so the paramedics were on scene right away. They didn’t find any evidence of internal injury or my spine. They gave me some adhesive bandages and checked my blood pressure which was normal, but a little high for me.

The CHP showed up and wrote up the accident with her at fault and took photos of everything.

My scooter is pretty munched up: torn seat, most of the plastic cracked or broken off, missing a mirror, the storage pucket is no longer mounted, but the core is still good and ridable.

Thanks to the cigarette store guy whoe picked up a lot of the pieces and taped on the ones that wouldn’t stay in place. He also gave me some more adhesive bandages.

Oh yeah. One pair of singing magnets are gone now. I saw one of them but didn’t see the second one and then forgot to get the one I saw before I left.

 Posted by Douglas at 12:54 pm

More on intermittent scooter power

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Jul 302005
 

Occasionally when I go over a bump I feel the power cut out on the scooter for a second. I thought it might be where the splice in the line to the motor is from when changing tires on these was an unknown. I just checked that yesterday and all those splices are solid, not even a wiggle. I also thought it might be in the throttle and to test that I had the back wheel off the ground with the throttle on and whacked it. The motor cut out for a split second.

I talked to Ricky at the Volks Cafe about it and he said he didn’t have any others in stock and explained that it is a hall-effect sensor which basically means it’s a magnet and a magnetic field sensor Not likely to have a problem unless the sensor or the magnet is loose. I took it apart and found the sensor a little loose so I bought some epoxy and really glued it in. I also got it positioned better so the final position will be closer to the sensor than before (slightly but we aren’t talking about major distances in any case and the magnetic field drops off as 1 over r squared so every little bit helps). The power in the throttle starts a little earlier now which is good but still there is the drop-out.

I got it home from the test ride and put it back on the center stand. I got the back wheel off the ground and turned it on. Then for some reason I turned the handle bars. When it was at either side it would work perfectly, but when I turned it through the center position sometimes it would cut out. Finally a concrete way to reproduce it without me having to be riding! I’m guessing that something is getting pinched sometimes in the forward position or something. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for but I with the better reproduction I can play around until I find it better.

 Posted by Administrator at 10:02 am

Another loose wire?

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Jun 162005
 

The scooter ran great this morning excet for two moments of what felt like the motor cutting out. I’m thinking there is still another loose wire in there that I need to track down. They were too fast to tell if it was the entire bike losing power or not. I’m thinking just the motor which means it’s one of the like 5 connections under and in front of the seat. I think I’m going top open it up this weekend, force the motor on, and observe while I wiggle those connections.

 Posted by Administrator at 7:16 am

Scooter is fixed!

 ecocruz  No Responses »
Jun 152005
 

I went to OSH and got the longest philips-head screwdriver I could find that still had a small enough tip to work the average screw. I got home and unscrewed the screw that is supposed to hold the wire in with no problem. Then we ate dinner.

After dinner I determined that after I strip and cut the frayed end it would still reach the opening. I stripped the wire with the swiss army knife scissors and then trimmed the frayed ends with the nail clippers. I managed to find the small hole in the larger hole it goes in to and hold it there while I screwed the restraining bolt in place.

Then I turned it on and reset the circuit breaker and it all worked! A tug on the wire showed it in there securely. YAY!

 Posted by Administrator at 6:55 pm
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