Cooking Heads!

For me, this has got to be one of the best Ghetto Garages yet. Here in Phoenix, AZ, home of Motorcycle Mechanics Institute (MMI) where they train "best of the best," homegrown techniques are alive and well.

Just before Christmas vacation one of the projects in machine shop was a practice top end rebuild. Some of it was pretty awesome like boring the cylinder and measuring all the clearances.



MMI Class Room E2



Machine Shop E1 during a rare calm moment



My Favorite Part...Boring Cylinders...That, is serious fun.

That is not the best part though, that would be the "Turkey Pots." Certain machine parts, such as some valve guides, are actually slightly larger than the holes they fit in. A so-called interference fit. In order to remove or insert them the surrounding material must be heated. One would think that a place like MMI would have something high-tech for this. Ahhhh, but not so.



Behold the Turkey Pots!



Yep! That is a Wal-Mart hot plate under there.



It works though.

Parking Lot Suspension

Ghetto Garage has been on an extended adventure. One different than the usual. Usually we travel around and do stuff. I guess we have been traveling of late, sort of, looking for a new home and a new life. Things have been stressful, particularly financially, but our higher power has been looking out for us. Always at the last minute it seems but nevertheless looking out.

We have been in Phoenix for twelve weeks now and one of the things that has been particularly adding to our stress is the untimely death of the Wrench Wench's car. We bought it in good faith from my brother which was a mistake because he is a known scammer. Paid $1500.00 for it, put about an equal amount in maintenance and after getting a mere 6000 miles out of it it went terminal. Guess that serves us right, a snake will always be a snake. I am trying to limit the resentment here, but it just keeps pouring out. Not very spiritual I suppose.

So, you may be asking, what the heck does all this have to do with Ghetto Garage. The answer is it brings us around to the question of transportation for Wrench Wench. The only vehicle we currently have is the Beemer and I am the only one who can ride it as it is much to big for her. We do have a Suzuki SV for Patti but it suffers from some problems. Not the least of which is that it is too tall for her and also too top heavy. If she comes to any kind of stop on uneven ground, over she goes and she does not have the upper body strength to pick it up. So the answer lies in lowering that sucker. Which, up until a couple of weeks ago, seemed beyond my capabilities. However, after working for the last three weeks in the MMI chassis and suspension lab I think I have a pretty good idea of what to do now.



Just for laughs here is a quick, and blurry, peek into the chassis and suspension lab

Doing a swing arm lowering and front end drop would be easy there, but since we don't have time to work on our own projects there. Well, the only the left to do is use the apartment parking lot chassis lab.



Above is a view of our very fine Outdoor Chassis Lab