T-Max big end bearing oil seal

I went into town a while back and oil was dripping out of my engine, specifically on the right hand side (as seated on the bike) and it seemed to be coming from the crank case cover area. This is in fact the side with the V-Belt (as owners would know). So I (having no choice) headed home (35km of country roads) and the belt was slipping well by the time I got home.

Obviously I needed to check what the hell was wrong so stripped the right side of the bike

yes that's fresh drippings ... bugger.

So the covers and casing had to come off (which I've done many times in replacing a belt, but this time the backing cover had to come off to expose the shafts and everything underneath. I'd seen this cover (on the primary shaft) before and expected it covered the seal ...

which it does and once the inner cover is taken off it simply lifts off. There is a  rubber seal around that (visible on the outside) don't loose that.

It was pretty clear that the seal was leaking and had an amount of road gunge on it ... part was identified and Yamaha said it was ex-Japan (not surprising) and so I just covered everything and waited.

as you can see its quite large ...

The seal arrived and I >carefully< drilled two small holes into the seal (with the new one in my hand I could see where I should drill) and inserted two "chipboard" self tapping screws in far enough to get a good drip on the steel (NOTE: use a small diameter drill) and with "vice grips" a long solid screw driver as a lever popped the old one off.

After that point I made this quick video

which shows the interior of the casing (but not the bearing, which is still further back in).

Lastly I'll show you the tool I made in better detail here.

So with everything back together, some test riding with no leaks I hope (fingers crossed) this gets it by for a while more.

The scoot has done nearly 130,000km

Sony a1

I have an old saying which I developed when determining (many decades ago now) if I needed to upgrade my 35mm outfit to a 6x7 medium format outfit (back in the daze of film): 

How much detail do you want to throw away?

because seldom do you need everything that (even 35mm film) the camera can capture. This is more pronounced in a day when people still wank on about that huge billboard print but then look at pictures on InstaGram on their phone.

Well DPReview have produced the review and (to me, all) important Studio scene comparison (I've got no time for slick wankerTV blabbering on about bullshit which isn't important to me) to allow me to see at a glance what I need to know

The costs of the step up are:

• Moiré in the fine detail 
• more than 4 times the RAW file size (still hasn't seemed to sink in that double the detial is 4 times the file size): meaning much more power in desktop processing
• nearly double the mass
• insane 30fps drive (and that's a traditional insane not "wow I want that" insane)
• body only price of around €7,300

So if its the camera you need (I'm guessing only for a number of top level pros) then its great that stuff like this is made to do so well as to challenge the capacity of your lenses (and maybe add another few dozen thousand to your bill). But if you're like me then its really nothing I want.

Interestingly if I did want more than the amount of pixels that the A7 puts out I can try some software which by all accounts is now getting pretty good (if you need those high res road side posters); for example the new offering by Adobe

So it seems I'm still very well served by my:

• 2009 Panasonic GH-1 (stills but mostly video now) {cost about AU$1000}
• 2009 Panasonic GF-1 (stills with occasional video {cost about AU$100}
• 2014 Sony A7 (stills with maybe 1 video made) {cost about AU$500}
• GoPro Hero 3+ (action video) {kindly donated, but costs around AU$50 now}
• 2016 Oppo Phone {cost about AU$250}

This outfit allows me to have (as I deem I need for a job) more compact or more competent in a variety of situations, in most cases people can't really tell what took what. Even I need to look at the data to know which took which with what lens

It seems to me that for most people too much is never enough.

MX60 range expectations experiment

Well I last charged the MX60 on Thursday night, so it was "fresh" Friday. I did some "around town little blurts, but this morning decided to go for a quick saunter over to the next village

When I left it hat 61% showing on the battery. The battery is 1200Wh in capacity (claimed) and so if I assumed prior usages I should be able to get there and back. I returned with 38% on the dial. Now Li-ION batteries are quite linear in the middle of their discharge cycle so I can say that its reasonable to estimate this has consumed 23% of the 1200Wh : meaning 276Wh.

Rounding this trip to 22km that means my MX60 returned an economy of 12.5km per Wh or 1.2kWh/100km

This is pretty good, better than this test where I found 2.8kWh/100 and this test where I also got 2.8kWh/100km. I believe this comes from a few possibilities:

1. the fact that I kept speeds on the flats to 25km/h, and only engaged power on the down hill (which was on tar not dirt) sufficient to keep speeds above 27km/h (wind resistance is an issue that gets bigger with speed)
2. I only used the battery %-age  indication and it was a shorter trip.

So further research is needed, but it suggests that at these speeds 80km is possible.That's pretty good and I'm pretty pleased with that.

Making NATO more comfortable

Some time back I did a blog post on removing the "keeper strap" which NATO straps have. I did this because it reduces bulk behind the watch and I have found that the watch doesn't move on the strap anyway so what is that keeper actually doing anyway?

Today while looking at my watch (and still not liking that bulk on the side caused by the fold-overs and keepers I thought (now that its not "locked in") why not move it so that the sides of the strap are not in my way (or visible) and make it just a nice well priced and solid strap

Also, it can be (when the buckle is down) positioned to the inside when using a computer by simply sliding the buckle closer to the watch. As one tends to roll ones arms out a little (thumbs towards up) it means there is only a thin piece of nylon or leather strap between your wrist and the desk.

I hope this helps someone who struggles with NATO being practical for them (not to mention the aesthetics) become more practical.