yaleman.org

After much muttering and wondering what I was doing wrong, I figured it out.

There’s some info on the Virago Tech Forums (registration probably required) also reproduced here because ugh. Here’s how to remove the carburetor on a Virago XV1100.

1. Remove the seat
2. Remove the right pod and its air cleaner hose
3. Remove the left pod and the vacuum line to the (AIS) at the 4 way junction and let it hang down.
4. Raise the fuel tank and loosen the upper intake hose clamp for the front carb
5. Loosen the lower intake hose clamp and remove the intake hose.
6. Remove the throttle cables
7. Loosen the upper and lower intake hose clamps and remove the intake hose.
8. Remove the fuel lines from the carbs
9. Remove the choke cable
10. Remove the vacuum lines from the carb holders.
11. Loosen the clamp on the rear carb holder and remove the bolt
12. Spread open the carb holder clamp for access to the lower carb holder bolt; loosen but do not remove the lower bolt.
13. Loosen the carb holder clamp bolt on the front carb and remove the bolt
14. Spread open the carb holder clamp for access to the lower carb holder bolt, loosen but do not remove the lower bolt.
15. Now, reach over the bike backbone and grab the carbs and twist clockwise and remove the carbs from the carb holders. If the carbs have not been recently removed, this will take some effort.
16. From the right side of the bike, slide the carbs back toward the rear wheel. This will give you access to the upper carb holder bolt from the left side of the bike.
17. Loosen the upper carb holder bolt on the front cylinder just enough to slide the carb holder out.
18. From the right side of the bike, remove the lower carb holder bolt and slide the carb holder out and set it aside. There is enough room to remove it. Don’t remove the bolts - the carb holder should slide off as it’s got a notch in that end.
19. From the left side of the bike, slide the carb forward enough to gain access to the top bolt on the rear carb holder from the right side of the bike.
20. Loosen it just enough to allow the carb holder to slide out.
21. From the left side of the bike, remove the lower carb holder bolt and slide the carb holder out.
22. From the left side of the bike, gently maneuver the carbs past the two top carb holder bolts and they will slide right out. You may need to screw one of the top carb holder bolts in a couple of turns to allow the carbs to pass.

This guy’s got the right idea with grinding down his 10mm wrench - I’ll definitely be doing it for the reinstall process. If you try to use the open end of the spanner you’ll likely round down the bolt heads - ask me how I know? 🙁 Luckily a load of G96 loosened up the bolt enough to save my bacon. I’m also going to try that socket wrench idea, that’s fantastic.

Nothing much to report today, I started disconnecting the wiring to individually test things, as mentioned in a previous post.

I’m fairly sure there was a meeting involved between a load of people to design this… From the battery to somewhere deeper in the loom is this strange arrangement of connectors and a fuse. I’m going to replace the whole thing with an inline fuse holder and a new plug.

Must have been a meeting

Petrol’s a nasty thing, and carburettors are normally full of it. Until it evaporates - in which case they’re full of nasty ex-petrol-goo. The carbs on the project bike are made of aluminium alloy and they’ve been in the weather by the looks of it, so they’re coated in a lot of nasty white corrosion on the outside. The throttle’s jammed and I’m hoping that’s just a wasp nest or the aforementioned white crap. This is even before I’ve gotten them off the bike!

Pottering around on the internet as I do, and RMB hit me up about a friend giving away a cruiser. I figure free things are good, and free motorbikes are better! We arranged a time and place and after a few calls around, I snaffled a motorcycle trailer for $73.

Here’s the bike! It’s a Virago XV1100, from 1997 maybe? 🙂

Yamaha XV1100

When you get error 29 while trying to access a site ‘protected’ by Incapsula, check the SSL settings for the site. It’ll generally be because the site “has not got SSL” - log a support ticket and they’ll fix whatever they’ve broken.

I wanted to make a quick battery charger just for giggles, the basic requirements were “allows me to plug in a USB cable to charge my phone” - which is fairly easy to accomplish going by all the crazy devices you can buy on the market currently.

I found an eight-pack of C cell batteries at the local Kmart for $5 and I had a few other parts lying around, so I had a go in ten minutes or less.

I work in computer security lately, so I figure I should probably ensure that my site is vaguely secure 🙂 The Qualys SSL test for yaleman.org was showing a ‘B’ grade because of a few things.

Firstly it wasn’t presenting the full SSL CA chain, so I fixed that. Previously I was only presenting the certificate, with the client having to have the root CA.

1. Downloaded the ca bundle files from the details Comodo provided me.
2. Made the bundle file (their support page helped)

cat *.crt > yaleman.org.cabundle

3. Uploaded the file to the server
4. Reconfigured Apache as per the config from Comodo by adding this line to  the virtualhost SSL configuration (replace $filename with the file location)

_SSLCertificateChainFile $filename_

5. Confirmed the config by running apachectl -t, then restarted apache
6. Reran the Qualys test and that showed up OK.

The next step was to remove the SSL methods vulnerable to POODLE and FREAK

It’s taken a lot of changes, along with a hell of a lot of growing up to finally stabilize that line, and I’m feeling a lot more relaxed for having done it.

Before the graph started, I had a car crash that left me with permanent whiplash damage, changed jobs, moved houses a bunch of times and spent a lot of money on distracting myself from all of it. I ate terribly, exercised only sparingly and didn’t have a plan other than buy all the things!

So, I posted this on Facebook a while back (I started writing this in June 2013):

I wonder if the increase in childhood obesity has a weak correlation with the programs to reduce bullying?

Originally it was based on a stupid line on an episode of  8 out of 10 cats, a crazy comedy show with Jimmy Carr and a bunch of other comedians. It got me thinking about how there’s strange correlations between so many things and it’s surprising where the data shows how things are linked.

It’s a strange word, and like many fascinating words it’s German. Zettlekasten basically means “index card” and refers to a system of organising your thoughts onto cards.

The modern equivalent for us techie folk would be something like a wiki, which would allow for more efficient searching and linking between concepts. It’s a fascinating idea and something I’m going to play with.

The article has a lot more explanation than I can add, and it’s well worth a read.