Mileage Calculation #6 - 76 Shell

Time for yet another calculation.

(3024-2948)/1.123 = 67 mpg

Cheapo Headlight Modulator

So the headlight thingy finally arrived in the mail last night. It's an LED light designed to be strapped to your head to help you work in the dark. I managed to get it on the scooter! So technically this isn't a headlight modulator mod. It's just a blinking LED light mounted underneath the existing headlight in a place that looks clean.

This is how it's supposed to look like when it's done. It would've fit perfectly in the oval shaped opening but I have to mount it higher to get access to the switch. I took the LED light apart to see if I could reroute the switch, but wasn't able. This will have to do.

I used one of the silver horn brackets I had laying around to mount the light to the base of the OEM scooter headlight. The silver bracket is just under 1" wide and about 3" long with a hole on either end. To get this mounted like this, I had to remove a couple pieces to get access to the bronze screw you see here.








I took out the screw that's used to adjust the leveling of the OEM headlight. Here it is being removed.












Here's all the pieces once taken out. There's a screw, nut bracket and spring.

I'm so glad this all worked out. The light was $2.08 from ebay but I already had some credit. Ebay likes to give away money to it's customers so I used the credit and got this light! It took awhile to come in the mail, but it was all worth the wait. This is the best safety mod next to the rear brake light modulator.

My intention as with all mods is to make it look stock. I want it to have as clean of a look as possible so it's as if it came like that straight from the factory. It doesn't stand out at all!







Same thing but at an angle. I like how the contour of the gap aligns with the curve of the light. It's like it was built for it! As an LED light, I'm hoping the three AAA batteries will last awhile. The only way to replace the batteries is to remove the chrome headlight housing. It's only 3 screws, so it's not a big deal anyway.




Here it's quite flush with the opening in the chrome housing. I really would have loved to mount it lower so that there's zero gap, but accessing the light switch would have been a problem. I even considered that using my scooter key to slip into a narrower gap could turn the switch on/off, but I was worried that would be more of a pain than the aesthetic is worth. I might change my mind, but for now, it looks fine.

Getting Horny

I finally installed the new horn. Well, it's a used horn. It's an air horn that I had used on the Rav4, but since I had it laying around, thought I'd give another shot at installing it. I mounted it differently from the original for a couple of reasons:

1. It wouldn't fit with my next mod in the way (headlight modulator)
2. I stripped the screw and wasn't able to get it out. A screw extractor costs $5 at the hardware store nearby. No way! I worked around it and made it all work.

The horn's pretty loud eh? Louder than a stock car horn! This is yet another safety mod I'm glad I did. Again, it was free b/c it was made from parts I already had!

New Replacement Jacket

The Joe Rocket Atomic 3.0 replacement jacket came in the mail today! Size small exactly the same as the one I had previously except this one has all the buttons intact. I hope this one is more durable than the first. I'll be sending out my old damaged one Wednesday to New Enough. I still can't believe they were nice enough to not only replace the jacket, but send me a new one while I hold onto the old one!

Most places would either tell me:

1. It's not our fault. Contact the manufacturer directly.
2. Insist that I send back the messed up one, wait for them to process and inspect it before deciding whether or not to send me a new replacement.

Two thumbs up for New Enough. Customer service is excellent.

Removed stickers

I'm sure these stickers are important, but they don't look good. I've read them all and perfectly understand the warnings. They gotta go.

The stickers unfortunately are super brittle. It doesn't come off in one piece. Took me at least 20 minutes just to get these things off! The other larger stickers took even longer and I scratched it up big time while doing it. Figuring there's gotta be a better way, I reached for a hair drier to hopefully wear down the glue and soften things up.



It worked! After heating the larger stickers up, they came off so much more easily. Your mom even helped take it off for me!!!

Giants Win World Series!

First time since 1954!

One thing I would never ever do? Purposely go down to AT&T Park to go through traffic and see all the crazies. But things are way different with the scooter. Headed straight there after dinner to check out the chaos. Saw tons of it.

I filtered through the traffic but the dangerous part was that people would drive with their car doors open!!!! Yes, even the drivers! It was all stop and go traffic though with cars going 5 MPG at the fastest along Embarcadero. Low rider cars with pumped up stereos sitting on 22"'s stopped at an angle in the middle of a two lane street, hopped up on their car's roofs and started dancing! It was nuts. I couldn't get my camera out in time, but pulled over later and took some videos.

I wasn't able to get the best of the footage, but manged to get a glimpse of some fanatics. Looks like these folks kept their Halloween costumes with them. There were so many people out tonight in SF even though the Giants won in Texas. Streets were closed, cops were everywhere and even Muni took detours to avoid all the traffic.

It was like this within a 3 block radius of the Park. Constant honking, yelling, screaming and kids running through the streets high-fiving random strangers - me included. Traffic was insane but no one was upset at anyone. It was a bit touching seeing the community get together like this. All races and ages of people were really into celebrating the Giant's win. You'd literally see strangers get out of their cars approaching other vehicles smiling and high-fiving all night long. Smelled a bit of pot and saw quite a few drinkers in their cars though. All in all a good night.

This was the parade a few days later! Some definite hardcore fans showed up. Lots of people skipped work to attend. Estimated 1 million people showed up! That's ridiculous! The first place we showed up to watch was packed full of people. Even MUNI buses and delivery trucks got stuck! It's pretty cool that the scooter allowed me to attend this. There's no other way I would have come. It would take too long on a bus. No one would come with me and driving a car looking for parking would be insane if not impossible.

Even with a scooter it took us 1 hour to find a place to watch the parade from a good spot. Most of the streets were so packed full of people there was no way to see anything. Here's a handful of a few of the million people that showed up. Notice the guy with face paint who climbed up on the pole waving a flag. We're all looking at the cable car crossing onto Market Street. The best view was from there. Saw a couple players! Two per cable car. Some of the floats were being pulled by UPS trucks! As Uncle Victor and I walked back to our scooters to leave after the event, I saw at least two people pee on the street. One guy peed on a tree and the other on a car! Yuck. Yes, that means he was facing the street!

Photoshoot - more pics