F&B Go Nitro Harley Racing

This is an old post I wrote back in March of 2003 on a private forum I belong to that I was reminded of today. Since I know it has never been posted here before I thought would offer it up for your reading. As most of you know my friend Frog is no longer with us and is enjoying that great drag strip in the sky where the track is always perfect and the sun always shines. I’ve got more stories I need to write about racing with my friend Frog an the Buffalo’s. Enjoy.

After raining out Saturdays qualifying Sunday woke all bright and sunny. Frog, Buffalo and I got the bike ready for the first of two qualifying runs. The last time we ran "Strip Tease" it ran ok at a 6.17 seconds. Frog had did some work to the carburetor to allow it to pass more fuel since than. We hoped for better this time out.

His first pass was a blistering 5.276 seconds at 140.71mph, Frog’s carb work was indeed paying off in a big way. We ready the bike for the last pass of the day and hoped for even more improvements. After the second round of qualifying Frog said he didn't feel the clutch worked like it should. He was right cause it slowed to a 5.596 at 133.61 mph. So Buffalo worked on it installing some more plates and resetting the "clutch pack” height. He sure knows his clutch and what it takes to make it work and it would show on the next pass.

We push up to the line for the first round of eliminations up against the same guy who we lost to last time out (Frog red lighted… another story for another time). Frog yanks the throttle late at the line giving the other guy a slight lead. He is already about 3 or so tenths behind before he finally gets it moving. Buffalo's clutch is right on the money allowing Frog to run him down from behind. We hold our breath as we watch Frog slowly pull up from behind and then the score board flashes our side first with an amazing 5.059 @ 140.99mph. The other sides lights up a split second later at 5.114 @ 134.00 mph. The racers are asking each other who won cause it was so close they couldn't tell. Buffalo and I look at each other with that same “who won” look on our faces. No win light on our side of the scoreboard. What the?

Back to the pits and we ready the bike for the finals to see if we can win the event. We are all set to go when we ask the starter how much longer before we run?

He looks at us and says with a puzzled look on his face, "You are in the finals?"

It is at this point we feel like something is for sure not right. We dig out the time slip to add up the numbers and see who won. The whole crew stands there in disbelieve. We was so excited at the performance of Strip Tease no one bothered to look to see who had won on the time slip. The ticket clearly states, "left lane 1st", we were in the right lane.

Are happy kick butt mode was all lost by a mere .052 of a second. We had nothing to be ashamed of, after all Frog did set low E.T. of the event for his class as well as top speed. Not to shabby for a 60 years young guy and a 13 year old Harley!

It will be awhile before we can go racing again. Frog is getting is knee worked on June 17th so it will be a good while before he can get back on the bike. If ever you get a chance to go to an AMRA Harley Drag Race by all means go. They are so much fun and exciting. Just
remember to park in the proper place!

fasthair

Epilogue: To this day we still don’t really know how we lost that round. On paper everything says we won but the timing system says another. Such is racing. Some days it’s a cruel sport. 

Insert You Are Old Joke Here

Go ahead and let’em rip if you must. But I must warn you…

I also want to wish a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friends Chris and Sonya (she’s the better looking one of the group clearly) too!

fasthair

Phil “The Mercedes” Mangan

Buy a Mercedes-Benz from Studebaker? Yes you can. 



My mentor and best friend Phil Mangan was there at the start of that partnership. He was working for Handler Motors that was a Studebaker dealership in Des Moines, Iowa at the time. He told me that story many times.

When I moved the shop a few years ago I found his certificates that he had earned from Mercedes-Benz dated from 11/58 to 10/76. It was shortly after the last testing, working for the dealership who took over selling Mercedes-Benz, Dave Osterm Imports, that the union crew went out on strike. The strike was short lived as people crossed the line and broke the union in the shop. All of these striking workers joined up and started an independent shop that was also short lived. All
of these guys went on to open their own shops with Phil partnering up with Bob Altamari to open A&M Imports. This is when I would meet Phil and my life, as they say, was changed forever.

 

Of all of his awards from Mercedes-Benz his "Meister Mechaniker Award" that he received on 3/23/64 was his most prized. It's unknown to me just how many ever received this rare status but I'm sure there were very few. Along with the award came a cap proclaiming his status that he wore on special occasions. I always told him that when he passed on I would like to have that cap. After years of working side by side with Phil (15 years by this time) I got the surprise of a life time. It was during Christmas one year that I opened my small present from him to find my own Meister Mechaniker cap with the very same patch. It seems he had a couple extra patches that I never knew about. His statement to me at the time was "I think you've earned this now." Needless to say I was blown over and even though I don't wear caps I do wear this one when I go for independent Mercedes-Benz training. Of course everyone wants to know how I got such an award and I proudly tell them of my friend Phil “The Mercedes” Mangan and how the award came about.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos but I didn't want to take them off the wall here in the shop and remove them from the frames just to get the shots. When I was getting the awards framed I was trying to figure just where I was going to put them. After some thinking it hit me, I would hang them in the shop area where Phil belongs. So he may be gone now but he still is in the shop with me looking over me making sure I do it right. And every now and than I look up at him and ask “Phil I could use some help here.”

fasthair

PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! and yes I know I've been gone awhile... more on that some other time

It’s All About the Music

I don’t know if anyone actually noticed or used the little radio link on the side of my blog to listen to KFMG radio but as of high noon 1/15/2010 my favorite radio station is going off the air. KFMG was a local low powered station that was a commercial free independent among many giant cookie cutter play-it-again-Sam-same-damn-song-you’ve-played-for-30-years-radio in town.

Ron Sorenson, brainchild behind KFMG, is a legend in town and has always pushed his brand of radio for over 30 years. He has took on and conquered more then one station. Once doing so well in the market to sell out to corporate America when they came knocking. They then of course took the station and ruined it like only they can do. Take something that works and change it until you get it completely screwed up and call it good. No thanks. You can keep your paid for radio. I’ll just keep listen free independent forward thinking radio that plays something other than the same 30 song rotation that they’ve played for the last 30 years.

So the search is on for a new station and sadly I think this time it’s going to have to come from the internet. I will miss my local news and information. I will miss being able to hear music ranging from Albert Collins to Frank Zappa. I will miss sitting down for pizza and beers with people, friends, who I’ve known for years. I will miss supporting the little guy.

Ron promises he will rise again and knowing him he will, he has after all done that more then a few times. But in the mean time…

RIP KFMG

fasthair

From The Phone Years End

What started out as a just a whim turned out to be rather fun. When I posted the first of the “From The Phone” pictures I had no plans for making it a series that would last all year long. The first phone photo from the lake was posted on 01/30/2009 and the last one was posted 11/28/2009 which if I added correctly that makes ten months. During that amount of time I managed to post eight photos from the same spot at the lake. I really planned on getting one more before years end but something called snow, and lots of it, put the brakes on that plan. One thing I’m pretty sure about is it would’ve have looked pretty much like the first photo.

With that, “From the Phone all at once” post in the same time line. Pretty cool to watch it all change as the year went along.

Next year I’ll look for a new spot and start all over again. I will also keep posting other From the Phone pictures as they happen while out riding. Here is hoping we all get to roll up the miles in the new year. And with that…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

fasthair

Cool Tech

Note: I’ve wrote this and not sure I like it much. I’m not sure it has much value in it but I’m posting it anyway. Sorry but this one just might suck on so many levels.

Here are a few things I’ve been playing with or wanting. I’m a Windows Media Center nut. I love it and think it is one of the best things about Windows 7. If you are worried about Microsoft's latest operating system, don’t be, it kicks ass. If you are even thinking about upgrading to it just do it. If you use Vista now you will love it. You old XP users might be harder to convince that it is better because of the learning curve. Trust me it is easy to use and learn where MS moved everything to. I’ve had two friends who used XP that I got to try 7 and they just dig it. I’ve said it many times that once I loaded the beta version back in January the was no way I was going back to XP. 7 runs so much faster on the same system that was once running XP and is rock solid stable. If you are running Vista your machine can run Windows 7 without a problem. An upgrade for a XP machine may or may not be possible. If you have any concerns if your system can run Windows 7 download and run the Upgrade Advisor for free from MS.

Of course you can say screw upgrading and just buy a new system with Windows 7 already installed. There are many good sub-500$ system out there to choose from. My advice, for what it is worth, is to buy a system with at least a dual core 64bit processor (CPU), 2gigs of RAM with 4gig being all you really need unless you do a lot of video editing. At this time I have five browser tabs open, watching two live HDTV football games, email and I don’t know at least four other programs open and I am using just under 3gigs of the 8gigs of the RAM I have installed on this system. If your new systems uses on board video, like most cheap systems do, then it will share the system RAM so you can see why more is better. Of course it goes without saying that you want to make sure the new system is running Windows 7 64bit. Hey it’s the latest greatest and the future so no need to be buying yesterdays tech if you can avoid it.

Now you know what you need or want lets take a look at what I happen to think is one of the coolest little PCs I’ve seen in a long time. It is perfect for a Media Center PC being nice and small so it fits easily in your entertainment system cabinet. Plus it has all of the system requirements I just listed above. This little Acer fits the bill for a Media Center PC, sometimes labeled as a HTPC, short for Home Theater PC. Not only will this tiny thing do Media Center prefect it makes a great “do most anything you do day in and day out computer.” This would make a great computer for anyone who wants a small quite low power consumption PC like Grandma want. Add in the fact it has the video power to drive large HDTV you can plug it in directly to your HD wide screen TV via HDMI and has digital audio out so you can plug it into your surround sound system and you’ve got, in my opinion, the prefect little HTPC. No it doesn’t have all the horse power that a big quad core PC does but it doesn’t have the high price tag of one either. This is on my very short list for Christmas if anyone feels generous.

OK so the Acers cute, but what are you going to do with it and why would you want it plugged into your TV? Why to record TV of course. In other words you just got rid of that TiVo DVR that you pay a monthly fee to use. Just add a TV tuner to the Acer either using a USB tuner like the one I use. Or better yet buy a digital network TV tuner. (damn it… it’s 30 bucks cheaper then when I bought it two weeks ago… bastards) Just as the name implies this device is plugged in your network router. This model has two tuners so I can watch and or record two shows at the same time. The bonus is any Media Center PC on your network can see and use it. Since you already have a wireless network in your house with this set up you don’t need to run a cable to a USB tuner. The Acer has wireless N (fastest wireless at this time) built in so you can connect wirelessly to this tuner. I’ve even been able to stream TV wirelessly to my netbook with this setup. With my TV as one of the four monitors and my 1080P LCD monitors plus my sound system plugged into my hotrod PC I have better picture and sound quality then just using the analog signal from my cable company and the puny speakers in my TV.

Now for some motorcycle tech. I don’t know about everyone else but I like to take my laptop with me on road trips so I can post about my trip as it unfolds. My friends and family have enjoyed this in the past but my laptops were getting old and even being smallish they was still kind of pain to haul around. Enter the netbook. To be honest I thought these things were a joke and a waste of money. Then while at a friends I picked his up and started playing with it. I was hooked and could see instantly how perfect they are for a motorcycle. The little Samsung N130 I bought fit perfectly in my inside my coat pocket and weighs all of about two and half pounds. It has all of the things I wanted in a netbook. Great battery life at over fives hours so far, wireless N and Windows 7 but sadly it is only 32bit. The little Atom CPU inside most all netbooks is just a single core and only 32bit.

Things to look for in a netbook, again in my opinion, are Windows 7 (watch this close, ALOT of them still have XP Home on them for the same money!) a six cell battery and wireless N. After that your only other choices other then color for the most part is the amount of RAM and hard drive size. Most have 1gig of RAM installed upgradable to 2gig. For hard drive size most have 160gig drives and some have 250gig drives. After that for the most part they all use and have the same stuff inside, of course there are exceptions. A buddy of mine was so impressed with this little netbook that he went out and bought one for his wife and she just loves it.

If you are looking for or at a new system shot me an email with a link to it, what you want it to be able to do and I would be happy to give it a look. If you have any questions about anything I’ve posted here or how else I use Media Center post a comment and I’d be happy to see if I can’t answer it for you.

fasthair

From The Phone No Snow… Yet

 

Whiskeys clean... gas... sunshine,.. all check... time for a lap or two!!!

Update:

Yes I’m still alive. I must apologize for my lack of participation of every ones comments and blogs.

The ride yesterday couldn’t have been a nicer day for what time of year it is. The sun was bright and warm plus there was no wind. I wasn’t the only one enjoying what little time we have left before the deep freeze hits and we are holed up in the house just itching to get out and play. I seen a lot of bikes out on the back roads and it felt good to see them. I even seen a couple out together, him on a small dual sport and her on a even smaller pink scooter.

Speaking of scooters. Had a lady pull up next to me on my way home from work in the rain on a scooter earlier this week. I’m betting some nice rain gear is on her holiday wish list. This had to be a sight to see. Picture it. Some big bad Harley biker dude in full gear with a little scooter sitting at the stop light next to him with a little lady on it soaked to the bone with rain. She did manage a smile when I flipped her a thumbs up but I can’t think she was all that happy. She gets major bonus point for gutting it out though.

There were a few boats on the lakes with people trying to catch fish and just enjoying a nice holiday weekend. The crops are all in and some of the fields have already been turned ready for planting next years crop. In fact I only seen one field of corn left to pick in all of the hundred miles I rode yesterday. So we no longer have just corn corn corn to even look at.

I’ve actually wrote a couple of posts just haven’t sent them off to the blog. I’ve got a tech blog coming up later this week. It will have a couple of cool gadgets the tech lover in you might like for Christmas. Other then that I hope everyone has enjoyable safe and loving Thanksgivings weekend.

fasthair