hp2 fuel tank!

I just heard back from HPN! I'm so happy SOMEONE is thinking about it.

From: HPN-Motorradtechnik GmbH
Date: Feb 9, 2006 12:27 AM
Subject: AW: BMW HP2 larger fuel tank?
To: k2h


Hello k2h,
thanks for your email. HPN develope a larger tank - we hope it can be available at the end of March, capacity ca. 26ltr, price is unknown at the moment.

best regards

Caroline
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: k2h [mailto:k2h.admin@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 2. Februar 2006 21:36
An: info@hpn.de
Betreff: BMW HP2 larger fuel tank?


Do you have a larger fuel tank for the BMW HP2? I wasn't able to find one on your web site, but I heard rumors that you may be in the process of making one. what capacity are you targeting, and how much do you think the tank will cost?

~keith

seems someone strapped a 12L on the backhere

hp2 update

Call me psycho, but I'm loving the $20k dirtbike, and that is all anyone will ever see in it. I was parked outside taco bell and some old chap walks up and says 'is that the 20k one?'. like I said.. thats all anyone will see in it.

and I am crazy. already had it off road. nothing to gnarly, but through some sand (keep above 40mph..) the thing is awesome!

fuel consumption is a bit of a concern. the specs says 4.1l/100km at 90kmph and 5.5l/100km at 120kph, (google makes it easy) and I can assure you I've been riding it much faster than 65. I'm getting around 40mpg, which is way to little on a 3 gallon gas tank to take it to alaska, so I'm going to have to address that. I really don't want a 2gal can hanging of the back, but thats the cheapest and easiest. if I could increase my metal working skills I could make some dakar style side tanks for it. that would be awesome, but a bit out of my current skill set.

I've got to address the night light situation, and get some cheep 20$ walmart light up there. its nice to know that the HP2 shares the same H4 bulb as the F650 (jens bike). at least I think it does.

one more thing. hand warmers! mom gave me some hand warmers a while ago and I got a chance to use them (the same ones we used paint balling). my commute is about 1hour, and I've done it in sub freezing temps (28degF?) its weird beccause its the wind speed (80mph) that has the worst effect on hand warmth. I slow down to 30mph and pass a sign that says 32F and my hands actually start to warm up.. its weird. its around $400 to add heated grips. it would be nice but i'm not sure its worth the money. I've got to address the fuel situation first.

hand warmer secret: the hand warmers from mycoal grabber are carbon and iron. as the iron oxides in O2 it creates heat. they come in a sealed bag for a reason. to extend the life of your warmers, reseal them in a ziplock. they take a little bit longer to heat up the second go around, but they still work. so far I've used one twice (for 1 hr each time). in theory it should work for 3 or 4 1hr events. they say 5 or 7 hours on them but i'll be happy if I get 4 uses.

The 'cold weather' gear consists of only a few things.

Gloves, some old alpine stars that jens dad got for me when we did our FIRST motorcycle tour thorugh oregon and washington. that was way back when we were still in college. over 5 years ago. maybe 6 now? they are still very good, and well worth the origional 30$ cost.

Coat: mom got it for me for my birthday about 7 years ago. touratech short coat. was around $150. still works great and has a polysters wind proof liner which helps a ton.

Polyester pants, for under the jeans. cost $25 from sierra trading post. well wroth it.

over pants: $20 wind/semi water proof pants from walmart. they actually work quite well.

boots: not realy cold weather gear, as I wear boots no matter what the temp, but full grain water proof boots from target cost $25. I got them for wood cutting a few years ago and they have since been to alaska and back on a bike and still are reasonably water proof. the only thing to take them down to date was kevs game of paintball. I have motorcross boots as well, but not really needed for my commute jaunts. it'll be a few months before I workup the skillset to actually need the motorcross boots off road.

the neck warmer, $15 gift from jen is a MUST. impossible to ride fast in cold weather without neck/chin protection. I have augmented this with wind proof nylon. I a small bag used to keep your round sun shades in the car in. I cut a hole through t he top and it just BARELY fits over my head. put the neck warmer underneath and the wind proof over it and your good to go. oh yeah.. the sun shades were turned into sleds last year and we're still using them for that.

When I show up at work wearing all this junk I've got called quite a few weird things. my favorite so far is 'the ice man'

Crash bars are now avilable from the US distributor and are $300. I priced out the valve covers (what the crash bars protect basically) and they are 130-$150 each, so maybe I'll wait till I 'hole one' and then get the bars.

rant against home depot

I promised my brother I was going to get him a garbage disposal for christmas, but didn't get around to getting one until way after the holidays. I have a gift card to home depot, so I walked into home depot and explained I want to purchase something, but pick it up at another store (in another state) so I don't have to pay to ship it any where. that makes sense right? part of the leverage of a chain store is that they have stores in different locations that [should] work together to satisfy the customer.

The lady at customer serviced explained she couldn't do that, but there would be no problem if I called the 800 number. I thought to myself 'yeah right' but I proceeded to call when I got home. not surprisingly, the 800# went straight to india. I don't have anything against the india call centers, I really don't, its just that they [the company that contracts with india call center] doesn't sufficiently train or give sufficient power to those on the phone to actually do ANYTHING to help you. they mean well, but theres really nothing they can do.

after about 20 minutes he 3-wayed me in to the store I wanted to pick the merchandise up from (in washington) and we had a little conversation about how it wasn't possible with a gift card, but if I wanted to call and do a credit card order they could handle it no problem. something about how they actually had to SCAN the gift card.

I explained that below the barcode there was a series of numbers that I could give him over the phone, just like a CC and that should work. no-can-do. home depot won't even take their own currency!

I'm a lowes man now. unfortunatly the home depot is still closer to I am a more freqent patron of HomeDepot than lowes. it really tears me up inside when I walk in there Cuase i KNOW lowes is better.

so... kev.. did you get the card?

Gasoline faq

faqs.org has a great article on gasoline. it drives our society, so why not educate yourself. for starters, oil isn't dead dinos, its dead vegetarian dinos dinner. I thought that was a good tidbit.

For all you people that want to run your engine off of water, I suggest reading section 9.8.2, where it says it is possible. (water mixed with gas of course)

section 10.2 gives some good insite into how to turn a 1.5L honda civic engine into a 1000hp formula 1 racer. very intersting.

other good tidbist:

A complete Octane Rating engine system costs about $200,000 with all the services installed. Only one company manufactures these engines, the Waukesha Engine Division of Dresser Industries, Waukesha. WI 53186.

Also ensure that the service stationstorage tank has not been refilled recently. retailers are supposed to wait several hours before bringing a refilled tank online, to allow suspended undissolved water to settle out, but they do not always wait the full period.

The legend of mothballs as an octane enhancer arose well before WWII hennaphthalene was used as the active ingredient. Today, the majority of mothballs use para-dichlorobenzene in place of naphthalene, so choose carefully if you wish to experiment :-). There have been some concerns about the toxicity of para-dichlorobenzene, and naphthalene mothballs have againbecome popular. In the 1920s, typical gasoline octane ratings were 40-60 [11], and during the 1930s and 40s, the ratings increased by approximately 20 units as alkyl leads and improved refining processes became widespread [12]

applied for new job!

big news!

I have applied for the next level up job. they gave my bosses job to someone else and this other (lateral) job is now posted. out of about 5 or 6 people I expected to apply only myself and my friend have applied. I'm pretty sure he'll beat me out, but I've got a few things going for me. MBA student, Pro engineering certified, and I'm younger.

sounds weird huh? since when did less experience get you any where? around here they seem to be taking the 'long term' persepective on people and the last few jobs have actually been filled with the younger candidates. maybe they think younger ones are more maulable. thats probably the case, but who cares. better take advantage of it while I still can.

the new job would be leader of the machine shop. about 65 full time machinest / misc. workers report to that leader. lucky for me I know nothing about machinest so when the work gets behind I'd just get a bigger loudspeaker.

maps

its so hard to get good maps, and good data! all I want is a list of gas stations in north america and an approximate GPS coordinate, I'd even settle for a city name next to the gas station, but alas, all I can find so far is some pseudo accurate search tool demo.kivera.com. I found a reasonable article talking about digital maps on gpsinformation.org

january update

I have done a terrible job of keeping everyone informed of my activities, so here is my january update.

1) the new bike is awesome. I have not had the time or endurance for 28degF weather to get more than about 100 miles on it, but I'm very happy. the other day a person stopped next to me at the stop light and rolled down the window to admire the bike. he started in on how he had an -80GS in 80's and he made three trips from sandiego to alaska on it.. loved it..... etc.. I get the feeling I'm going to get alot of these stories.

2) I may be applying for my bosses job. she moves to california to oversee another plant and after all the pieces fall back to earth a similar job (over a sister division) will most likely be posted as open. I don't think I stand a very good chance. I will mostly likely be beat out by my best friend at work. but its all good. should I get it, I could be making 20 grand more in about 2 yrs time. its all about the money for me.

3) the new house is great! no major deffects, and the neighbors have temporarily stopped parking in front of our house as the builders have finshed repair work on many peoples driveway curbs. we'll see how long it lasts. the joy of being in a coldesac is that you have tons of curb space, the reality is that everyone thinks since you have lots of curb space your happy to share it with them. I'm thinking of posting a sign out front that says "is your driveway full? why don't you go back and check" but haven't resorted to it yet.

4) we got a new kitty door, but haven't had time to install it yet. I hope the kitty remembers how nice it is outside and starts using the sand pile out there.'

5)school starts tomarrow night. ugggg... I was able to clep out of one class, but this other one, marketing managmenet, it for sure going to suck. the teacher already assigned HW before the class started, and the lab fees are pretty high, and we have 40$ of supplimental material to purchase.... on and on........ yeah.. it'll suck.

6) people keep getting hurt at work. usually its not a big deal, if its people that work for someeone else, but I own about half of the recent incidents in an 800 person plant. the joy of overseeing hourly employees. they mean well. but they arn't all.. well.... theres no polictially correct way to say it so i won't.

and this.... this is the end of my 5 minute lunch. until the end of next month.

~keith

Human Genome

anyone remember the big human genome project? cancer still isn't cured, but i'm sure there will still be big advances made from it. I found some visuals on homosapien genome view that seemed pretty interesting. well, as interesting as biology can look to an EE.

patents

every now and again I want some inspiration. why come up with something origional when you can just borrow an idea from freepatensonline.com the US gov use to have a patent search but it sucked. this one seems to actually be usable. check it out.

paris-dakar

here is a day by day update on the 2006 paris to dakar race. it looks like this year there are a few F650GS's competing as well as a modified VW toureg II (I didn't know they had a second version) I think someone died yesterday. I havne't figured out who or why yet, but I'll keep reading.

hp2 gearing

this is so I can figure out what 5000RPM is without a Tac. I calculated it with info found in the manual. I figure its probalby wrong but with 10 miles on the bike it seems I may have got close. it passes the 'smell' test anyway.

links

nerdy tails
things i drop
Ambition Run Amok
k1h
prairie home
simple ramblings
Wanderings..
Something Epic
Kseb.net
HP2 forum

hackaday

freeware
imagefap
google videos download
Post Pics
Post files
Bt
BT-btjunkie.org
BT-TVrss.net
BT - grizzly
BT - torrentspy
CR
crackteam
logons
pushfile host files

hp2 manual
hp2 parts
bmw gear

erzberg Rally

I love rally racing. soop up a WRX, slide it around corners until you roll it. Thats the kind of fun the entire family can learn to love. thats kind of what I thought I was going to be watching when I fired up a clip from what i think is the erzberg rally. found on advrider.com.

I think think this is what one of the guys was trying to tell me about awhile back where they race out of an open mine pit. looks brutal.

sat maps

more arial (sp?) sat maps. check out windows live local powered by virtual earth.

BMW HP2

I pick mine up on dec 30,
watch an early version in germany here
watch another race

gmail spoof

Like a sucker, I fell for this one, the link is not a link to gmail.com, it is to redscream.com, I suppose to fish for account passwords. if you get this one, don't click it.
------------------------

Gmail@gmail.com to me More options Dec 16 (23 hours ago)

This is an automated message from The Gmail Team. Please do not reply!

Our bot has detected that your account has been inactive for about 2 months.

This information may be wrong, because the bots are still in beta stage. So
if you are still using this account please click link below and verify.

http://www.mail.google.com/mail/?

vrfy=3DDQAAAG0AAAD129VxFL5IuCb0DVL
UKGtdfAgm6xFWJZi2GtdfAgmkB8hglfH8u

We are terribly sorry for any inconveniences.


Thanks,

The Gmail Team

$500 for less

We are purchasing a fridge for our new house. something in the vacinity of $1,000 seemed semi reasonable so we targeted that price point. we came up with a very nice fridge. before purchasing it we drove down to the developer and measured on last time. we decided 10 inches of sticking out was a little excessive for a fridge, so we looked at getting one that wasn't quite as deep. how much does less cost you? in our case $500. now we are paying around $1,500 for basically the same fridge, just not quite as deep. gotta love that.

vw relay update

a little update for all of my avid readers. I replaced the relay 109 with the real one, and with great reverence retired the switch hack job to a semi-safe location in the boot (trunk). this go around it was as easy as three Torx T15 screws, prying plastic around on the bottom of the dash, removing the large bigger relay bellow 109, replacing 109, putting large big relay back in and screwing it all together while forcing the plastic to fit on the underside of the dash. all in all, a 5 minute job. so...... in good car fashion, I'm sure you thinking whats wrong now? well.. the drivers side door has begun to squeek again. its winter, and its cold, and since I have boycotted the dealer the door has never been greased in its life. someday I'll have to grease it... but not today.

macro lense

I was reading slashdot and ran across how to make a macro lense from a pringles can. it seems the pringles can is the new duct tape, or the new zip tie, or something. the results were astonishing, I give you a ballpoint pen.

WRT Firmware

a little rundown of links for me that covers some of the available firmware for the WRT54G

www.dd-wrt.com
openwrt.com
sveasoft.com $20 subscription
sourceforge wifi-box
batbox