Warm, carwash and Killing Lincoln

It must have been a mistake today as we officially made it to 70 degrees at the local airport...  But while I was out and about on the bike this afternoon I saw 74 on the dashboard..

This bike is different, as you have to push the button marked info in order to have it tell the temperature..  Then it reverts back to the time and radio display...  The radio was a fad and at first I had it running on Country music, but lately it has run in the off position...

My excitement for the morning was to go to the full service car wash and get the "works"....  Three guys hovered over the clean up after it went thru the machine...   And they gave me $.30 off on a fillup  of gas per gallon... But the wash was $19.95...  Still it beats me spending a couple of hours on it at home...



That's about all I did, except buy O'Reilly's book, Killing Lincoln, which has captivated me since I got home from the bike ride..  I have previously read, April 1865, so the material isn't new, but the telling of the story is new and different and fresh...  The Civil War was especially brutal.. Its worth a few hours of your time...

Retired Rod

Phoenix Quilt Show/ Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza

Enough of the motorcycle blogs.....  today was Loyce's day to go to one of her favorite quilt shows....  Its at the Arizona Fair Grounds in downtown Phoenix...

We left the house about 9 AM and drove directly to the fair grounds, where we found the traffic jam of grandiose proportions....  A massive line that began almost the moment we were off of I 10 on 19th street...

Seems they were all going in the front gate...  I waited for a while in line, but decided that they weren't going to the back gate which is usually open too...  Once out of line we drove right to the other gate that had almost no one lined up...

Today there was a dog show in some of the buildings as well as the quilt show...  I just dropped Loyce at the front gate to the industry building and quietly left the property....

So where to go while waiting...?  How about down to the Capitol Building and Grounds...?

The building is nestled into the center of a parcel of ground that is surrounded by legislature buildings and a large office building to the West...  There were about a million grade school children out front waiting to get in...   Not too patiently either.....  This is as close as I got.

To the East is the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza  which contains numerous and various memorials commemorating various events in history...  Wesley Bolin is a former Governor of Arizona..

We all remember the Battleship Arizona and its demise from Japanese bombs on December 7, 1941..   The memorial on the grounds includes the anchor and the many plaques on its base includes the names of all of the shipmates that perished that day.

And mounted in the center of the plaza is the signal mast from the ship...

For those of us in the Navy this is the yardarm...  But I could find no place on any of the plaques that referred to it as such..  The yard is the cross piece where the top of the signal flag lines are attached,  the ends of the yard are referred to as arms...  Anyway this is a small surviving piece of the otherwise sunken ship...

I have been on the memorial in Pearl Harbor so this means a lot to me...

As you walk around this two block long Memorial Mall there are numerous monuments...

 This is the Peace Officers Monument to fallen officers....

I looked at this one for quite a while until I determined that this was a Navajo code talker on his radio during WWII..

Purple Heart..

Bushmasters Arizona Army National Guard

Monuments in no particular order, this plaque of the ten commandments has been controversial over the years because of the separation of church and state doctrines....  The law suits have failed so far and it is still in the circle with the other monuments... But not without the American Civil Liberties Union's protest...

Desert Storm

To honor the current fallen soldiers from the Desert conflicts, this memorial has names of Arizona's fallen..  Some of the names are so recently engraved that the dust of the stone is still on the ground...

This is the Korean Memorial...

I resisted the urge to go ring this bell....  But I'm not sure there is a clapper inside of it as Asian bells are usually struck with an external hammer...

I didn't find the Vietnam Memorial and I was out of time as it was time to go get Loyce..  This is robbed from another source on the web...



Once back at the quilt show, there must have been 10,000 vehicles parked in almost all of the available parking, so all I could do was mill around up and down the aisles until she called on the phone that she was done...

We had a good day at our respective endeavors...

Retired Rod

Honda Goldwing Oil Change

First off, I'm an accountant not a mechanic so this is shade tree at best...  But this is how I did it...  I have a 2012 Audio Comfort..

The basic tools I used are below...  The T handle is 5mm and the socket is 17mm...  Oil filter wrench is an F.

The front panel has to come off to gain access...

I used the T handle to remove the 5mm bolts and watch which holes they come out of as one is longer....  There are 4 more fasteners on the other side as well..

This thing is always all grungy so its a good time to go clean it up....

The plug is 17mm and requires a shallow socket and extension, as a deep socket will interfere with that vacuum canister...

Now for the filter...  I used the smaller F filter wrench that I had to go get at the Auto Zone....  My Suzuki wrench was just slightly too large..

Of course the wrench stuck on the old filter and had to be tapped off with a small hammer....

Here we are ready to pour in the 4 quarts of Honda GN4 which is standard mineral oil based oil....  The guys over at the Honda dealer strongly recommended that I wait until the 4,000 mile service to change to synthetic...

If you are a fan of Amsoil, they say that is a bunch of bunk... That you can use their synthetic right from the beginning.........  But in my mind since this thing is brand new and we are doing a 600 mile change to remove any filings and the like that might be present...  May as well put back the same oil that Honda had in it in the beginning..

I did use 10w-40 as I had read on some of the forums that it makes a slight difference in the shifting CLUNK that you get, especially from first to second gear......  And perhaps will lessen the false shifting into neutral, if you are at all tentative with your shifting..

Seems like that only happens when traffic is down your throat and you need to get the heck out of the way..  Before some cager runs you down...  And then let the clutch out and zoooommmm...  Neutral...

I tend to write these as just a record of what I did today, but when I did one on the Honda outboard motor, it ended up being one of my all time most visited posts....

Remember this is just what I did, and is in no way anything beyond information for amusement only..  But if your careful you might be amused to keep the extra $100 in your wallet..  But it will cost about $40 for the oil and filter...

Retired Rod

Still cold and reading the internet about the motorcycle...

I shouldn't read so many forums about the Goldwing motorcycle....  They are a massive time consumer and give me all kinds of ideas about how to modify the motorcycle...

So today when I got out of bed, it was fairly quickly sunny outside...  But the electric heater was still running in the bedroom...  That should have been my clue..

But when I made it to my chair and found my glasses, the electronic thermometer barely read 40....  We had been down to 36 earlier in the wee hours of the morning...  Biscuit just looked at the open door and refused to go out....  Wonder what she would do back in Kansas.....?

So after breakfast and morning coffee, those darned forums jumped up on my computer.....  All by themselves.......honest!   Well......... they are in the bookmarks anyway..

And in reading the recommendations, under oil changes, almost to the letter, everyone wonders why Honda has removed their instructions to change oil at 600 miles.....  And longer readers know I am an oil change nut.....



I was thinking that I should do this without encouragement, even though I was surprised to not find it in the owners manual..   And then to read that many forum contributors agreed.......!  Well, now it was a foregone conclusion...

The idea behind this early change is to remove any machining bits of metal that might be left over from the manufacture of the engine and mechanical parts...  And if you have ever had a magnetic oil plug on these engines, you will find all kinds of powdered metal attached to it...

Also, if you cut open the oil filter and look at the filter media, it will be coated with this left over metal....  So to me it just makes sense to toss the  filter and the initial oil fairly quickly....  Ok its settled......  do the initial oil change......



So that meant I needed the oil....  Again there is a big controversy  as to when the engine can be changed to synthetic oils...  And Honda usually says after 4K miles......  And on my Honda outboard, that dealer says never use synthetic...  Something about the outboard being stacked in the upright position with its crankshaft aimed at the sky...  Too slick and flat spotting lifters......  Who knows...

Anyway it wasn't getting any warmer outside as we only had 55 by two in the afternoon...  So I dressed with all the clothes and headed out on the bike anyway...  Went over to the motorcycle shop and bought a filter and regular mineral motorcycle oil..  Genuine Honda oil...

I got the 10w-40, as some on the forum said that the thicker oil when warm lessened the clunk when shifting gears.......  Remember the engine oil is also the transmission oil on a bike..



I rode for a while, and then purchased a tank of gas, as our prices here have been going up almost daily...  We were under $3 a month ago, and now it is $3.34...  Its not even February yet.  We will likely see $5 by May...  Get ready...

After some lunch at my favorite burger place and a stop at the Auto Zone, I came back home to read the computer some more...  And it got cold immediately when the sun went down...

We are to be in the mid 30s again tonight so perhaps it could get this out of its system...  But the Midwest is bracing for another snow storm and high winds and weather including tornadoes in the lower Mississippi River valley..  and on into Eastern Texas........

So I'm not really complaining about 35 degrees....  It's just usually warmer here by now...

Tomorrow is oil change day for the new bike and then Thursday is a quilt show.......  And I get to chauffeur..  But Loyce went with me to the big tent, so I can't say anything....LOL

Retired Rod