Sunday, August 9, 2009

Minor Details

Spent yesterday afternoon and evening washing and waxing the car and motorcycle. The motorcycle is a piece of cake to detail for the most part. I use S100 cleaner which is one of those "spray on, rinse off" no wipe cleaners. For the most part it works as advertised, unless there are spots with heavy dirt. Even so that only requires a quick swipe with the towel and it's all clean. Plus, there's a whole lot less to wash on the bike than there is on the car!

I'm in dire need of a new wax to use. I'm currently using that old green pasty/liquid original Turtle Wax. The bottle I'm just finishing up now was literally a hand-me-down from my Dad and was manufactured in 1989. Seriously -- I'm not kidding.

I've heard great things about the Turtle Wax Ice, so I think I may give that a shot. I have the Ice clay bar kit (liquid clay, solid clay, and lubricant) which I get great results with... except that I'm topping it with a wax that's almost as old as me.

I'm planning on detailing (or at least giving a basic clean) the engine bay in the garage today, as well as vacuuming the interior. The engine bay is just starting to get dirty since the car is fairly new, so I figure if I start cleaning it now and keep up with it, it won't ever get too grimed up.

Planning to get some pictures up of the WRX and VTX as soon as it stops raining and I can take them out in the sunshine to get some nice shots.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Bucks County Day Trip

I've been playing around with Google Maps, trying to outline some rides I'd like to do. I really love the backroads of Bucks County, since it offers some awesome views along the Delaware River plus hills and twisties a touch west of the river. Not to mention there are several covered bridges in the area from the 1800's.

One of my favorite spots in Bucks County is Ringing Rocks Park. It's a diabase boulder field where about 1/3 of the rocks have a metallic, bell-like ring to them when they are struck with a hammer. There's also a nice water fall in the park, however it is usually little more than a trickle this time of year.

Here's the GMaps version of the ride. It's about 2.5 hours in a loop from New Hope, to Ringing Rocks Park, then back to New Hope through some of the covered bridges along the route.


View Covered Bridges and Ringing Rocks in a larger map

Have a Garmin GPS capable of importing custom routes? Want to check this one out?
Download the Garmin MapSource .gdb file here and send it to your device!
EDIT: The original route posted here briefly covered a dirt road (found that out first hand, "Sheep Hole Road"). I'm in the process of updating the .gdb route, and it should be up soon.

Monday, July 27, 2009

But this time, it's serious!

I've tried blogs many times before, but always lost interest quickly after starting. I think it had to do with not having a particular goal or subject to the blog, but rather just wrote down whatever I was doing at the moment. It sounded fun to me, but apparently nobody else had any interest in what I ate for lunch that afternoon, or what TV shows I was watching that night.

I'm going to try something a little different this time. I think my hobbies are fairly interesting (okay, I guess I'm kind of biased..) and I think this is a great location to share them. A few worth mentioning:
  • Cars
  • Motorcycles
  • Homebrewing
  • Aquariums
  • Trap & Skeet Shooting
This blog is going serve as a maintenance record of sorts for my car and motorcycle. Mods, oil changes, adjustments, etc will find their way here. Info on rides and meets will be posted here as well. I'm going to try to keep this somewhat on topic, and I think that may keep this blog alive.

Since I now have a Garmin Nuvi 750 GPS, I will be making custom routes to load onto the unit. I think this page will be a great place to host both the Google Maps version of the routes as well as Garmin MapSource file so I can share with other people!

In the interest of keeping this first post short and on topic, the two vehicles in the stable at the moment along with the most notable mods:

2007 Honda VTX 1300 C - Pearl Alpine White
  • 1300cc V-twin, single carburetor
  • Kuryakyn Pro-R Hypercharger intake
  • Cobra Speedster Long full exhaust
  • Custom mounted 55w auxiliary lights
2009 Subaru WRX 5 Door - Dark Gray Metallic
  • 265hp turbocharged horizontally opposed flat-four "boxer" engine
  • Cobb Tuning cat-back exhaust system
  • K&N drop in panel filter/stock air box cutout
  • Kenwood DNX-5120 in dash DVD/GPS Navigation system