build diary

November 28, 2004: It's stopped raining.
Instead, we have a fairly good snowfall. Enough that they've actually closed access to the flat-top mesa on the edge of town due to avalanche danger! 3 feet of snow over a weekend does that I guess. So I'm still inside and thinking of things to do. Of course there's the obvious, such as the wipers and grilles. But in the course of doing some research for an article, I started thinking about the potential of putting on a dry sump. It would be great to have the increased ground clearance and it would give a bit of a power boost and prevent oil starvation. But it's not cheap. Maybe I'll just raise the bottom of the oil pan by 1" or so instead. I wonder how that would work?

A bit more on the LED tach. It would actually be a two-stage setup, using an LM2917 to convert the frequency to a voltage, then an LM3914 or two to convert that to a series of LEDs. I'm at the dreaming stage right now, trying to figure how many LEDs I should have and when they should come on. Right now, I'm thinking of having them start at 4,000 rpm and light up one every 500 rpm, with a change to every 250 rpm above 6000 rpm. Or maybe something different. I don't want too many LEDs, as I'll probably want to be able to glance down and see how many are lit up. Also, the superbright LEDs get expensive in a hurry. $2.50 doesn't seem thatbad until you realise that I'll probably want 10 or 11. A couple of decent websites have me started: bike-oriented and from a Mini site. I'll probably add a couple of things to it such as autodimming ability. We'll see how carried away I become. I'd forgotten that DigiKey was a good source for things like this. I've also decided that the Hawker Genesis batteries would be an interesting addition to the Seven - they have a tiny model called the G13EP that puts out reasonable power and only weighs 10.5 lbs instead of the 25lbs of the stock battery. Not good for extended cranking but I can deal with that. They're even pretty cheap, only $45. Given that I'm currently running with a cast-off battery, this might be something I need eventually. I can use one of my myriad other batteries (such as the spare giant Land Rover battery I have) to jump it if I ever need to abuse the starter. See, it's bad when it starts raining...

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