Today is a hot, humid, rainy, yucky day. As such, I decided to get some low-impact, easy(ish) stuff done. This does
not however, mean that I didn't sweat straight through my shirt while sitting in a chair. Man, it's brutal out there.
First thing up was replacing my spark plug cables.
It started as a purely aesthetic move, but once I got into it, it turned out to be a good idea. I gotta give a strong shout-out to
Industrial Cafe for sourcing some cable for me.
As he told me off line, this was some left-over high-per, copper-core cable that he used in a vintage Porsche race car project. I liked it because it was blue.
Eventually, my color scheme is going to be black with blue highlights, so I figured these cables would point it up nicely.
Replacing my cables was a pretty easy project, all things told. To start, the cables just unscrew from the coils, and then the boots just screw off of the cable. As you can see below, the boot has a screw spike in it that sticks into the core of the cable.
Here's what I was talking about when I said that it turned out to be a good idea. All of the cables were rock-hard and barely bendable. A few of them popped right off the spikes. In this picture, you can see the difference between the new cable and the old, slapped out cables. This might explain why, the few times I had this running, it seemed like it might not be firing all the time.
After cutting the cable to length, it was just a simple matter of screwing everything back together and, presto, new spark cables.
The other thing I got into today was one of my valve covers. I had meant to get them powder coated along with the other parts I had done - but I forgot about them. So for giggles, I got out my Dremel and some polishing compound my kit had in it.
I thought that, even in a project that's going to be mainly black, some shiny accents never hurt. After a half-hour of work, I got this (half and half.)
Not bad, but obviously, the Dremel didn't do the best job...but as proof of concept, it shows me what it would look like with some shiny up top. (Picture includes my finger to show a reflection.)
Sometimes, I think that cameras keep notes of their favors. Many times, I've looked at pictures of my bike and thought, "Man, I wish my engine really
did look that clean and awesome.) In this case, the camera called in one of those favors, and would not shoot a good picture of this piece and how reflective it is to save my life.
So, I might look into either buying a benchtop buffing wheel or borrowing one from someone.
