Beer Is Good – Goose Island Endless IPA

A limited release item from Goose Island, I bought it with some trepidation as its labeled in IPA, not my favorite type. It’s also labled a “session ale”  and “easy drinking”. We shall see about that! Anyway, pours a clear bright amber with a medium strong head. Strong hop aroma with citrus note that carries through to the flavor.  The flavors clear pretty fast leaving the astringent bitter. Thankfully it avoids the skunkyness  that can afflict some hop heavy brews. I’ve been told that unfortunate flavor is the result of hop compound exposure to UV light. Medium light mouthfeel kept light by carbonation. I’m not sure if I could session this beer solo, it needs some accompanying food to offset the bitter, but it is a pleasant beer.

I would say it just makes 3 out 4 advantageous monkeys.

Shake Rattle and ….

Don’t want to complete that line for fear of it happening. While waiting on the drive side drive shaft that was sent back, I decided to take care of some small issues on the other side. It still had the OEM short wheel studs so I took the hub off and apart. Oh my, the steering arm joint was missing a cotter pin and was barely finger tight. The joint itself came apart with no tools. Yikes! Definitely a good thing I got in there! I pulled the CV shaft because the transaxle was leaking at that seal. Looks like this shaft is fine, but I discovered something else had rattled loose! The rear engine mount that I welded solid had rattled it’s mount off the transaxle, the bolts were no where to be found! Fortunately it seems the threads are still good so I pulled a set of bolts from one of the spares and cleaned and coated with thread locking compound. Hopefully this holds, I’m sure this was stressing the CV shafts too. Fortunately no more surprises, I changed the transaxle seal and got the whole passenger side drivetrain back together.

K-Mac Daddy

Received and installed this camber kit from K-Mac last week. K-Mac specializes in camber kits and has a slew of them to fit a wide variety of applications. The more bling ones they have are the top mount plate types commonly seen on the front of aftermarket coilover kits. Theirs however is not just the slotted plate type but rather a sandwich plate which allows camber and caster adjustment. This would have been ideal for the FX rear given the custom modified nature of my struts, but it looks like there isn’t a kit for that. Instead I had to settle for the eccentric lower mount kit. What sets their kit apart from the other typical system you see is that it does not use an undersized bolt with eccentric cam lobe as seen here to the right. Their marketing proudly proclaims no undersized crank bolts! It isn’t entirely true, if you need 15 or 17mm bolt size you get a 14 or 16mm bolt with a sleeve, but we’ll let that slide.

Continue reading ‘K-Mac Daddy’

Clear Again

Friday, 23 May 2014

The traffic cams showed it was sunny, so I went straight home and took a Friday spin on the bike.  Best to take advantage of good weather, since it could turn to weeks of rain.  Probably the best way to end a week!

D = 10.7 km, Vavr = 14.8 km/h, Vmax = 37.5 km/h, T = 43-minutes, A/D = 143 m

If Can, Can

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Doctor’s clearance, clear afternoon weather, and the upcoming Whistler expedition meant secret training for conditioning.  Plus, getting mudded-out on the previous Saturday’s ride left me itching to get out on the bike.  Knee felt pretty good afterwards.

D = 8.8 km, Vavr = 15.4 km/h, Vmax = 36.1 km/h, T = 34-minutes, A/D = 132 m

Dozed and Hosed

Saturday, 17 May 2014

There had been some rain during the week, but on the two days leading up to the weekend, it was dry, so we figured the Ditch would be fine for a afternoon spin.  It must have been raining out in Waimanalo, because we found the trail a muddy mess.  The hikers coming out of the gate were all pretty muddy and had moon-shoe.  I don’t exactly know why we didn’t give up, but we rode up Government Road until it got too slippery, then tried going out along the ditch, until it became too soupy to continue.  Government road had been recently bulldozed, so the regraded surface was ripe to transform into sticky mud at a hint of moisture.  Oh well.  Should have just gone to get beer and blown off the ride!  Bike got another bath.  Took two hours to clean up from a one-hour ride.

Pictures soon

D = 1.93 km, Vavr = 4.9 km/h, Vmax = 12.9 km/h, T = 24-minutes, A/D = 133m, Total ride time about an hour.

Beer Is Good – Hitachino 2014 Comemorative Ale

Took a dangerous stop at Liquor Collection and picked up a bunch of beers as an offering to the machinist who made my bike rack rods, more on that later. Got some stuff for myself too. This here pours a cloudy medium dark amber with small head. The spicy aroma is detectable the moment you pop the cap. Oddly the corriander and spice don’t hit as strong as say Hoegarten. I’m having a hard time describing this beer. There’s a fair astringent bitter that carries throughout the flavor, the spices give it a warm feel and come out at the finish. The mouthfeel is fairly heavy. This is not a session beer but one to be savored. It also packs a bit more punch at 8% ABV. The aroma is the hard to describe part, the spices are clearly there, but it is hard to pick out any single one. This is quite an interesting one, would have been more appropriate during winter holiday season I suppose.

4 out 4 spicy monkeys.

Disjointed

Neglected to blog about changing a torn CV boot on the rally FX a couple weeks ago. At the time it seemed a minor thing. Turns out it wasn’t. It looks like it was torn because the joint was extending past where it should, and today in my seventh balls out run, the joint popped. After the event we pushed it to the pit area and I was hoping maybe to just pop it back together. No such luck, all the big balls in the joint were gone. Sigh, looks like another call to the tow truck! At least its an easy repair, if I can find the part! And again while it was working, the FX was posting awesome times. To add insult to injury, or rather injury to the insult, I jammed my right index finger into the steering wheel again. The knuckle is now inflamed and sore.

Grind em

Been testing the neighbor’s good will the past few days, been working on fixing the rally FX. Here’s the failure. Drew up plans for plates to repair those flanges. My thought was to cut them out and weld the plates in. Took the plans to Universal on thursday and they had them donr friday, but with work and traffic I could get there in time to pick them up. In the meantime I thought about the repair some more. I decided that my initial plan put too much at stake on my skills at welding and fabricating to line everything up and make it strong. The plan now was to weld the plates on the side of the existing flanges. There’s no clearance issues and I’d just have to source longer bolts. Continue reading ‘Grind em’

Edible Briefs – Nestle Japan Otona no Amasa Kit Kat

Nestle Japan makes innumerable regional variations of the Kit Kat chocolate-covered biscuit candy, usually borrowing the flavor of the coating from the local specialty food, whether that be strawberry, green tea, melon, wasabi, sweet potato, or even soy sauce! While killing time at the airport before my return flight, I saw some boring flavors that I’ve had before or are available at Don Quijote on Kaheka, then I saw these. From the get-go, the katakana “otona” for “adult” caught my eye. Adult? What, is it like naughty or something? I couldn’t read the kanji, though it seemed vaguely familiar. The package was dark, and the images of the candy seemed darker than the usual milk chocolate, so I figured what they meant by “adult” was these were a less-sweet dark chocolate version. I threw them in my Kifaru after buying them and forgot about them until a couple days ago. Continue reading ‘Edible Briefs – Nestle Japan Otona no Amasa Kit Kat’