Note: I split this entry off from Day 13.

Day 13 contained the bulk of what is important to me, and felt these details were trivial in comparison. That said - I want to record the mechanics of the motorcycle and my solutions to mechanical problems, for both future reference and those of you who are mechanically-minded and interested in the bits.

Motorcycle

Let's make our non-vented fuel cap into a vented fuel cap.

Now, air is, fortunately, quite good at making it through tiny holes. Unfortunately, so is rain. Rain + fuel isn't awesome - so I'm going to try to drill underneath the keyhole in the gas cap. The keyhole is covered by a little rotating cap to prevent stuff (like atmospheric dihydrogen monoxide) from getting in, so hopefully it'll serve for our venting purposes too.

Some time spent at a drill press later,

Note the spring inside. Unfortunately, taking a move from NASA, Honda decided to make their gas cap as complicated as possible. So, what was originally a device designed with the quite simple intent of just keeping air and water out and gas in turned in to a lockable, complex mechanism that has key-hold features and advanced anti-tampering techniques.

Which means there's a lot of internal mechanisms I don't want to screw with.

So I just drilled as small as possible and hoped for the best.

"How do you know it's big enough?" you might ask. Well, it's a scientifically complicated procedure - but, basically, I put my lips to the gas cap and blew through it.

I think I still can taste the ethanol. Yuck.

Don't worry, I washed it a bit beforehand. Still, gasoline is not my favorite taste. Air definitely got through, but it was like blowing through a really, really small straw. Which it is, in effect.

Still, I wanted to make absolutely sure the tank was able to get enough air - so I cut open the o-ring seal a bit as an additional measure.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to test if this was a solution without driving it on the highway. So ... let's try that tomorrow.

Sometime later.

Okay! I have some good news, and some bad news.

The good news? The paracord emergency support works really well!

... You can probably guess the bad news from here.

I got back to the hostel and the bolt was missing. I have no idea when or where it got disconnected - it certainly didn't shear off, that would have left some remnant. Besides. I don't think the crate is heavy enough to encourage that sort of uncouth behaviour.

Rather, I imagine that the threads just disengaged due to the vibration of the bike. It loosened, then fell out.

This morning, I replaced the bolts with some M8 bolts - 65mm this time. On the end of each bolt, I attached some locking nuts.