Fluid Film by William

Perhaps you’ve heard me mention using Fluid Film sometime? Maybe not as much on here yet, but some of the forums I visit I am always plugging Fluid Film. So you might ask as to why I am promoting  this product now. It’s simple really, this stuff is awesome. We do not usually promote any products here on Midnight Mods with a whole article, just tid bits here in there about the vendors or products we use. Lets start with a little product info first before I divulge further.

Fluid Film is a natural based lubricant made from lanolin. It’s solvent free, and eco friendly. While I’m not pushing green technology here, this really means that it is safe to use anywhere. (I’m not sure if you want to use it around food.) Lanolin comes from Sheep. It’s a natural moisturizer and lubricant. For me working with sheep, if you have caught on to that by now, I really enjoy this product. My hard work, essentially, goes to making this product. I sheer off the wool, and then when the wool is processed, the lanolin is washed out of the wool at the Woolen Mill. What is done with it after that, I am not sure, but this stuff is just as slippery as the stuff on the sheep.

I’m not sure what is all in this besides lanolin, but whatever they did, it works. This product is great on metals, it sticks and doesn’t easily wash off. It is highly water resistant as well. It’s even safe on paint and synthetic rubbers. There really are lots of uses for this product besides lubrication as well. I use it to seal my shoes so my feet do not get wet. Underbody coating on your vehicle. There is a web site out there dedicated to the creative uses of this product. http://fluid-film.ning.com/

I could probably go on for a while about this product, but let’s get down to why this article is on our sight. It was noticed that I mentioned Fluid Film quite often on a forum and tried to get other members to use it. I was contacted by a site sponsor rep for Fluid Film. A week later I got a box in the mail.

A decent sized box at that. I was so excited I blacked out the addresses and took pictures. Comedy, even in donations. Dano on Ford-Trucks was kind enough to send me this package with some goodies for the help I had been giving him on the sight promoting Fluid Film. Lets open it up and take a look.

Sneaky. The goodies are hidden under some paper. I didn’t let this stop me!

Inside I found a hat and a shirt. Let me tell you, this is probably the nicest promotional hat that I have ever got. Sorry newegg, this thing is sweet. Even the clasp in the back has fluid film logo stamped into the metal. I’m sorry to report that it is not made here in the US like Fluid Film, which is made out in California. Lets check out the rest of the shirt.

 

The shirt comes with a sleeve tag as well as some rocking graphics on the back. Can’t wait to wear this sheering to start some conversations.

Here is the full lot of goodies. I got a bunch of stickers and the big decals were totally unexpected!

Brett also received a sample can of Fluid Film, and a T-Shirt as well.

Thanks for the Hook Up Dano! We really love donations over here at Midnight Mods.

 

If your looking to try out some fluid film, send me an email and I’ll get you setup with Dano. I do sell small lots of the 12oz Aerosol cans as well. Fluid Film also comes in 1 gallon and 5 gallon containers as well. Any questions regarding Fluid Film, feel free to comment, any questions regarding ordering the product, please send me an email.

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Pelican Bicycle Panniers by Brett

I’ve been commuting to work using my bicycle more and more over the last year or so since I’ve moved to California. It’s been nice so far. I get some stress free outdoor exercise doing an activity I’ve always enjoyed. Plus, now I look forward to the ride home, as opposed to sitting in the car getting aggravated at rush hour traffic.

My workplace is nice enough to have changing facilities, so I ride in comfortable cycling clothes and change at work. When I started out, I used a backpack to hold my change of clothes, wallet, keys, paperwork, ID Badge, music device, camera, and various other things. Most mornings I’d also stop on the way and pickup breakfast at Burger King (hey, its an 18 mile commute, I’ve earned it!), placing (read: cramming, stuffing, and squishing) my croissant sandwich in the bag as well to eat at work (I elect not to chill at BK in my spandex and have a bite, hard to believe I know.) Actually, I rotated between 3-4 different backpacks with different sizes and straps, always trying to find the one that worked best. Funny how it always ended up being the cheap small single strap one.

Like everything else, backpacks have their advantages and drawbacks. They are cheap (you probably have one already!), easy to use, don’t produce a lot of drag when on a bike, quick to attach, and some hold quite a bit. Plus, you already have all the mounting hardware, provided you have shoulders. On the other side though, they put additional weight on you, that weight gets transferred to your back, which means extra weight on your Anatomic Saddle System (A.S.S. for short). There were some days where I would have liked to take something extra, like my laptop or a small package, but it just wasn’t happening with my backpacks. Perhaps the biggest issue I had was sweat. During the summer months especially, backpacks leave your back, shirt, and pack itself wet with perspiration. Sometimes it would even make it’s way inside the bag- not cool if you have important paperwork, laptop, or a change of clothes inside.

I knew about panniers, but I’d never owned a set. Now, I figured hard case panniers would already exist and be readily available, but I was surprised when few turned up in my searches. The ones I did find where all wrong somehow. Wrong size. Wrong attaching system. Wrong material. Interested to see what they have to offer, but not satisfied with the selections in stores or online, I set out to make my own hard case panniers.  Guess if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself?

I came up with a list of requirements.

• It had to fit all of my laptops and safely carry at least one at a time (bonus points for extra laptops.)
• It had to also carry a change of clothes and related pocket items.
• It had to also have enough room for additional stuff (Breakfast? Paperwork?)
• It had to quickly attach and remove from my bike (for public transit.)
• It had to be waterproof.
• It had to protect the contents in case of a fall.
• …and most important, it had to fit on my bicycle!

I’ve been a fan of Pelican products since a friend introduced me to them some years ago as a good laptop case and I thought they’d probably make an awesome pannier too. They are waterproof, configurable, tough, and available in many different sizes. I did a quick Google search and found some inspiration from Josh Putnam. After some measurements of my gear,  I purchased a pair of Black 1430’s for about $60 each. They fit every one of my current laptops (at once without padding!), open from the top (so I can get gear in and out without taking them off), and this model has an optional “Boat Bracket Kit” for about $10 a pair that, although I couldn’t find much information on, I thought might make a cool mounting system on the bike (more on this later.)

So plan A was to buy a rack for the back of the bike and figure out a way to mount the  cases on the back using the boat brackets. I bought a cheap rack and began dry fitting the parts as they arrived. This didn’t go so well. Typical to Pelican Engineering, the boat brackets were designed really well not to be easily removed from the cases. They attach by rotating on from the sides, meaning they have to be removed from whatever they are hooked on to take them off the case. They also screw into the case on the bottom. Not exactly quick release.

Okay, just one problem to overcome, so I kept the project moving forward, venturing I could fix the quick release problem down the road if everything else worked out. Next issue, how can I get the brackets to mount to the rack? I bought some aluminum poles and cut it and the rack up to fit together.  The whole thing was pretty ugly, rattled a lot, and I didn’t put a whole lot of trust in it.  Hours of fiddling later and I still didn’t have a solution. The next day, I went to the local mega hardware stores and spent hours playing with parts from all around the store until  I had a headache from the constant intercom interruptions and distracting muzak. 

I came home and stared at my parts for a little while longer. Feeling defeated, I let the project sit for a while. Then, after a week or two, I started back at the research phase. This time, really hitting the internet hard to find the best way to attach the darn cases to my bike. I knew my next plan, Plan B, would roughly involve buying a set of pannier mounts, drilling holes in my cases, and mounting them to the sides.

 

After much debate, I finally decided on the Arkel 10” Cam-Lock system, fancy technology imported from the strange, far away, misunderstood land of Canada. They looked pretty straight forward, got good reviews, and the price was in the budget for a pair. Boy, are they neat! The cam-lock system is really adjustable and when you are building panniers yourself, adjustability is key.

The next thing to do was dry fit the 10” Cam-Lock track to the case. So, I disassembled the hooks and chose a spot on the back of the Pelicans to mount the track. Then I traced over the ridges that I would have to grind down to get the track to mount flush on the side of the case. After that, it was short work with the angle grinder to flatten them out. I was careful to keep the clearance in mind that the top of the hooks would need to slide around on the track. If the track was mounted too high, the hinges there would keep the hooks from being able to use the whole track. The case may look funny right now, but the track will cover most of that up. 

If the grinding on the $60 cases made you nervous, drilling holes in the case isn’t going to be easy for you, I know it wasn’t easy for me to do, but that is indeed the next step and it had to be done. The tracks need two holes to mount to the case, one bolt at each end of the track.

The bolts included with the kit were not long enough to fit through the thick walls of the Pelican case. I was able to find longer bolts  at the local mega hardware store that fit the stock metric square nuts that fit in the track. Along with the bolts, I purchased two different rubber washers (large and small) to keep the water from entering my case through the bolt holes and a larger set of fender washers to help distribute the weight across a larger area.

 

After the whole thing was assembled, I did a little happy dance and went out to the garage to test it. It worked! Okay, not that well- but that was mostly due to the cheap rack I still had on the bike from Plan A (that had been cut up a bit mind you.) So I did a little more searching and found the rack that would work the best with my hooks. That is, fat tubes to hook on to and the longest platform I could find (because my commuter bike has the back wheel really forward and I have big feet, I needed to get the cases set back to prevent heel-strike, where your heel hits the pannier because of insufficient clearance.) As a bonus, it also fit better because it was wider, being made for a tandem bicycle and as I learned that's the width my rear mounts required for some reason.

Arkel Cam-Locks in Action

I took my pannier with me to the store just to make sure the shoe fit. Like a glove- er, shoe! Sold. I mounted it up and clipped on the case. Then I made little stops or as I call them for some reason, indexes, out of hose claps around strips of old inner tubes on the top rail there. They keep the case from sliding forward while riding and make it easy to clamp the whole thing on in the right spot every time.

To top the whole thing off, I purchased some black 3M reflective stickers and cut them up to not only look ultra cool, but add to my night-time visibility.

My bike may not feel like a race car with these thing on, but it sure does haul ass! There weight isn’t a big deal so far (with the cases at just over 6lbs each empty, total weight is under 20lbs on most days.) Yeah, it takes a little extra effort up hills, but you get it back on the down slope. The most noticeable drag seems to come from high winds, but even that isn’t horrible. The capacity? HEEE-YOUUUUGE! Since the original planning of this project, I don’t have the need to carry my laptop normally, so I find myself putting my cheap backpack in one side (with all work stuff and related) and the other side has my change of clothes (and a small bag with ID Badge, keys, belt, wallet, related pocket goodies) with plenty room leftover for a bag-o-breakfast. This arrangement is working well. I have my backpack for everyday use, then when I’m ready to bike to work, I just toss it in and go. Then when I get there, I take the other case with me to the change room and swap clothes.

I’m so happy with the project so far, I’m already working on design upgrades for 2.0, but that’ll be another article :-)

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Down Time by William

We don’t ever really have down time, but if we do have time where much is not going on, we got something going on.
Today, we are going to modify some Dull Pencils, to Sharp Pencils. All in the eye of the beholder.

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6637 Mod by William

One of the most fun parts of my new truck is all the fun things I can modify and change. While Midnight Mods is mostly a computer site, we divulge in all modding, not just electronic modding. We mod without prejudice!

I want to thank Clay at Riffraff Diesel Performance for donating this kit.

Today, we are modifying the stock air system in my 94 Power Stroke. I was in such a rush to get this thing out of this truck that I never did take a good picture of it being installed. The problem with the stock air box is that it leaks. It has poor flow. You can see here, the box on the right of the picture, has the snorkel missing for it. This is an idea that allows less air restriction to the filter. You might think, “well, they designed it all this way for a reason.” Well, it might be safe when this thing was brand new, but when you make things out of plastic, and the fasteners out of plastic, they eventually fail. It was a cheap air filtering solution. So, maybe you might be thinking “why are we worrying about leakages in the filter system, don’t we want more air intake?” Well of course we want more air intake, but this is a Turbo Diesel.

(Thanks to nateairman and Cuda_Jim for the pictures)

This is what we are protecting, these blades right in here. They need to be sharp to work effectively. If we allow dirt and dust though, we are essentially sand blasting the compressor wheel. In the right picture, you can see a dusted and new compressor wheel. We do not want to sand blast the compressor wheel. This mod gives us some air flow and some security in air filtration system.

Now as I had said, I could not wait to get this thing out. This box has a few bolts that screw the bucket, or pan, secure by the fender. There are two long screws that come up from the bottom that allow you to tighten the top down onto the filter. You can see the massive amounts of dirt on the pan and the filter. Yuck! Lets remedy this problem.

 

There we go. Another good shot of how dirty it is, and how worthless this system is. Okay, actually, I did not throw it away. I have it out in the garage. I really do not know why yet. Maybe I’ll load it in the trap thrower for some fun someday.

The 6637 kit includes a 45 degree, mandrel bent, powder coated 4 inch pipe. This is to make the turn to the filter area. It also includes a SS T-bolt Clamp and the 6637 Tymar Filter. This thing is HUGE! I really cannot hype this up enough. I don’t think you can get much more flow than this filter will give you except if you were to remove the filter.

Okay, so you could be saying, “K&N Filters are way better than this junk, why would I want to do this? Bah Humbug!” Okay, smarty pants, when is the last time you held a K&N filter up to the light and looked though it? You can see though the filter can’t you? Those little spots of light, that is where dust can get though, even if you have the oil on the filter. A reusable style filter actually cleans less when you first clean and recharge the filter with oil. It needs to be dirty to actually work effectively. Even if the filter was filtering well, I still would avoid them. Why?  A Turbo PULLS air though the system, it doesn’t work on atmospheric pressure. I’m not trying to bash K&N, because their products are great for Gas engines, but the sensitivity of a turbo is far to important for me to trust a filter with huge holes in it. I want to be safe. Just to throw more fuel on the fire, and throw in a Dodge reference. They took a Dodge Cummins into the dyno at CMU here, and ran the truck with the stock air filter system for a bench mark, then installed a K&N cold air setup and lost 10 horse power on the next dyno run. You know, just saying. I ran a K&N in my gas truck successfully for years. I just don’t recommend it on a Turbo Diesel.

Basically we just insert the 45 into the filter, put down the clamp, slide it into the stock tube and clamp it down on the 45. That’s it, your done. Simple, easy. Looks good in there also. Clay’s kit also comes with a Dust Cover for the filter as well. This was a donation to me, so that might be why I did not get a cover. The cover is just essentially a cloth cover that fits over top like a sock, and you can remove and wash. This will help your filter last a bit longer due to the sock picking up most of the big dust, and allowing the filter to get all the small stuff.

This kit is available for the 94.5-97, and the 99-2003.
94.5-97 6637 Kit
99-03 6637 Kit

If your wondering why you should order this kit from Clay instead of doing the kit on your own, you should call down to Napa where you get the filter and ask them the price. they will tell you right around 66 dollars. So, for a few dollars more, your getting a dust cover and the 45 elbow, that is powder coated, to complete the install.

You can also call up Clay and order your part as well. If you do, be sure to tell him I sent you.

Thanks again to Clay at Riffraff Diesel Performance for this donation.

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Blast from the Past by William

This is kind of a special treat for everyone here. I figured everyone would enjoy a smart toy, and maybe it would fuel some comments from an older crowd. This is the Big Trak, a programmable toy from a long time ago. I’ll save the date for a while, but, this is when toys were made in the USA, not china.

 

See, right here, says “Made in the USA.”

Okay, so really, what is this thing? It’s a tank, simple as that. And this tank takes 4 D batteries and 1 9volt. It’s got motors, it’s got lights, it’s got sounds. I’m not sure what happened to toys for the next 40 years, but man, what gives toy manufactures? I never had anything like this when I was a kid, and this was made before I was made.

My big track has the transport as well, an add on toy if you will. It is a fully functional dump bed that attaches to the Big Trak. It takes a D battery or 2.

It just uses a 3.5mm jack to attach to the Big Trak. It receives its commands though here. The wheels just roll, and there is a motor and battery box in the bottom.

Okay. I’ll stop the suspense now. This is the Big Trak. It’s basically a tank. Reminds me of something that would be in GI-Joe. It is a fully programmable unit. It accepts up too 16 steps in the programming. Forward, backwards, turns, fire the guns, and a few sounds as well as dump the bed.

The transport even comes with a book telling you how to hook it up, and install the batteries.

The book for the Big Track is very well planned out and detailed in the programming of the unit. There are a few programs in the book to help teach you how to program the unit as well. I know your wondering when this thing was made still. This looks like a newer toy! Come on, we haven't’ hit the computer age till just recently.

the speaker is on the front under the “laser” which is a flashing bulb in the front, and it makes sounds when it “shoots.” The battery door is on the back of the unit. only 2 of the wheels are drive wheels, the rest of the wheels float and can travel up and down for different terrain.

I put it together for a quick picture here with an example of goods to transport. Finally we get to the year this awesome toy was made. Wait, what, 1979? Your kidding right? Nope. This was my grandfathers toy that his 3 kids chipped in and bought for him a long time ago. I never even seen it until my grandmother remembered that I was supposed to get it 5 years ago.  Ooops. “Better late then never, right?” she says to me.

It even included a few different programs he wrote with it, and the Smith and Wesson 7803 Halogen Spotlight packing slip on how to change the bulb and warranty information. Wonder how that got in there.

I hope you were able to enjoy this old toy. I haven’t even got to play with it yet. I don’t have any batteries for it, and for some reason that dump bed is screaming “put a battery pack in here so you can power the unit.” Maybe next time.

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