It's Finally Here

I was walking around the downtown area of a small town and I found this posted on the door of a store. Hit the More link for a cleaned up version.



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Keychain

When I was doing my CFL Teardown I mentioned that I thought the PCB would make a cool keychain. It does. I have had it on my keys for a little while now and it works quite well at helping me find my keys without getting in the way. I like the side with the components silkscreened on, most people like the green side with the traces.
To make it work as a keychain I had to widen out one of the holes to fit the key ring through. There are a ton of ways to do this, but I happened to have my Yankee Drill sitting on my counter as I was working, so I used that. Next I wanted to take off the excess solder so all the holes would be visible. I was feeling lazy so instead of using a solder sucker I just used solder wick. Once I was happy with the amount of solder I had left I put the keychain in my toaster oven to round off any sharp bits of solder that were left over. This made the board a bit discolored, but it also kept me from cutting myself when pulling my keys from my pocket.

After a few weeks using it the only problem I see is that I am slowly wearing the hole larger. I figure that in a few months I will wear completely through. I could cover the whole thing in a clear epoxy and it would probably last much longer. Probably I will just take apart another broken CFL and use the PCB again.
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Yamaha Motorcycle Fixup Part 1 of many

This is going to be an ongoing project for a while. I believe that it is a 1975 Yamaha motorcycle. I don't really know many other details yet, hopefully I'll get someone much more knowledgeable than myself to take a look at it soon. Hit the read more link for more pics and a little more info about the bike.

I went to visit my younger brother this weekend, and he had this yellow bike in his garage. It was left behind by the previous owners and he didn't have a use for it. Not to mention that it was very broken and dirty.
So I threw it in the back of my car (with the help of my lovely wife), tied down the trunk with some rope and drove it back to my place.It is going to need a lot of work. Almost all of the electrical is unhooked and there is no battery.
The seat cover was all missing but the little bit that said Yamaha on the back. The seat was soaked in dirty oil. The gas tank isn't connected to anything. The chain, brake cables and throttle are all missing.
But, when I pushed on the started the engine turned over. Yes it may yet workThis is the label, or at least most of it. The top has the numbers 3/75 on it so I'm guessing that is "THE DATE OF MANUFACTURE shoWN ABOVE" If anyone has any info or tips as I dive into this project I'd love to hear from you.
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