Eddy's Shop of Horrors

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Livermore, CA
Eddy's Shop of Horrors

This is where all the magic happens. Here I restore, clean, modify and tune my motorcycles, cars, bicycles, skis/snowboards. fi****ms and hi-fi stereo stuff.

There's always some project in the works and something on the backburner. Don't even ask. You can't afford me!

08/29/2026

I've got a little time on my hands to do some PC gaming nowadays. With GTA 6 on the horizon, I thought it might be time to refresh my situation. I bought Diablo IV last year, after I convinced myself that I could bring my old Intel Core i5 tower up to minimum specs for the game. I put in the best (old) graphics card I had and overclocked the s**t out of everything. It did run the game, but it chugged and it wasn't a great player experience, so I shelved the game for a later day.

Well, that day finally came. But first I took another swing at the old PC with a more updated graphics card. Yup. that did the trick, but I lamented on why spend $200+ on a refurbished card, when I could just put that money towards a new build? So I opened up my wallet and did a build that looked more towards the future.

I decided to go desktop, as in small form factor. I found the Fractal Terra case and fell in love with it. The rest of the design was finding what would fit in there, run like the dickens and wouldn't completely suck my funds dry. I had to buy a new motherboard, chipset, memory, graphics card, power supply and cooling stuff. Wow! Prices sure went up over this past year! RAM that used to be $40 is now $225!!! For now, I reused my old SSD drive to save a few bucks, but if I can find an NVMe 2.0 5th gen SSD for a reasonable price, I'll probably get it. Overall, the computer cost me about $1600.

The build came together with little fuss. The new system runs fast and stays very cool considering the size of the case. Most games I run on it can do 250+ fps, but I'm capping at 100, just to keep the GPU cooler. I've optimized the voltage consumption, fans and GPU, then stopped unnecessary services and apps in Windows 11 for better performance. All-in-all, I'm very pleased with this little box so far. It's small, it runs fast, it isn't very loud, and it just looks cool!

Here's the Build:
Case: Fractal Terra ITX Case
M/B: ASRock B850I Lightning WiFi
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
Storage: Crucial MX500 500GB 2.5 inch SSD
CPU Cooler: Thermalright AXP-120-X67
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM
RAM: Patriot 32GB DDR5 Signature
GPU: Radeon RX 7700 XT
PSU: Corsair SF750

04/26/2026

I picked up this 2018 Fender Stratocaster MIM (Made in Mexico) off of FB Marketplace. Got a great price and I love the color! This harp is so original and has barely been played! The plastic wrap was still stuck around the k***s and screws on the pickguard. The strings were starting to rust over. The bridge height has never been adjusted!! So I spent a night doing a nice tune-up- new strings, trussing the neck, polishing the frets, bridge and pickup height adjustments, intonation, etc. This guitar feels and plays fantastic!

Upon further inspection, I decided to do a little pickup work. The guitar sounds good, but I want a little better sound out of it. I bought a Seymour Duncan full-size humbucker and new pickguard to house it. The original configuration has no tone adjustment k**b for the bridge pickup alone (and I didn't want to buy another switch/k**b/button), so I moved some wires around to fix that. Also I wanted the ability to pair the neck and bridge pickup together, so again I swapped a couple more wires.

All the work is done- the body could use a little vacuuming, but essentially I'm just waiting on the pickguard!

02/08/2026

Every once in a while, accidents arise. In this instance, I was recording with my Insta360 on its tripod/magic stick and a stiff wind knocked it over resulting in a scratched lens. Luckily replacement lenses aren't hard to find- they just take patience, courage and faith to install! This repair cost me about $25 and half an hour of my time.

09/06/2024

Wow! My last 2 days have revolved around trying to get this nut off my primary crank. My shifter shaft is bent, so both sprockets and chain need to come off, so I can do the replacement. The clutch nut was super-easy. The primary, not so much. I threw MAPP gas at it, my 800 lb air impact and a 3-ft breaker bar at it and it just didn't move. Today I even made a "tool" to help keep things still! I bought a 1000 lb air impact and 2000 lb cordless Bosch. Those didn't budge it! I called my local Harley mechanic to do a sanity check- he said I was doing everything right. I finally had to Dremel the cotter pin off my Hi-Lift jack handle and use that 4-foot handle as a breaker. That FINALLY did the trick! Yay!!! Now I can move on 👍

09/01/2024

A little update on the Harley [re]build. I bought some used fork tubes and was able to swap all the parts from the wrecked forks. I had my upgraded springs in there that I wanted to keep. I had to do install some fabricated steering stops into the lower triple tree clamp too.

Onto the wheel. It's pretty mangled. Mangled beyond repair. I ordered another hoop from eBay. I'll rebuild it next week 👍

08/03/2024

Well, it's finally time to pull Blackboard out and access the damage, dirt and all. I'll start the rebuild picking at it little by little. I'm finally done crying over it- it'll be a new opportunity to create something different! The time is feeling right- the Jeep is pretty well situated, the Yamaha is about finished, the Honda needs nothing at this point, and the Bimmer can always wait another year 🤣 This bike had served me well for a good 10 years, before I got chucked off the bike at 65 mph and then she chased me into a ditch. It's been 10 months and my right knee still has a little swelling, but I'm pretty well healed up from the accident- I'm really lucky I'm not dead.

The bike still starts up readily and the right side is still very well preserved- it's the left side that took the brunt of the fall. The left saddlebag and rear fender are wasted. The left footpeg and mount were torn off, nowhere to be found. The shift shaft is bent. Derby cover got scratched a little, but not badly. The forks took a real beating! They got pushed back a good 2-3 inches! The gas tank has some major dents from the handlebars slamming into it. And the left hand controls got a bit rashed. All-in-all not too bad!

I've already purchased some fork tubes, a footpeg mount, and am trying to source a used gas tank. I'll have to rebuild the forks (no biggie) and replace the shift shaft. Other than that, I think it'll be pretty straight forward. I think I'm going to cut the rear fender, buy a solo spring seat and convert this bike into a bobber. I'll get rid of the luggage and install lower handlebars (I still have the stock ones on the shelf). I've got a bunch of trips events till the end of the year, so the trick will be finding time to do the work. Oh, and then there's ski season! With any luck, I'll be done by the end of Winter!

07/29/2024

Got another day at the track coming up next in a few weeks. Thought I would make some adjustments from the last time, since I was dragging the kickstand on my left turns, which scared the bejeezus out of me! I bought the kickstand relocation kit from HVC years ago and that helped a bit on the streets, but not enough clearance for deep leaning. I know others have done this before, so I knew it could be done. I took a MAPP torch to it and got it to bend just enough that it's out of the way, but not hitting the pipe! I didn't have to cut the mount off the frame. She leans a bit more with the kickstand down now, but I think this'll get er done 👍

06/25/2024

It's been a busy week in the Shop. And the weatherman lied again. I scheduled this repair for today, because there was supposed to be a cooldown, but NO!

If I keep trying to find the limits of my vehicles, at some point, I will suffer breakages and failures. So be it. I build each vehicle for specific tasks- then I torture-test them. I jokingly tell others that we build these things, then we try to break them. Not too far from the truth.

On the Rubicon Trail, near the end of the route, one of my rear wheels just plum fell off. I guess it had enough and gave up in protest. A couple of months ago, I installed wheel spacers in preparation that I might soon be getting larger sized tires and I would need the clearance. It had been over six years, since I last installed them. I remembered to put Loctite on the lugs, but I put on the blue stuff. Fail! Not good enough! With all the demands of the trail, the nuts started to come loose off the spacer (but it couldn't be seen, because it was obscured by the wheel that was installed on top of it). Over the miles, the nuts got looser and the lug holes got larger and larger. Finally, the holes became so large that the nuts just passed through the holes and the last lug that holding everything together just snapped off. Luckily, we were able to do a temporary trailside repair, enough to get me back to camp, them back home.

I was able to find all the parts I needed on Amazon for a total cost of less than $70! It took about 2 hours of sweating and baking in the hot sun (with lots of cooling breaks along the way). I had to replace the bent and missing lugs by pulling the axle shaft from the Jeep. I also had to replace the spacer that we stole from the other side. And I used RED Loctite!! Looking back on all the directions, they said to use the red loctite! I'll have to redo the front ones before my next outing. I'll never make that mistake again!!

06/24/2024

I didn't plan on doing this today, but the time slot just seemed so obvious and I was really itching to see what kind of damage was done to the motor.

At the track, earlier this week, my bike had (what we are guessing is) a "soft" seizure. That's when the piston/cylinder gets momentarily so hot that the expansion is more than it can handle and the engine physically stops turning, then subsequently my rear tire locked up. In my case, I probably over-cooked the motor coming down the long straightaway revving well into the redline at 9,500 rpm. Stock on my bike starts at 8,500 and the meter runs out at 10,000. This engine has been a bit modified and redlines are for 2-strokes are more theoretical- redlines are more for 4-stroke engines and estimates the point at which the valve springs are "floating" and can't close the valves, because the cycles are just too quick.

I got as far as pulling the cylinders off and doing some quick analysis. I'll pull the pistons another day and check under the skirts. From what I could tell, it was the left cylinder that locked up. I sent the pictures to my tuner to get his input. If I'm lucky, I might be able to just lightly sand everything down and reuse the parts. I do plan on upgrading the wrist pin bearings though, as when this motor was planned/built, I didn't think I would be racing it this hard.

The fun never stops!

05/17/2024

It's been a while since I brewed a batch of beer. Batches are usually 5 gallons. The caveat is if you don't like what you brewed, it's 5 gallons of beer... and such was the situation with the last batch. I'm starting to pare down on my belongings, as we're getting ready to downsize. I was considering giving away my brewing equipment, but I thought I should really brew something while I we still have time. I bought a Deschutes Fresh Squeezed clone from MoreBeer. It looks darker than I had anticipated. I did a yeast starter, so the gravity came out higher than what was spec'ed- the 7% abv turned out to be 8%! We'll see how it tastes!

Address

Livermore, CA
94550

Website

https://sv-garage.blogspot.com/

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