Yesterday was very nice

We finally managed to get to the upscale burger place for my free burger after taking care of various errands at the bank and other places where we paid bills. Then we set about the circuitous bus ride to the burger place, and about an hour later we had covered the 2.9 miles between the bank and the restaurant, arriving just before 1700. This is the route that doesn’t run on weekends and why we didn’t go on my birthday.

Mrs. the Poet got the free burger and I spent my money on the MadLove Burger which is quite a mouthful. This was yet another ½ pound burger this month, after the one we had in the restaurant in Lewisville the week after our grandson’s birthday when the family friend visited from England, and also the ⅓ pound burger from Whataburger this week, so I think I have had my allotment of ground beef patty for the month. To go with the burger was what they call “bottomless” fries, and I got two rounds and the waitress offered another round of fries and another round of my Diet Coke to go. This was after we had a chocolate sundae big enough to split for dessert. When I got home I was pleasantly stuffed.

I am still thinking about the T-Bucket, and how to power it. I’m still flexible about using a FWD power unit as a mid-engine unit because I’m not sure what will fall into my lap. Now obviously I will not be legal for Goodguys autocross that requires the engine to be sorta close to the stock installation, which is not what I would have with the FWD power unit mounted in the back. But, I would have a SCCA A-Mod legal and street legal T-bucket to drive and race. I fact I was planning on doing just that with the 3.8l V6 and automatic transmission a few years back that I almost got from someone who wanted to get rid of a minivan that wouldn’t pass safety inspection. I think Mrs. the Poet managed to talk the van owner out of letting me have the vehicle because she didn’t want a mess in the driveway. But since I really need something for a RWD drivetrain, to be Goodguys legal, I’m hoping I get something I can at least convert easily to RWD if it doesn’t come that way in the car. And my research has shown there are many such engines available and I discussed some of them before in this blog. So I have to remain flexible about potential candidates for the engine, especially with the (extremely) limited budget. So if you know anyone with a car or truck with a running engine who needs to get rid of it and is somewhat local to me, have them contact me at this blog with a private comment (I think that is still an option with the plan I’m using) about how to get it.

And I need to get off the computer now, so bye until later.

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Listening to “Billy and the Boingers” while writing

You would not believe what you can find on YTM. I literally found the video for the Billy and the Boingers song “You Stink But I ❤ You" that I never knew existed. There are actually two videos, the official one for the Boingers and another for the real band that provided the music, Mucky Pup. I wonder what happened to them after the Boingers?

I didn’t win the lottery, again. No surprise as I know what the odds are, just a little disappointment. Wednesday’s jackpot is $16e6, again something I could easily live with. And I have been looking at the costs for buying a Pentastar V6 crate engine and the automatic transmission it bolts to and they are supposed to get back to me Monday. Used transmissions are about $1800 by themselves so I’m not looking at this as a cheap option. Indeed it looks like it will fall closer to the LS3 crate engine than the 383 Blueprint crate engine, but I won’t know for sure until after I hear back from the parts department.

My hand is still bothering me. I have been comparing the symptoms to previous experiences and it comes closest to back when I first started commuting to Farmer’s Branch by bicycle, about 100 miles a week. I injured a nerve in my palm sometime in the second or third week and it took several months to recover, mostly because I couldn’t take a break from commuting by bicycle and my route was under repair for most of the time I was working that job. There is a nerve that runs through the middle of the palm that can get pinched if you keep putting pressure on it like if you ride 15 miles a night over broken pavement. The other 5 miles a day was getting to the bus and from the bus to work. Incidentally that’s the route I was riding when I got killed, but by then the repairs had been finished.

And speaking of my hand pains, it hurts to type again. So this post is over.

Weather has been here, wish you were beautiful

The title is the punchline to a very old joke from before I was born, and accurately sums up the situation here in The Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. The highs and lows have been swapping places with highs less than the previous day’s lows, and lows higher than previous highs. I went from long pants and long underwear to shorts and t-shirt for my daily walks on consecutive days and back again to long pants and underwear. Yesterday I went for a walk at night in shorts and t-shirt and was a little chilly, today I went in the middle of the day with a sweatshirt over a long-sleeve T and still my hands got cold, much worse than yesterday’s walk at night. Mrs. the Poet has a condition she calls “changing weather crud” that in the past she got once in the fall and again in the spring, this year she has had it the entire month of December with no end in sight.

In other news I spent the majority of my Xmas money buying parts I don’t have the equipment to fabricate to the level of precision required, at a reduced price because someone bought the wrong parts and returned them after trying to install. So I’m getting them at 20% off original price. Maybe more, there was a discount code I tried to use that wouldn’t work that would have taken another 10% off the already discounted price that will probably get refunded when they get real live humans reviewing the order next week. Anywho the parts are steering arms that attach above the axle on the reproduction early Ford spindles I got last year. The main difficulty with making these on my own is the thickness of the stock used, the arms made for bolting to the bottom of the spindle are cut from ¼” mild steel and bent so they bolt through tabs with nuts, the ones for the top look like they’re cut from 1″ plate and are threaded so they don’t need nuts or bent tabs. My cutting tools are pretty much maxed out at 3/16″ thickness plate or 0.125″ wall tubing. Sure they will cut thicker stuff but my ability to make the tool go where I want to go instead of where it wants to go declines sharply when I exceed those limits. And don’t get me started about my hole-drilling abilities with my 3/8″ capacity hand drill. And I picked up a big bottle of Shiner Holiday Cheer beer to toast in the New Year tomorrow for $3 at my local grocery store. Since Mrs. the Poet will probably only drink an ounce or two (30-60 ml) and I’m not a big drinker either so the 32 oz. bottle will be more than enough for our private little party.

Stay warm or cool as the case may call for this NYE, and consider every driver on the road a drunk stoner on 2 days without sleep, because they’re out there and you don’t want to be the one that gets hit. I’m an unkillable badass but it still hurts like a mutha’ to get hit. You most likely are not an unkillable badass. ‘Nuf said.

BTW I have a playlist loaded to You Tube, labeled “Opus’ fun junk”. It’s 71 pieces of all kinds of music with electronica, EDM, trance, Classic Rock, New Wave Jazz, and some stuff that just defies classification other than the origin of cartoon music themes.

Peace out, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet

Hope everyone had a merry Yule

Instead of a merry Yule I went on a 4.22 mile walk to pick up the car cover I ordered last week so my parts car doesn’t get stolen by Codes. I’m not allowed to have an unregistered/inspected vehicle on property but as long as they can’t tell it’s unregistered I’m good. In TX current registration/inspection status is indicated by windshield stickers so if they can’t see the windshield they can’t tow the car out of my driveway. This car cover is supposed to go all the way down to the rocker panels on the bottom of the car, so to see the windshield they would have to come onto my property (legal) and remove the car cover (not legal) to uncover the windshield.

The weather was slightly above normal temperature for the date, which meant I could walk in shorts and a t-shirt to the parts store to get my stuff. Of course I can do that down to about 55°F, but colder than that and I have to start throwing on layers toot sweet. If I keep moving and there is no wind chill 55° is uncomfortable but not excessively so, but the conditions were 60°F and light winds while I was out. On the up side with all the walking I’m doing I’m burning a lot of calories. Not as many as when I was riding my bike everywhere, but lots more than sitting at my laptop.

On the Mini Sprint-T front some of the changes I’m making on the mid T-Bucket will transfer over to the Sprint-T and because the one is supposed to be the other only smaller it will show in the Mini Sprint-T as well. TBH I see the changes as an improvement for frame stiffness and ease of assembly for the full-size version of the car. For the model, it’s ehhh 6 of one half-a-dozen of the other.

Time to hit the hay.

Opus the Unkillable Badass

Update notes while I’m waiting for my Internet access to be restored

We lost Internet last Saturday so I have been burning through my phone data trying to keep up with my web comics and watching my unread e-mail count approach sail by 1K. I have also been thinking about the T-bucket rear suspension. Thinking may be the most dangerous thing I do, especially when it comes to building things, like cars. But in this case I was thinking about reducing costs by using parts I bought when I was thinking I was going to use a V8 engine in front of the passenger compartment instead of a V6 behind it. Specifically I was thinking about the swingarm links I bought to locate the rear axle fore and aft. They were also designed to use as the lower mounts for coilovers which would mean the only thing the de Dion beam would have to do is hold the knuckles upright and the same distance apart all the time, since the weight of the car would be supported by the swing arms connected to the knuckles and the lateral links from the Watts link would also connect to the knuckles.

What got me thinking about this was seeing if I could mount the brake disks to the outputs from the differential and the calipers to brackets attached to the transaxle. I can’t because there is not enough room for the disk next to the transaxle, but while I was thinking about mounting the disks and calipers there the thought came to mind that all the forces that had been going through the de Dion beam were going elsewhere leaving the beam with pretty much nothing to do except keep the wheels apart. Then the swingarm links came to mind for removing the weight of the car from the beam, and the rest just snowballed from there. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to put the brakes on the transaxle, so I will still need two fore and aft links per side, one to keep the axle from climbing inside the passenger compartment, and a second lighter link to keep the brakes from spinning the beam around the half shafts. The swingarm link is very strong and will be attached to the knuckle on the bracket that holds the knuckle, in line with the horizontal axle centerline to transfer the weight and the thrust from the tires. This lets the bracket be lighter because it doesn’t have to move the weight into the beam, and the adjusting links that change the camber and toe can also be lighter because that are not taking bending forces from supporting the weight of the car. The second link can be much smaller and lighter because all it will need to take is the brake reactive force and prevent the beam and knuckle from rotating when the brakes are applied. It will attach to the same bracket that holds the ball joint that transfers the lateral forces into the beam and also that takes the lateral forces from the ball joint into the lateral locating link from the Watts link. So that piece will have the ball joint in the center with the lateral links to the rear of the car next to the ball joint and the link that controls reaction to the braking force in line with the ball joint and also the support members that hold the knuckle to the beam on either side above the brackets that connect the links.

Something else I was thinking about was where to put the gas tank, and also how much of a riser I would need to be able to see out of the car and endure sitting for 4 hours at a stretch. Then I saw where the gas tank was on the original model T, under the seat. Now most people think this was not a good idea, and given the gas tank technology of the era it was a very bad idea. But in this day and age we have fuel cell technology that can withstand massive amounts of impact force without rupturing and leaking gas, to the point that if you are sitting on the gas tank and something hits you hard enough to cause the tank to leak you won’t have to worry about the gas catching fire and burning you to death because you’ll be dead from the impact first. This has many serendipitous effects, including making the car shorter because I don’t have to leave room behind the transaxle for the tank, and reducing the change in car attitude with change of load because the lever arm for the gas tank is in front of the rear axle so that some of the load is carried on the front axle instead of coming off the front and getting added to the rear. There is another technical benefit from moving the tank forward from the far rear of the car and putting it in the middle, a reduced polar moment. Without getting too technical about it think of it as reducing the length of the dumbbell that is the weight and balance of the car because all the masses are closer together in the center of the car. Also the fuel cell gas tank guarantees at least a 9″ riser for the seats so I’ll be able to see out the front of the car. But how will I put gas in the car, you might ask if you really cared. Easy, just unlatch the seat riser top/seat base and tilt it forward then open the gas cap.

And I also got better information about the power and torque peaks on my engine, and it is even worse than I thought before. The 1996-7 3.8 l engine has a power peak of 166 @ 4300 RPM (!) on a 6000 RPM redline, and a torque peak of 227 @ 3100 RPM. This means there is tons of untapped potential in this engine if I can just unlock it. As I posted earlier since I’m going to have to make tube headers to install this engine in the bucket I might as well make them as racy as I can to try to tune as much power across the band as I can get with (relatively) large tube diameter for a higher torque peak from exhaust tuning combined with very long primary tubes to get as much power at the low end of the range. The Jeep cam for this engine has a lot more power at the top of the RPM range (205 @ 5200) and more torque higher in the RPM range (240 @ 4000). The RPM numbers I posted earlier were for a car version of the engine with much better exhaust with the HP and torque numbers for my van version.

And as you probably noticed we now have internet back. Now I have 1.2K emails to catch up on. And the web comics I couldn’t remember the URLs for which was most of them.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass

People die, but life continues. Plus my Christmas list.

I finally processed another hero from my childhood shuffling off this mortal coil, and I can’t think of anything better to say than what Scott Carpenter said during Glenn’s launch into orbit: “Godspeed, John Glenn.”

Now what I need for Christmas (I need this regardless, but Christmas is a good excuse to send it to me).

The new bike needs head and tail lights and my DIY supply closet is fresh out of things I can hack for the cause. I would like a nice bright headlight that can use the 8.4 V lithium pack from the mega light that burned out, or a similar light that will let me stack two tail lights vertically and put one on blink and the other steady. I also have a diffusing lens from the headlight that fits a large variety of headlights like the Magicshine 303.

I really need some raw stock for the T-bucket project. The big one is 1.5″ square 0.060″ wall 4130 chromoly, I’m going to need like 40 feet of that. Also need 1.5″ x 0.120″ wall round for the roll cage (SCCA rules) about 20 feet, and another 20 feet of 1.5″ x 0.060″ round for frame rails. I’ll also need some light sheet but I haven’t figured out how much and what size I’ll need for that, so hold off on getting that. My welding supplies will handle 4130 alloy so I’m good on that.

If anyone has a small lathe they want to donate to the cause the wheels for the Mini Sprint-T will be much easier to mod to the right widths, and a lot of other things that need to be done as well. Otherwise I’ll have to figure out how to turn my Dremel into a lathe with hose clamps and 2X4s.

As always any cyclist will appreciate gifts of food. I have a weakness for Swiss Colony Summer Sausage and Mrs. the Poet loves their sharp cheeses and petit fours. Basically though anything sausage and/or cheese from the Swiss Colony is good.

And Amazon or Starbucks gift cards are always welcome. You have no idea how much a hot coffee or iced tea means when you’re out and about and don’t have cash on hand for a meal or snack. And there are always things we need on Amazon at a good price with free shipping. 😉

Last thing, there is a water-resistant windbreaker on Alert Shirt that would be perfect for this part of TX. It’s light enough to wear by itself in spring and fall rains and would also work as a wind-proof top layer over other stuff in the winter. I would need an XL for that.

Everyone have a safe day, especially those of you in the midwest in the blizzard conditions.

PSA, Opus the Unkillable Badass

Wow was I underestimating my walks

Someone mentioned an app on Twitter that did something I needed, tracking walks and estimating calories burned. So I looked it up at the Google Store and found out the price was right (free) and the basic version did in fact do everything I needed from such an app. So I now have “Map My Walk” installed on my phone.

What I learned is my “short walk” is 3.31 miles long instead of my estimated 2.5 miles I’ve been telling everyone, and that I burned 500 calories on my “short walk”. I’m thinking my “long walk” is closer to 5 or 6 miles than the 3.5 or 4 that I thought. This also explains how my shoes keep wearing out so fast, since I go for a walk almost every day. I’m also faster than I thought but still nothing to brag about.

Also while on my walk I contemplated the one remaining issue I have to solve with the rear suspension: keeping the rear wheels from steering the car under power because the toe angle changes. With the 2D Pratt truss the knuckle could have had enough bending torque to change the toe angle uncontrollably, so I had to make it 3D without adding to the weight or making it take up too much space behind or over the transmission. Thinking the problem through I realized the 4-link was going to be taking almost all of the forces that would be changing the toe, so all I really needed to do was give the 2D truss a fighting chance at using the depth of the structural members to resist toe change by using some diagonals connecting to the vertical member of the last bay before the knuckle, in as many planes as I could so the last bay would be 3D but everything else could remain 2D, only slightly increasing the weight of the truss and not changing the vertical stiffness needed to keep the wheel aligned on the other 2 axis. In doing so I would not be using a true Pratt truss in that the diagonal members will be under compression rather than tension, and the end bay would not have an upper horizontal member or terminating vertical member but would be similar to a kingpin truss in 3 planes, with another triangular bay under the truss from the bottom of the knuckle up to the bottom horizontal member in the plane of the main truss keeping the camber angle constant. I wish my CAD skills were good enough to draw this out and output a .gif or .jpg file to put in the blog, because words are only so good in describing this.

Another stab at it, the plate that holds the knuckle to the truss is going to be rectangular or maybe a right triangle with the hypotenuse facing down and forward and the right angle on the top rear side. Diagonal members will run from all 3 corners of the triangle to the first vertical member of the truss, one from the bottom corner to the bottom of the first vertical member from the bottom, one from the top front corner to the bottom of the vertical member on its front side, another from the top front to the top of the vertical member on its front side, and a last one from the top rear corner to the top of the first vertical member, that diagonal in the plane of the truss. That should be more than enough to keep the forces driving the wheel under control so the toe and camber don’t change. And none of the added members will interfere with the drive shafts or the lateral links of the Watts link that keeps the whole shebang located from side to side. That’s because all of the added structure is either behind or above the knuckle and therefore above or behind the driveshafts and lateral links.

I really need to learn how to use the AutoCAD 360 program I downloaded to the laptop and not just so I can draw pictures of the car to post to the blog. Anyone know of some good tutorials to teach me to use it?

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass

I just got a check from Facebook

I’m going to be quite honest about this and say I had forgotten completely about the issue that resulted in my getting the check, to wit Facebook using my name and avatar picture for advertising purposes without requesting permission first. This took place shortly after MySpace started censoring the sh!t out of links in my blog and I left MS for WP and FB.

So anywho, I have a check for $15 that I will now spend on useless things like groceries and comic books. Probably more groceries than comic books.

Also while I am doing a post, I bought a keyless chuck for my Dremel tool through Amazon using the gift cards I get from the mobile game, and a set of tiny drills to use in the chuck from Lowe’s using the card that I can’t use everywhere but I can use in a few places they pay me with at another one of my side gigs. This means I can finish building the scale SBC for the Mini Sprint-T. And yes I’m still building the Mini Sprint-T even though the full-scale car will now be mid-engine with a Mopar V6. One slightly ironic thing is the Sprint-T had to have an automatic transmission because there was no room for 3 pedals between the transmission tunnel and the side of the car, while the mid-engine car will have a flat floor and acres of room for pedals but no manual transmission available, just a full manual controller on the slush box.

While on the subject I have mostly finished redesigning the frame for the switch from front to mid engine. One thing I changed was the location of the forward hoop of the roll cage, which was also a crossmember of the frame, that had a diagonal running from the top of the rear hoop to the bottom of the front hoop. On the front engine version this ran through the passenger compartment, but on the mid-engine version I’m moving the bottom rail out from under the body and the bottom of the hoop likewise meaning I don’t have to figure out how to get the painted body back on the frame with parts of the frame under and over the body and one big part running through the body, because that “one big part” will now be outside the body. It will be a close fit but it will clear. The other thing changed was the location of the front coilover mount both on the axle and the frame. The new axle mount will be as close to the end of the axle as possible without the back of the spindle making contact with the unit at the ends of the turning travel, on top of the axle tube. The new frame mount will be high above the axle so that the front wheel doesn’t hit the diagonal from the frame mount to the bottom of the front hoop of the roll cage at full compression and full turning travel. This is a very unlikely place for the wheel to be but it is possible so the frame has to clear the tire. This has the secondary effect of increasing d which increases the torsional rigidity of the frame, meaning better handling.

And that’s about it today, go ride a bike. I’m still stretching to be able to ride mine again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass

Need input from my readers on my T-bucket

I’m at a dilemma here on the rear suspension design, so I’m asking for your help. I have narrowed down the rear suspension to 3 candidates, 2 of which are interchangeable as the major difference is method of construction, and the third would require cutting most of the back end off the car to go from either of the other two to it or from it to either of the other two.

Anyway here are the choices:

1) Reuse almost everything under the front of the minivan including the subframe. That means the struts, springs, hubs, knuckles, axles and CV joints, A-arms, and the tie rod ends. Advantages are reduced fabrication as almost everything is reused except the upper strut mount to the frame of the minivan. Major disadvantage is no way to adjust ride height except to cut the spring to make it shorter, no way to change the spring rate except to cut the spring to make it stiffer, no way to reduce roll stiffness to improve rear grip, very little way to predict the ride height, and poor camber control with body roll. Also ugly with a capital UGH! The front suspension bits of a Chrysler Town and Country are strong, but they will never win the “Rear Suspension” category of a beauty contest.

2) De Dion beam with fabricated brackets to fit the knuckles attached to a 3″ dia 0.25″ wall aluminum tube, probably a 7075 alloy. This has the main advantage of keeping the wheels pointed in mostly the right direction in all 3 axis all the time unlike option 1. It’s also much better looking than option 1, but that is faint praise from a bad comparison. Another advantage is roll stiffness can be reduced by mounting the coilovers closer to the center of the car. The major disadvantage is I can cut the pieces for the bracketry but not weld them as none of my equipment will work on the thicknesses of aluminum needed for this job and the budget does not run into buying welding equipment that will only be used for one major assembly. Secondary disadvantage is coilover shocks and springs will need to be purchased to keep the frame from dragging the ground, but that is offset with the ability to choose shock and spring rates better suited to the reduced overall weight (compared to the donor vehicle), and the ability to adjust the ride height. This will reuse the knuckle and hub along with the parts attached like brakes etc. but probably not the tie rods. Lateral location will be by a Watt’s Link mounted under the differential and connected to the hubs or the bracketry the hubs are bolted to. Fore and aft location by a parallel 4-link connecting the frame and the end bracket on the de Dion tube.

3) Bird cage style de Dion beam from thin wall small diameter steel tubing in a 3D Warren or Pratt truss that sweeps back from the knuckles to clear the transaxle while leaving room for the axle shafts to come through without hitting the structure when the suspension travels vertically. Advantages include looking cool, something I could fabricate on my own, looking cool, slightly lighter and slightly stronger than the single 3″ aluminum tube, looking cool, all the advantages of the 3″ tube version, and finally looking cool. Disadvantages are much harder to fabricate since it’s basically a space frame for the rear axle and leaves less room for the trunk and gas tank behind the engine and transaxle.

Options 2 and 3 are interchangeable, just unbolt the tube or space frame and bolt in the space frame or tube to replace, so I could make both and see which works better. Probably not going to happen because I don’t have the budget for iterative development.

Right now I’m trying to decide which of the three options I’m going with. #1 is cheapest but has the most negative compromises, #2 and #3 have similar costs but #2 is much quicker to build because there is less actual cutting and welding. So help me make up my mind

Still working through the T-Bucket problems in my head

I prefer to think through all the problems and their solutions before I start to work cutting metal, it generally works out better that way.

One of the things that has been bothering me is the spread between the torque rating and the horsepower rating of the engine. The engine is rated 158 HP at 5000 RPM and 203 ft-lb of torque at 4000. Given that HP = Torque * RPM/5252 the power curve is basically flat from 4k to 5k RPM as it makes 154 HP at the torque peak. This means something is choking the engine off above the torque peak, and I’m betting it’s the exhaust. That’s the big reason why I’m planning tube headers to replace the crappy cast-iron manifolds on the engine as it is installed in the minivan. The manifold on the front bank is the likely culprit as it is just something to collect the exhaust and run it away from the head while tucking up as close to the head as physically possible, the one on the rear bank is much better except for the place where the front bank dumps into it. I’m sure that after I install the headers I will see pretty close to 180 HP at 5200 RPM. That torque curve makes a lot more sense than 203 at 4k dropping to 166 at 5k, and it might be even higher because the rest of the exhaust system will be less restrictive than the minivan as well since I’m going to dual exhaust with high flow quiet mufflers instead of the single exhaust and restrictive muffler on the minivan.

Also while I have the engine out of the car I’m going to clean up the inside of the intake manifold, because I can and because I want to make sure there are no horsepower killers in there. Nothing fancy, just cleaning up any port mismatches where things bolt together or to the heads and removing any rough spots or flash inside the manifold so that air moves smoothly inside the manifold. I’m not trying to add horsepower, just keep from losing the power that is already there. I’m just doing the stuff that Chrysler would have done if they had the time and money to hand fit and assemble the engine at the factory. Like I said I think this engine is capable of 180 HP without changing any internal parts or losing any power below the torque peak. I also think there is some power and fuel economy to be found in the fuel and spark maps in the computer which will happen when I hook the new controller up to the engine. I’m thinking that 200 HP is within reach without changing the cam or other internals as installed in the T-bucket. This will give me the same around-town and autocross performance as a 2017 Stingray base model, but better fuel economy than the 15/22 hwy estimate for the 1996 minivan, assuming I can keep my foot out of the gas driving around town. Changing the transmission controller to full manual will help by keeping it in as high a gear as possible to keep the RPMs down.

And those have been my thoughts on the subject for today. Keep riding your bikes, I’ll keep riding mine.

PSA, Opus