By Greg Kachadurian
Some track day organizers require you to display a number on your car for easy identification. The experts will have fancy stickers or magnets that fulfill this requirement while plebs like me just use tape. If you’re going to be as uncultured as I am, do yourself a favor and pick a number that doesn’t require a lot of tape. It should have been obvious when choosing #80, but that number requires significantly more tape than… uh, pretty much every other number except 88. I saw lots of guys with easy numbers like 1, 11, 7, 77, and 4. Nobody else gave themselves as much work as I did. Don’t be like me.
(Also that’s Racer Tape, not regular duct tape. It comes off easily and leaves no residue – would recommend)
Last Call indicates the end of Hooniverse’s broadcast day. It’s meant to be an open forum for anyone and anything. Thread jacking is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.
Jeff Glucker
On the other hand, 80 is the start to 80085. It’s worth the extra tape.
80 is also great if your name is Bo.
It’s not so great if you suffer from bad Body Odor.
I’ve had no problems with painter’s tape, since it’s cheap and also doesn’t leave residue.
Maybe if stored indoors out of the elements, but painter’s tape will leave residue if you don’t remove the tape for a couple years, but continue to daily drive the vehicle.
This sounds like it was informed by experience?
This sounds like it was informed by experience?
Of course. It was on some stainless trim for a couple years. When I peeled it off, blue splotches of adhesive remained, though the paper layer came off. Thankfully, some elbow grease and chemicals got it the rest of the way clean. I don’t know if I would have the same luck on a painted surface.
Fair, I only ever kept the painters tape on for a ~8 hour day of autocross, so it didn’t have the chance to bake on.
Two things related to tonight’s Last Call text, and one thing purely Last Call (Tuesday)
Requiring more tape to form ’80’ reminds me that I recently found out how telephone area codes were distributed in the early days. On a rotary telephone, higher numbers require more time and physical effort to dial, so premium markets like New York City got quick & easy area codes like 2-1-2, whereas Washington DC got the more lugubrious to dial but equally palindromic 2-0-2, and Pittsburgh got the quick and even tempered 4-1-2, and Boston ended up with the somewhat consecutive 6-1-7, solidly in the middle of things. (Signal processing required the emergency number to start with 9, giving us 9-1-1, and no one wanted 8-0-0 so only telemarketers got that.)
Stay away from ’88’, not for tape conservation reasons. In outlaw biker slang letters are assigned numbers, with ’81’ translating to ‘HA’ and ’88’ translating to ‘HH’, or code for ‘Heil Hitler’. My local pub gave me an order number, on a little flag stand, of ’88’ and I quickly convinced them that number ought to be thrown away, which they did.
Hey! Remember when I went looking for a new motorcycle back in 2017? I wanted a Honda NC700X with the DCT transmission. For the next 18 months I couldn’t find one, not new anyway, I wanted a new bike. The 2018 NC750s came out, with their bigger engines, but no DCTs. Eventually my savings grew to match the price of an Africa Twin CRF1000, and I bought a New-Old-Stock 2017 model in March of 2019 for $13K, plus $2K in farkles.
Recently my housemate bought a 2014 NC700X DCT (just like I went looking for years ago!) with 16 (sixteen) miles on it for $5K and needs to change the 5 year old factory oil, plus buy $2K in farkles. It has given me the opportunity to see exactly what I got for the extra $4K the Africa Twin cost me, and also what I missed out on by not getting the simpler, humbler NC700 or -750. I can literally put them head to head, like so.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f78102836d2cfec42df4c8df7ae16cd0681f3f295389ef9824c121c550cd9a05.jpg
I’m still of two minds about them I think if I’d gotten an NC700X I’d be just as pleased, but that’s because I haven’t ever owned a ‘new’ bike, or anything more modern than an EX500 NInja. Fuel Injection is the bee’s knees to me. I also see what you get when you upgrade to the premium bike, and it’s a lot more than just displacement. A rear rack (really? the commuter bike doesn’t have a rear carrier?), sophisticated suspension (I know nothing about), confidence inspiring brakes, burly frame, pleasantly informative dashboard… all these standard things on the Africa Twin make the NC700X look pretty bare bones, but I never would have known that if they’d have just imported more NC700 DCT bikes when I wanted one. I’d have been just as happy, and just as broke. Homeslice didn’t necessarily want the DCT model, but that’s the only one that has ABS, which he absolutely wanted. He rode my DCT once and decided he could live with it.
One thing they have in common, they both came standard with the most disappointing, un-livable seats ever (I paid more for mine.) I’ll let you know if the cheap bike’s spokes start rusting in the first 4000 miles like the flagship bike’s did.
I used more tape than was strictly necessary for this and it was fairly sticky duct tape, too. That’s okay, though, because it wasn’t my tape. Or my choice of number. Or my car.
http://www.murileemartin.com/UG/LAZ17/078-IMG_6971.jpg
On that note 42 is a good choice for a Miata
Contact paper. (image from Murilee Martin)
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I would like to highlight the importance of a number that can be read correctly while upside-down – refer to Kevin Bartlett’s “Channel 6” Camaro.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e5d37be2b810c6e05ccb27f4dc9a2e05c953ba507513934a66bdc0de877672b.png
Just in case, of course.
Wasn’t that the thinking behind Nicky Hayden’s no. 69?
https://statik.tempo.co/data/2017/05/23/id_609332/609332_620.jpg