u/ella-reads70

Third time in two months I've had a rack bolt back itself loose on my friction drive setup. Running a 66cc on a beach cruiser frame, roller pressed against the rear tire sidewall, and whatever vibration that setup creates seems to march straight into the rear rack mounts no matter how tight I get them.

First time I chalked it up to just not torquing it enough. Second time I switched to nylock nuts thinking that would solve it. Still had one work its way out on a pothole heavy road about three weeks ago and almost lost my saddlebag off the back. Not fun realizing that mid ride.

What I'm doing now is a combination of blue Loctite on the threads plus actual lock washers under the nylocks, and so far that's held for about 250 miles without issue. Also went back and re-checked every other bolt on the bike while I was at it, engine mounts, chain tensioner, throttle housing, and found two more that were looser than I expected. Kind of a wake up call honestly, I'd been assuming things were fine just because the bike ran smooth.

Curious what other friction drive guys are doing for hardware on the rack and fender mounts specifically, since those seem to catch more of the buzz than the frame itself. Wondering if anyone's tried rubber isolation washers or if that's overkill for a bolt-on rack.

Grew borax crystals with my kid probably a dozen times now and usually they come out pretty clear, at least clear enough to see through a little. This last batch turned out almost solid white and chalky looking, like the whole thing is opaque.

Same process as always: boiling water, kept adding borax until it stopped dissolving, poured into a jar with a pipe cleaner hanging from a pencil, let it sit overnight on the counter. The only thing different this time is the house was colder than usual (we had the AC cranked because of the heat wave) so it cooled down a lot faster than normal.

I'm guessing the fast cooling caused a ton of tiny crystals to form all at once instead of a few bigger ones growing slowly, which would explain the cloudy chalky texture. Does that sound right? Also curious if there's a sweet spot for room temp when you're doing this, or if I should be insulating the jar somehow to slow the cooling down. Might try wrapping it in a towel next time and see if that helps.

Not mad about it, still turned into a fun little geode looking blob, just curious about the science side of why it happened.