Wednesday, April 22nd

Long day today. To start our day, we went to Patrick's to try to fix our bike. However, when we arrived, Patrick wasn't there, only his son. We talked to his son for a while and asked him if he had any suggestions. Unfortunately, James told us that Patrick knew way more about carburetors than he did. However, he did make a suggestion about the spark plug. He suggested removing it while waiting for Patrick in order to let to motor dry out, as there may have been too much gas in there. After about 45 minutes, Patrick arrived, and we began to look into the carburetor. Patrick suggested many different methods to try and attach the carburetor, but none of them worked. The real issue is that the carburetor is not very high quality. At some points we were able to get the bike started and ride it, but when we switched it into idle and reved the engine, the carburetor would shake off. Eli and I realized we may just have to make due with reattaching the carburetor after every ride. For the most part, the carburetor stays on, its just when it is in idle that we run into some issues. Patrick had one final idea where we glued the actual screw of the carburetor to keep it from unscrewing. With the glue applied, Eli and I planned to leave it overnight to dry, and we will check back in the morning before the outdoor bar b que.
Next, Eli and I decided to get some footage on the electric bike to try and show people what it looks like to ride it. We did this because we realize that we will not be able to bring the bikes on stage with us when we present the bikes, so the videos we make will hopefully suffice. Though it was a little reckless, I got in my car and rode along Eli on the bike, filming on my phone. Surprisingly, it was kind of tough to keep up with Eli because of how agile he was on the bike. We plan to incorporate this into our presentations.
After we finished filming, Eli and I headed to Starbucks for some more work. We began by compiling our final list of expenses. We soon realized that we may have misplaced some of our receipts. Luckily, we only used credit cards, so hopefully we can outline exactly what we spent on our bikes. We then began work on our presentation to the faculty. We discussed for a while about how to actually present. We debated going through our project by day, week, etc. We have decided to basically focus on the gas powered bike, then the electric bike, then compare the two. This would include showing our stats for each bike, which one is easier to ride, discussing the actual assembly of the bike, and so on.
With two days left in our senior project, Eli and I are feeling both relieved and sad to be finishing up. We are glad to finally have something to show for our work, but will miss getting down to business in the mechanic shop. We are both really excited to be at the outdoor bar b que tomorrow, and really want the students to see what we have done. We are still debating if we should let people ride the bikes or not. I guess we will find out tomorrow!