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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Mon, 27 Dec 2004
I finally went up again today. The day was extremely clear The flight was pretty standard -- preflight, meet the instructor, do some touch-n-goes, get comments, sign logbook, go home. This particular instructor was pretty good though, and I got a good feeling from him. I was happy about that, because so many of the instructors at Northway have left me indifferent or displeased in some way. The only comments he had for me were that my first approach was too fast by about 15 MPH, which was exactly right (I had the pattern off and was holding more speed so I didn't sink too fast on a longish approach). He also commented that I had trouble holding to the centerline, which has been a constant struggle for me. At least I'm not too far off. The poor Cherokee hadn't been flown in about two weeks. I'm actually fairly amazed it started as easily as it did, normally that engine has real trouble starting when cold. I only had to crank twice. Anyway, hooray for getting out and flying a little bit! I'm current for another two months, so I've got some motivation to get out and fly again soon. Hopefully I can find another clear day like this. Posted at 18:55 permanent link category: /aviation Tue, 21 Dec 2004Boots: My Wesco boots finally arrived Wednesday of last week, and I've been slowly getting them broken in. It's actually gone far faster than I had expected, and I'm now able to wear them whole days at a time (although it's still a relief to get them off at the end of the day). They look really good. I'm dissappointed that particularly the right boot seems to have been made just fractionally too small around the front. My toes are crowded, and it's a little bit too narrow (the problem I had with every other boot on the planet). Wesco says they can stretch that stuff out very easily, with about a 2-week door-to-door turnaround. Still, it would have been nice (particularly after a 4 and a half month wait) if they Just Fit. I also noticed this morning that the lining material appears to have a cigarette burn or something in the left boot, right where they pressed in their logo. I'm pretty sure that pressing the logo doesn't involve heat, so I'm a bit mystified by that. My overall impression is that, for $400, these boots are generally a worthy investment, but little things like the fit being off and the newly-discovered burn detract from that feeling. As I described to someone else, you know how people always say, "things were better in the old days?" Well, these boots were made in the "old days" way -- by hand in a small factory, with good materials. Heated vest: the correctly-sized electric vest finally arrived from Aerostich yesterday, after returning the too-large one I got a week or two ago. It was a cold day, but I was already dressed warmly enough for it, so adding the vest just by itself was enough to push me over the top into "too warm" before I even turned it on. I was able to test it this morning, dressed a bit more appropriately for having an active heating element in the mix. It worked quite well, as the layer just above the t-shirt, and below the sweater and fleece vest. That set of clothes without the heating element would have been enough to keep me from getting cold. With the heating element going at half-power or less, I was quite comfortably warm. It was hardly a real test, as I was just doing my 15 minute ride into work, and I don't ever have time to really get cold, unless I'm wearing drastically too little clothing. I'll have to take a longer ride one of these days, so I can get an idea how it really works. I'm particularly interested to see if I notice the benefit in my hands, as everyone claims I will. Posted at 10:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 16 Dec 2004
Well, crap. The new front tire I got for the Ninja is on the Bah. On a different note, the old tire was quite interesting. It was cupped, but not in the way I normally think of cupping. The tread had the same rising and falling pattern, but it was offset from the center, on the tread blocks you'd hit in a gentle turn. The effect was surprising in its unstable, wandering feeling. It "only" went about 9000 miles. I say "only" because there was still a fair amount of tread left (a few mm at least) and it looked like it would go another 3000 miles at least before it ran out of tread. I'm guessing it was cupped because I do a relatively large amount of braking for the miles I ride. I also noticed, while I had the wheel off, that the front brake pads were down to 1mm or less of material left, so I got a new set while I was down getting the tire changed. I'm amazed sometimes at how fast the mileage piles up on the Ninja. I hadn't realized that 4000 miles had passed since I'd changed the pads. Of course, I also didn't think I'd run through a set of pads in 4000 miles. I guess I'll have to step up the inspection interval, I'd hate to get the brake pads down to metal and start tearing up the disc. Blame the crazed 210 lb guy riding the 300 lb bike... Posted at 11:32 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 14 Dec 2004
Woo! My new boots finally arrived. Can you tell which pair is the They're amazingly stiff. That's probably good. But it makes putting on the old boots feel like slipping into the softest glove leather. There's nothing quite like a new pair of boots to make you really appreciate the fit of the old ones. So, all told, it only took all of August, all of September, all of October, all of November, and part of December to finally get them. I was initially told to expect a 16 week wait, and a planned ship date of November 18. These must have shipped on Friday or Monday to arrive here today. Not a fabulous recommendation, time-wise. They seem to fit well enough, but I really won't be able to tell until they're a lot more broken in. They're tighter than the old boots, but that's probably a good thing, the old ones are too big. Posted at 17:49 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 01 Dec 2004
I rode down to Portland and back for the Thanksgiving holiday, The GPS tells me that I travelled 442 miles over the course of 8 hours and 38 minutes, making an average rolling speed of 51.1 MPH. That's the total for both ways, since I forgot to note the one-way numbers when I headed back. I didn't spend much time stopped on this trip, since the weather was relatively miserable. The ride down started out fairly well, with overcast skies and the temperature in the 40s. I was glad to be on the Le Mans, since this route involves a fair amount of high-speed travel. As I said previously about this route, it's pleasant and interesting, particularly compared to just droning down I-5 the whole way, but there are definitely stretches where you want to be able to comfortably go 70 or 80 MPH. Since I was going to be gone for most of a week, I was glad to have the sidecases on the Le Mans, making this the second time I've seriously used them. Clothes in one side and "stuff" in the other balanced each other surprisingly well, and I didn't have to do any balancing of weights to get everything happy. The trip down to Puyallup went by fast enough, as it had last time, but I was considerably colder this time. I was very happy to stop in South Hill for some lunch. Taco Del Mar was only too happy to take my money, and everyone had a good time. I got some curious stares in the restaurant, with my big grey spacesuit. There was one little boy, perhaps 6 or 7 years old, who followed me with big eyes. I'm always kind of happy to get that reaction from kids, since I think it's far too common for motorcyclists to get a bad rap as rebels and outlaws, for all that the average guy on a Harley is as likely to be an orthodontist as an outlaw. Fortunately, this particular kid was getting a positive-looking message from his mom, from the looks of it. Lunch conquered, I headed out, spending the requisite 20 minutes traversing strip-mall-land before 161 stretches out into less developed territory. Passing by my previous photo-op site with that fabulous view of Mount Rainier, I was slightly dissappointed but completely unsurprised to find a view of clouds and damp fields -- I pressed on without stopping. Around that time, it had started raining. Not a heavy rain, or even what a meterologist would call rain. Sort of this heavy mist that came down in droplets. I didn't even think about putting a cover on the tank bag, since I wasn't quite clear on whether the mist was falling or not. In Morton, I was nearing the 100 mile mark on the trip odometer, which is my sign on the Le Mans to look for a fuel stop. I dropped into a Shell station, and filled the tank. I was pleasantly surprised to see the bike had gotten 37 MPG. Good thing, that gas was expensive. Of course, at 37 MPG, I can go nearly 160 miles before the reserve light comes on, so I could have easily gone further and paid 10-20 cents less per gallon. C'est la vie. However, in Morton, I also noticed that the mist had turned into legitimate rain, rippling the puddles across the parking lot. I don't know if the temperature had dropped below the 40° mark, but my hands were freezing, and my torso wasn't doing a lot better. I wished I had an electric vest or gloves, but I already had almost all my warm clothes on. I definitely underpacked the warm stuff for this trip. I rested my gloved hands on the Le Mans' valve covers, which imparted a pleasant warmth, before I took off again. The rest of the trip to Scappoose (where I would meet up with my parents to see a property they're buying) was an exercise in ignoring how cold I was. Highway 12 and I-5 dissappeared into the fog of riding while too cold. I had stopped just before getting on I-5, to use the restroom and warm up a little bit. I ate a candy bar, which is frowned upon for endurance reasons, but helped a bit. I also called a friend while I was stopped, but she had to call me back, and didn't get back to me until I was in Longview aimed for the bridge to Highway 30. It's a good thing too, since I was having a hard time hearing her while going 50 -- it's hard to imagine I could have heard a thing she said at freeway speed. The conversation helped pass the time, though, and I was glad of the distraction from how cold I was. Note to self: cell phone and Autocom sounds like a fine idea, but the practical implementation isn't that great. I wish I could turn up my cellphone like I can the radio. After seeing the property ("looks great, I'm freezing,"), we caravanned back across Cornelius Pass Road, and I was amazed at the huge procession of cars coming the other direction. Between the rain and the half-mile-long line of oncoming headlights, I was having a hard time telling where the road was. It was an amazing relief when we got past them and I could actually see the road surface again. The Le Mans would benefit from the extra lights on the Ninja. The Road BackOn the trip back, I knew in advance how miserable it was going to be. The weather report said morning fog and afternoon sun, but by 11:50, when I left, the "morning fog" was still clinging tenaciously to the ground, like a 200 foot thick layer of icing. The first temperature sign I saw, on a bank in Scappoose, said 33°. I'm not sure it was quite that cold, but it was definitely not warm. The moisture from the fog was contributing a lot too, and I was freezing again. I decided to stop and try putting the toe warmers in my gloves like I'd imagined. These toe warmers (available at any sporting goods store that has hunting and fishing supplies, I suspect) are perfect for just covering the knuckles of my hand inside the glove. I was afraid at first that they'd be too hot, listing a maximum of 113° on the package. I needn't have feared. I never noticed them getting "hot" at all, but they were fairly warm. Early on, I noticed that one of the byproducts of the chemical reaction must be water, because the pads were getting damp. It's definitely not because I was sweating, my hands were still nearly numb from the cold. But, they did help, and I think the trip back was more bearable for having those heating pads in. I'm making this sound like the trips were miserable for the cold. While that's true on one level, they were also good adventures. Part of me was enjoying being out on the bike in weather that kept almost everyone else in a car (I only passed two other bikers going the other way for the whole trip back, and I don't think I saw any bikers on the way down). I always enjoy the freedom of riding along without a cage around me, far more aware of my world than I ever am riding in a car. I could have done without the thick fog on Highway 12, though. Photo-op over with, I got back on the road. I managed to find a huge gap in the traffic, which was very light in any case. I had the radio on, and was listening to someone calling out, discussing what was causing the heavy traffic on I-5. I smiled in my helmet, the road stretching completely carless in front of me. I was very glad, at that moment, that I'd taken the back route, even in spite of the frigid pea soup I'd had to brave to get there. I twisted the throttle a little bit, diving around a corner, happy to be exactly where I was. I passed again through Morton, finding myself now trailing behind a series of pickup trucks and SUVs. Fortunately for me, they wanted to get home faster than I did, so I found myself able to maintain a pace that kept me happy while leaving a nice space cushion in front of me. I also stopped near the crest of a hill, letting them all jet ahead of me, and spent a couple of minutes warming my hands on the valve covers again. My hands were lifeless on the ends of my arms, still obeying commands, but on the edge of useless. I was shivering all the way through, despite the long johns, sweater and fleece vest under the Aerostich. That combination is no match for sub-40° weather with high humidity, and I was feeling it. I mentally kicked myself again for neglecting to pack more layers. I stopped for gas in Eatonville, again paying a premium to avoid the spectre of fuel starvation far from a gas station (although again, my mileage was in the high 30s, so I could have gone much further than the 104 miles indicated on the trip odo). Fortunately, this time around, I am able to fast-forward from this point. The trip back through Graham, Puyallup and into Seattle was quick and flawless. I altered course near Seattle, going across 518 to 99 rather than up I-5 -- it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, no way I wanted to spend any time on a major highway if I could avoid it. As it is, I managed to do the entire drive back without hitting any traffic. That's a feat I'm mightily impressed with, given the date. The major lesson I took away from this trip is that I need some actively heated gear. To that end, I ordered a Kanetsu vest from Aerostich, which I hope will arrive in a few days. I don't really need it around town, but it'll still be nicer to have than not. And if I take another longish trip in the winter (effectively a given), I'll be really glad to have it. I'm not going to depend entirely on the electrons, though. My plan is to dress warmly enough that I'll survive without the vest, and only use it to supplement the good insulation. Certainly the bikes' electrical systems will be happier with that. I ordered the pulse-width-modulation thermostat as well, which will help keep the drain down. PWM current limiting has been a great boon to electric clothing makers, since it allows the clothing to operate at partial heat and partial draw, compared to the resistive type, which always draws the full amount of power, while just delivering less of it to the clothing. Overall, an excellent set of trips. I just would have preferred that they be a bit warmer... Posted at 23:39 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 16 Nov 2004
Well, the great carless experiment of aught-four is about to come I'll be remodelling my kitchen soon, and the thought of trying to do that without a large utility vehicle was pretty daunting. I've decided to get an old pickup truck to haul crap around for and from the remodel. I haven't yet decided if I'll keep it after the remodel or not. Living without a car has been surprisingly easy for me. I'm single now, so I have no need to carry other people 99% or more of the time. I only rarely have to carry more than a single bag of groceries, and probably 98% of my riding is done with just a tank bag. I have the wire basket on the back of the Ninja, and the sidecases on the Le Mans, for when I need to carry more than will fit in a tank bag. However, trying to deal with the old "cabinets" from the kitchen would be impossible without a truck of some kind, and my FlexCar experience has been mediocre. Trying to bring in building materials would be a hassle. Naturally, I could make do with rental trucks, and it would cost less in the long run. But it would also drive me crazy for all the running around that entails: bike to the store, purchase stuff, bike to the rental place, get truck, take truck back to store, pick up stuff, drop off stuff at home, take truck back to rental place, finally return home. Many extra steps, and even dealing with FlexCar, which is straightforward and fairly easy, was getting on my nerves. Later... Just returned home with the beast. It's huge. I'm going to have to figure out where the heck the corners of the thing are, I think I'm leaving 5 feet clear when I fear I'm about to sideswipe someone. Certainly an adventure. Posted at 22:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 08 Nov 2004 I just finished up with the sidecar class, and I wanted to record a few thoughts. I'd like to do a more formal report on it, but here are some first thoughts. The class is two days long, with 4 hours of classroom time in the morning on each day, and 4+ hours of range time in the afternoon. Our particular class had 3 functional loaner sidecar rigs, and one trike. Fortunately, the class was only 7 or 8 people, and two of them had brought their own rigs, so there was limited doubling-up going on. The three bikes on loan were a Ural (don't know which model, it was always just referred to as "the Ural"), a Suzuki GZ250 with a Sputnik sidecar, and a Honda Nighthawk 250, also with a Sputnik. The 250s are bikes that were converted from the regular training fleet, and they were not constructed with the care and attention of a "proper" sidecar rig. As a result, they were balanced a little bit strangely, the steering was heavy, and they reacted more extremely to some maneuvers than a "real" rig would. This was a novice class, so the classroom portions were very basic. Because it has to cover everyone, including people who've never ridden a motorcycle (or even driven a vehicle) before, the classroom portion was about 90% review for me. The new information was sidecar-specific, including information about how they're set up, balance considerations, and "how to ride" stuff, like technical explanations of the dynamics of riding. There was a written test at the end of the second classroom session, on which I missed exactly one question, which the instructors agreed was very ambiguously worded. I suspect that, had that one question been my passing or failing question, they would have passed me. The question read: When approaching a left hand turn, should you:
I chose the final answer, because it's technically correct. When approaching a turn, you shouldn't be turning the wheel yet. Looking at the lines in the road is never a good idea. You'd turn the wheel left if you were in or starting the turn, but not approaching. My friend Dave chose the same answer, so I'm not completely nuts. There was a general theme of discontent running through the classroom portions of the class. The instructors had just received the new curriculum a week earlier, and hadn't had any opportunity to proofread any of it, and it turned out later that the curriculum committee which had previous existed was disbanded. This latest lesson set was constructed by one person with little or no oversight. Apparently the person who wrote the new lesson material is not an active sidecar driver. The instructors were clearly quite upset about the whole thing, and took a certain delight in explaining how the book said this, but the correct information was that other thing. One of the instructors explained how the new curriculum had already driven off 8 (!) sidecar instructors, and they were threatening to go next. In any case, company politics aside, the classroom portion was moderately instructive. I would have been unhappy if the instructors had just stood up and read from the book like they were apparently supposed to. The mix of people in the class was interesting. I was there, with my 5 years of motorcycle experience. My friend Dave was there, with about 3-4 years. There was Monty (I've already forgotten most of the names), who had a Harley sidecar from the factory, which he'd ridden for a year and a half -- perhaps 15,000 miles. Next was a husband and wife (retired, perhaps 65ish), who'd been riding for many years. The husband estimated he's ridden about half a million miles between all his bikes and sidecars. His wife has never piloted a bike before, excepting one day of a MSF beginner course that she cut short when she realized she was having a terrible time. Next was a guy with MS, in his 60s, who bought a sidecar because he wanted to on a whim (as far as I can tell). Finally, there was a guy I want to call Steve, and his wife (who was only there to be a passenger for day 1). Steve has been riding motorcycles for 25 years, but never drove a sidecar. He's got an old BMW sidecar rig in his basement, waiting to be restored. Steve was in his late 30s or early 40s, and has a 6 year old child that's the reason he was suddenly interested in sidecars. The range time, up next, was what I was really there for. I initially gravitated toward the Ural, as being representative of a sidecar rig I might actually drive in the real world. By the end of the class, I held the belief that each of the loaner rigs was good for different reasons: the Ural was big and stable, and had relatively lightweight steering; the Nighthawk had the lightest steering of all the bikes, and was easiest to get the car flying; the Suzuki was the best bike for braking, and some of the maneuvering stuff. They each had their strengths, and I ended up riding each of them happily. The first day on the range, we were riding with ballast (ie, a passenger, one of our fellow classmates) in the car, to make the handling easier and more stable. We started out with basic stuff, such as how to mount the rig, how to use the clutch, how to use the brakes, how to start the bike, etc. Very similar to a beginner motorcycle class. The first obvious difference was when we talked about riding on a curve, or braking (I can't remember which came first). Riding a sidecar rig anything other than straight is very interesting. Because the vehicle is asymmetrical (bike on the left, car on the right, car's single wheel forward of the bike's rear wheel), it behaves completely differently in right- and left-hand turns. In a right-hand turn, the weight of the vehicle shifts to the left, lightening the sidecar, and making it possible to lift it off the ground. One can keep ballast in the car, or shift one's own weight to the right to counteract this tendency. In a left-hand turn, the car gets heavier, and it's generally easier to make a "hard" turn. It's still possible to lift the bike's rear wheel in a hard left turn, but it's much less likely than lifting the car in a right-hand turn. Actually, even getting the car to go straight is challenging at first. On most hacks, the bike's rear wheel is the only powered wheel. Since it's offset left of the vehicle's center of mass, applying throttle tends to yaw the rig right. Braking with the bike's brakes tends to pull you left. You have to turn the handlebars to counteract this tendency, or you end up in a curving path. Braking is certainly interesting, too. Braking in a straight line is easy enough, once you figure out that you have to counteract the tendency of the car to pull ahead of the bike and turn you left. Braking on a curve is a completely different thing, again. Turning left while braking is easy, since the car pulls you that way. Turning right is more work, although not too much more. Having a brake on the sidecar's wheel helps a lot. (Only the Ural had a sidecar brake, and it wasn't adjusted very well, so we didn't really have much opportunity to use it.) If I got a sidecar rig, I would definitely make sure the car had a brake on its wheel. The lessons on the range progressed from the basic "start, stop, turn" into more interesting stuff pretty quickly. By the time the first day was over, we were riding a figure-8 around two circles of cones, shifting up to 2nd gear and back down, using the brakes, leaning into the curve, etc. On the second day (today), we did the whole day with no ballast. This means that the car is much easier to fly (ie, lift off the ground) in right-hand corners. I flew the chair before the first exercise of the day was over. It wasn't intentional, but it was kind of fun, in a scary, out-of-control-feeling way (I wasn't actually out of control, but it felt like I was). As the day progressed, I got more comfortable with the idea of lifting the car up off the ground, and by the time we got to the final lessons (all about flying the chair), I was doing well, easily maintaining the balance of the contraption. The exercises on day 2 were more involved, usually covering all of accelerating, braking, cornering, shifting, leaning your body, etc. This was the day that some bikes began to really shine for certain things. The Ural was light-steering, and fairly stable, but had an atrocious heel-toe shifter that I found difficult to use. The Nighthawk had great steering feel, but would fly the car far too easily, and had atrocious brakes. The Suzuki had ridiculously heavy steering, but didn't pick the chair up so easily, and had excellent brakes. I ended up riding the final test on the Suzuki. I could have done it nearly as well on the Ural, except for the shifter. I wouldn't have done as well on the Nighthawk, simply for the nasty brakes (and I probably would have had the car up in the air more). I followed my ever-clearer pattern of nearly, but not quite, acing the tests. From people's attitudes in the class, I was clearly the favorite for "most likely to do it right". Fortunately, everyone in the class was nice, and it wasn't a big deal. I really hate being that person, from a social standpoint, but I'm not willing to do something poorly if I have any choice in the matter. Riding motorcycles and sidecars seems to come fairly naturally to me. I'm going to try, like I said, to write up a more-formal report on my class experience, but this will have to do for now. In case I didn't already say it, I had a really good time, and really enjoyed riding the rigs. They're a hell of a lot of work, between the heavy steering and the sliding around on the seat to keep things balanced. But I can easily see how it could be very rewarding to ride a sidecar. Am I going to rush out and buy a sidecar rig now? Probably not. Will I own a sidecar rig some time in the next five years? It seems likely. We'll have to see what develops. Posted at 19:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 02 Nov 2004
Man, but I've been busy lately. Nothing exciting in the motorcycle I have been able to get the Le Mans out a few times, and it's started having starter trouble. I don't know what exactly is going on, but it seems to be that the solenoid is no longer catching reliably. It could have been chipped or missing teeth on the flywheel, but pulling off the starter revealed that everything was in acceptable shape. I greased up all the connections to the starter, so hopefully that will address the problem (I'd hate to think the starter was crapping out after only 8400 miles). "We'll see." Posted at 15:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 17 Oct 2004
I had a truly disturbing experience last night. I was riding home All of a sudden, I saw a car about 500 yards ahead of me swerve violently, as if aggressively passing another car. As I watched, I realized that the driver wasn't passing anyone, and I had no idea why he swerved. But as the event unfolded, he quickly lost traction on the rain-slick pavement, and started spinning clockwise. As he passed 270 degrees, the front of his car slammed into the retaining wall in a shower of subdued sparks, glass, and body paneling. It looked like a movie, except I was rolling toward it on a very small and underpowered motorcycle. I had started slowing as soon as I saw the swerve, so I was very well positioned, as far as being safe from the spinning car. When the car finally came to rest, it was facing back toward oncoming traffic, marker lights on and headlights off. Its bumper was hundreds of feet in front of it, towards oncoming traffic. Suddenly it started moving, as the driver tried to get out of the path of the approaching cars. I was nearly stopped, unable to decide whether I should stop and see if they needed help, or get home before I was plowed down by another drunk. My choice was made for me, when I felt and then saw a car pass within a foot and a half of me, passing on the inside. It was probably going 30 MPH, and I was nearly stopped. I think I said, inside my helmet, "shit, I'm gonna die here!" I gunned the motor and accelerated back up to freeway speed, paranoid as hell that all the cars around me were driven by similarly intoxicated idiots. Fortunately, the rest of the ride home was uneventful, if wet. I had to stop and get gas, as I'd switched to reserve on the ride out, and found myself shaking a little bit at the gas station, between my delayed adrenaline reaction (watching the car spinning had been bizarrely clinical, as if I was watching a video game and considering whether the physics engine was working correctly) and my tiredness. I noted with a very mundane feeling that the Ninja had only returned 46 MPG for this tank, and rode the remaining half mile home. In unrelated news...I decided to take today to wash and waterproof my riding suit, since it's been really wet out in the last few days. It's no fun arriving somewhere with the suit soaked through, so it takes many hours to dry out. Ideally, it should be waterproof enough that a quick shake and 30 minutes on a hanger will dry it out. Unfortunately, as time goes on, it is less and less like that, and the waterproofing I was doing was less and less effective. Based on comments I've read, I'm trying a new method. Now, instead of washing with regular detergent, rinsing well, then waterproofing with ScotchGard spray, I'm washing with Nikwax TechWash, rinsing well, then doing a wash with Nikwax Wash-in waterproofing, then spraying on ScotchGard. We'll see how it works in practice. Unfortunately, the Nikwax products universally seem to smell like Elmer's glue. That's kind of disturbing. I really don't want my suit to smell like glue, although it came out of the washer smelling of the soap I'd used. So, hopefully not a problem. It's still weird to pour what smells and feels like diluted wood glue into the washing machine with the suit. I also decided to try RainX on a spare helmet faceshield. Surprisingly, it provided almost no benefit over untreated shield, since I left half coated and half uncoated. Heavy drenching with a spray bottle resulted in the coated side being slightly clearer, so there was a very small difference. Not enough that I'm going to bother with the extra maintenance, though. From the glowing reports I'd read, I figured it would make at least a meaningful difference. Posted at 16:22 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 15 Oct 2004
As posted on the Ninja 250 board. A melancholy snapshot of the motorcycle's existenceI was riding in to work today, along the 30 MPH stretch of road that leads from my driveway to the major road I commute along. I passed a child of perhaps 12 waiting with her mother for the school bus. Half a mile futher on, I passed a much smaller child waiting with her father. The memory has slowed to extreme slow-motion for me now: Something looked odd as I approached (riding at a steady 31 MPH and about 6k RPM in 3rd gear). I realized that the little girl looked miserable. She had plastered her hand over one ear, and was pressing the other ear into her dad's leg. I realized as I rode past that she was reacting to the sight of my motorcycle. Dad had an indeterminate look on his face, like he hadn't made any decisions if he liked motorcycles and wanted to ride one, or disliked them, or felt completely neutral on the matter. His little girl had a look of resigned dread on her face. I've never seen these two before, so I have no idea what the background is. But I can easily imagine: there is a group of Harley riders down the street from me, who have not-quite-straight pipes, and don't have any qualms advertising the fact to neighbors. I can't count the number of times I've heard sportbikes with loud race exhausts around the neighborhood. This poor girl saw a motorcycle, and assumed that when it passed, the sound would hurt her ears. I have a faint hope in my heart that after I'd passed, her dad leaned down and said, "see, that wasn't so loud, motorcycles aren't all bad." I don't believe that happened, but it's a nice dream. This brief shapshot into someone else's life left me feeling introspective and melancholy for the rest of the ride in. I hope we haven't made another enemy through a minority of loud, bad examples. Posted at 09:39 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 12 Oct 2004
I've finally got a little bit of free time, and don't have to park So I was able to ride the Le Mans on Saturday, and to work yesterday. Much better. There's something very satisfying about cranking on the throttle and having the bike leap forward, rather than gradually meander forward. The Ninja certainly serves its purpose, and does so exceedingly well, but there are times when I want a bit more life out of my motorcycle. Still, for all that, I'm back on the Ninja today (Tuesday) for the gas mileage and easy handling. It's all about variety. Posted at 11:14 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 06 Oct 2004
Lately, I've been riding a lot of short, mean freeway trips. I'm Imagine my surprise when my last fillup returned just 45 MPG, nearly the worst mileage I've ever gotten with the bike. The best I can figure is that the short freeway trips, all at 70+ MPH, are nearly as bad as stop-n-go in terms of gas mileage. That, or my driving has gotten more aggressive as I get more and more worn out by the 8 hours at work, followed by 5+ hours at rehearsal. Either way, after I filled up a day or two ago, I resolved to be a bit more gentle on the throttle. If my gas mileage has fallen that far, it's probably also wearing on the rest of the bike pretty badly. I never figured I'd be using my gas mileage calculations as a way of judging how stressed I was. Posted at 15:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 29 Sep 2004
I took a longer-than-normal lunch today, to avoid destroying my I've been considering getting a sidecar rig for a while, and one of the bikes recommended to me as a good tug was a Honda Goldwing. Another good choice is apparently any Tonti-framed Moto Guzzi. I figured I might find an old Goldwing at Cycle Barn, so I could see what it felt like to sit on one. After wandering through the new displays, I meandered over to the used bikes, thinking calming thoughts. I made my way slowly along the bikes, converting their "infotags" to real prices in my head (subtract two from each digit -- 3111 becomes 1999, 6041 becomes 4829, etc.) on any bike that caught my eye. They had a KLR650 for $5k, and someone was making an offer on a Kawasaki-green Ninja 250 as I walked by. I recommended that he look up the Ninja 250 board, and silently cursed myself for not having any of the business cards to hand to him. Then, off in the corner, I spotted an old Honda with a big fairing -- sure enough, it was an '82 Goldwing. Nearly the exact bike that was my "target" (the '83 had been recommended to me). I plopped myself down on the seat, and was immediately unhappy with it. The seat was too low. The bars were about 5" too high. The pegs were too far forward, and too close to the seat. Ugh. And that's only the impressions of the seating position -- the fairing was distractingly large, the bags seemed kind of ridiculous, etc. The first impression was not good. I'm sure, for all that, it's a great sidecar bike. But it would definite take some getting used to. Curiosity satisfied, I moved on, and decided to stop at Moto International to see how much trouble it would be to turn a California or an EV into a more "standard" motorcycle. Aaron told me it's actually fairly easy. It may be that I should consider the California being sold by Dauntless Motors after I take my class. I found out that the sidecar class I'm taking is actually being taught by the owners of Dauntless Motors, so I'll be in a good position to ask them questions. I'm sure I'd be happier with a newer bike when it comes to any potential sidecar tug, if only for brakes. MI also had a 99 RS50 for sale, which had just over 1000 miles on the odometer, and some rash on the right side of the fairing. The asking price was $2700, which is fairly steep for an older crashed bike like that. (And honestly, that's around what they should cost brand new, although they cost $3600 new.) If it's still there next time I have some free time, I'll go back and test-ride it, since I'm still kind of curious about them. Posted at 14:13 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 24 Sep 2004
I noticed last night that the bike computer on the Ninja read It was interesting to ponder that I had actually sat on that bike for more than 200 hours at that point. Certainly there were the hours spent getting from 9100 miles to 10,500. Then also the extra 10% (20 hours? yeesh!) spent sitting still at stoplights or what have you. Coincidentally, that represents just a bit over a year of riding. I installed the computer in late August or early September (I can't find a record of when exactly I did the installation). I'm impressed, I didn't think I was spending that much time on motorcycles. Although I guess since a year is 8760 hours, that's only 2.3% of the year. Still, that's a fair chunk for someone who doesn't have a long commute, or use the bike as part of the work day. This is the first time I've had statistics like this, on hours of use versus miles of use. Interesting data to know. Posted at 14:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 17 Sep 2004
Oh my god but that's annoying. I just pulled the wheel off So, I pulled the brad out of the tire. It's less than a centimeter long. It's about 1mm thick. It could be half of a long staple. Argh! $120 worth of tire felled by a 1/4 cent brad. And I can't fix it (literally in the center of the tread, in the center groove for fuck's sake). Well, let me restate that. I can fix it, but I'll have to mount it myself. If I'm going to go there, then I'm looking at $100+ in tools and supplies, assuming I build most of the tools myself. It's a sorely tempting idea, because then I wouldn't have to depend on dealerships any more for tire changes. That means no more $20-50 per tire to mount and balance, and I could buy the tire wherever it was cheapest instead of looking for the best deal on purchase and mounting. Most importantly to my new car-free lifestyle, no more having to either pay the shop to take the wheel off, or figure out how to get the ungainly wheel down there. (Aurora Suzuki, where I'm having this done, actually has a fine deal: $99 for the tire, and $20 to mount. But it'd be $65 to mount if I just brought in the bike. So I'm using a FlexCar, and dismounting the wheel from the bike myself, 'cause it's much cheaper.) I guess this journal entry is mostly impotent ranting. But I do think I'm going to look into making some tire-changing equipment. Posted at 22:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 15 Sep 2004
I discovered today that sneezing while the Autocom is connected is In other news, I broke down and ordered a new rear tire for the Ninja this last weekend. I discovered a small brad embedded deep into the tire a little while ago, but the tire was holding air, so I left it in place until I could either repair or replace the tire. I looked into repairing the tire, but there's no one locally who is willing to do it (presumably for liability reasons). The hole is literally in the center groove of the tire, and Internet Wisdom suggests that this is one of the safest places to repair, so I may investigate getting my own tire repair/changing/replacing setup built and/or bought. Since I discovered that the Mille GT was sold last week, I've gotten off the sidecar-bike kick. It's still an interest, but I'm going to wait until after I've taken the class to see if I really want to pursue it. I have my reservations, since I know that driving a rig is really different from riding a motorcycle. On the other hand, Aaron, the parts manager at Moto International, rides his sidecar into work every day and seems really happy with it. Posted at 08:54 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 09 Sep 2004
The Mille I saw for sale is sold. Oh well. I'm not that But, I did sign up for the sidecar course in November. Should be an interesting experience. Posted at 10:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle
I've been thinking lately that a sidecar rig would be a fun thing I located someone selling a Moto Guzzi Mille GT, which is a Tonti-framed 1000cc bike. I talked to Jay at Dauntless Motors, local purveyors of all things sidecar. He said it would be a good choice, better than a BMW, which kind of surprised me. I had always heard that BMWs were da bomb (so to speak) for hauling a sidecar around. Apparently Guzzis are better. I think I'm going to call up the guy selling the Mille, and see if it's still available. I figure I can buy it (if it's in good shape), and ride it as itself. Take the sidecar class when I have time (unfortunately I have very little free time right now), and if I hate driving a hack, sell the Mille. At the price the guy is asking, I probably won't lose much in that situation, and I'll be well-set if and when I decide to set it up with a sidecar rig. Jay at Dauntless has further said that given his choice, he'd pick a 1983 GL1100 Goldwing as his preferred sidecar bike in the cheap category, or a new GL1800 in the pricey category. Dunno how I feel about those, that's one I'll have to sleep on. Posted at 08:35 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 22 Aug 2004
Today was Maintenance Day. It was all about the Ninja, too. First The last time I adjusted the valves on this bike, I nearly punched my fist through several nearby objects, I found the process so frustrating. It was just one fight after another to get tools to the valves, and I even wrote in the service log that I would probably get a mechanic to do it next time. I just didn't want the agony again. I decided that this weekend I'd give it another shot. This time, I'd be careful to remove all the bits the manual said to remove (something I had not done last time). I would follow all the instructions. It had to be easier, or I can't imagine how anyone, professional mechanic or not, could afford the mental trauma of maintaining this very popular bike. So, I pulled bits off. The fairing. The gas tank. The radiator. The ignition coils. Anything that looked like it would be in the way and was easily removable came off. I soon had an orderly pile of fasteners and parts stacked around me. It was about time for the Nasty Surprise. In removing the valve cover, I noticed that some of the bolts holding it on weren't even finger tight -- I could spin them freely, with no resistance. I noticed some oil weeping down from the valve cover gasket, but didn't give it too much thought. A little oil doesn't really hurt anything. Wrong. Well, right, as far as it went. The oil itself didn't hurt anything. But what it helped was it provided an excellent adhestive for all variety of road grit and sand. I realized this, of course, after I have the cover off, and the engine's delicate internals all exposed. I felt like a MASH doctor doing surgery with bits of the building constantly threatening to fall into the patient. I very carefully wiped away all the big piles of grit, working them away from the open valve train. There was a lot. I exercised some language that I don't normally use. Eventually, I got as much of it as possible wiped away. There was still a little bit here and there, but it was in no danger of falling into the engine, at least. I don't think I got any inside the engine, and it didn't make any scary noises once I eventually restarted it. Grit obstacle successfully overcome, I got to work on the valves. Having all that extraneous stuff out of the way made it a lot easier. Much easier. Huh. Goes to show what "saving time" is really worth. I had the valves adjusted much more quickly this time around, having taken the measured and methodical method rather than the, "I think this'll work!" method. Valves conquered, I moved on to the spark plugs, for which I had been unable to secure replacements on short notice. They were too white, and the gap was a tad too big (although not by much -- perhaps .1mm). I cleaned them up with a wire brush, and applied some fine sandpaper to the spark gap. A quick squirt of air from the compressor ensured there wasn't anything scary hiding inside them from the sandpaper. I hope to get replacement plugs some time this week, since they're due to be replaced, and cleaning the ones I have was really a stopgap measure. At this point, I was feeling pretty good. I bolted everything back together, and poured fresh coolant in. The engine ran fine, and after a few burps, I got all the bubbles out of the cooling system. It's amazing how much a radiator with air bubbles can sound like someone's rumbling stomach. I guess it's all just tubes and fluid, after all. I took a quick ride to a friend's house and back, and unbolted it all to adjust the carb synchronization. It wasn't very far off, but it wanted a little bit of tending. My final task for the day (after a suitable break) was to address the right rear turnsignal, which has been collecting water for some time now. I pulled it all apart, to discover that the whole thing was full of damp sand(!), and the bulb was rusted into the socket. I have no clue how sand and water is getting into that thing. It appears to be sealed up exactly like the left hand one. My best solution was to drill a couple of drain holes in it, so that at least any water entering will have a chance to escape, hopefully taking the sand with it. On the ride to get the bike warmed up, I noticed that it was running distinctly better. The valves had definitely been out of spec, so I'm sure that was most of the improvement. It wasn't a lot, but just a general impression that the engine was a bit smoother, and had a little bit more power from about 7k RPM and up. We'll see tomorrow how much better it is with the carbs balanced properly. Posted at 22:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 18 Aug 2004
Unfortunately, I don't think the technology is quite there yet. At least, not in the consumer arena. The scooter I rode was just acceptable on flat ground, but it gave up a fair amount as soon as the slope increased beyond a few degrees. The top speed was limited to about 30 MPH, probably within the controller -- although I don't think the hardware has a lot left past 30 MPH. I took a route from Fremont (on 35th), up 3rd, up the hill to Fremont Ave, down Fremont to 35th, and back to the store. Writing it like that, it looks so simple. Alas, it was about 2 miles of agonizing shoulder-hugging and controller resetting. I got on 3rd well enough, and although the scooter was able to hit the speed limit (30 MPH) just barely going up the slight incline, going the speed limit does not cut it. Normal traffic runs at 35-45 MPH, and 30 MPH feels shockingly slow. I stayed close to the shoulder, and eventually people figured out that they should just pass me. When I got to where I was going to turn (up a much steeper hill, on a very busy street), I thought better of it, and turned up a residential street. It was still steep, but I figured I could make it. Unfortunately, the scooter had diffferent ideas. It beeped (its signal that battery power was running down), and eventually shut down, refusing to pull me any further up the hill. Fortunately, the guy who owned the shop had warned me of this, and I did the recommended procedure of turning off the key to allow it to reset. It worked, and I was once again slowly crawling up the hill. To be fair, it was a steep hill. But a 50cc scooter would have buckled down and done it, although it would have been running at about 10 MPH. Overall, i wasn't that impressed. It worked, but just barely. I'm probably too big for it, although the specs claim it'll carry another 50 kg (110 lbs) on top of my weight. It certainly wasn't enough to be safe in traffic. If I lived in a place where it was flat everywhere, and i was riding in honest 30 MPH zones, it would be alright. But between the always-exceeded speeds limits and the hills of Seattle, this scooter is definitely not for me. I am definitely looking forward to the time when 250cc-equivalent electric motorcycles are available. Posted at 18:58 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 16 Aug 2004
Riding with the new handlebars and the Autocom setup installed has This leaned-forward position, along with the wide handlebars, feels pretty odd. The overall effect is that the Le Mans feels like a different bike. Not bad, but interesting. The short cord also makes doing head checks in the blindspot hard to do. Fortunately, I spent some time tonight rebuilding the headset cable, and grafting a 3' section of coiled cable to it. The resulting cable is about 4' long compressed, and 5-6' when extended -- more than long enough. This will make the bike much more comfortable to ride. I'm looking forward to riding in tomorrow morning, so I can test out the handlebars in a more realistic situation. Posted at 23:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 14 Aug 2004I'm not quite literally dancing around for joy. But just barely. I have finally (99.9%) finished installing the radio/intercom on the Le Mans. It only took, what, 1.5 years? Ah well, it's done now. I started in on this project around Christmastime a year and a half ago. I bought an Autocom intercom, a Yaesu FT-90 amateur radio transceiver, an aluminum enclosure, and a crapload of accessory stuff (connectors, fasteners, wire, etc.). I hate to think what my total outlay was, but I know it ended up being somewhere over $1000. I guess $400 of that cost was the new helmet, which shouldn't really be counted. Still. A lot of cash to have sitting around idle. Of course, that 1.5 year figure doesn't come from me working with all my free time for 1.5 years. The aggregate time I've spent on the project is probably in the 20-30 hour range, if even that. It's just been spread out and interspersed with long periods of inactivity and procrastination. ;) Anyway, the final system is pretty cool. The Autocom has connectors at the dash for headset, line-in (stereo) and aux-in (cell phone or similar, mono). The radio box, which houses the intercom and radio body, has 6 different connectors on it to talk to the outside world (RF out, hand mic in, "multi", driver headset, power, and passenger headset). The "multi" connector carries radio faceplate, line in, aux in, and PTT (push to talk) switch. The radio's faceplate is mounted in a "splashproof" box custom made out of ABS and acrylic plastic, up near the dash. The original idea was that I wanted to be able to use a radio on the bike, but hooking an Autocom up to a handheld radio seemed so cheezy. I wanted something that was "permanently" installed, in that I could leave it on the bike, and be reasonably certain it wouldn't get stolen as being an easy target. The idea is hardly revolutionary, and every Goldwing comes with a similar system built-in. Still, I'm very happy to have finally gotten my ideas out of my head and installed on the bike. I think I'll order a pizza to celebrate. (Party animal, watch out!) Posted at 18:59 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 12 Aug 2004I've seen more and more people running red lights around the Seattle area in the last few years, but this one just takes the fucking cake. I was riding on my normal commute into work: ride down Aurora Ave N (a large arterial that goes from 35 MPH traffic light land to 40 MPH freeway-style, with no controlled intersections for many miles), turn off at N 39th St., and head down to Fremont into work. I turned off Aurora at 39th, and got to the intersection of 39th and Fremont Ave N. Fremont Ave is an arterial, but just one lane in each direction. 39th is a small residential street on the side I was on, and an arterial on the other side. The arterial version of 39th bends off at a 45° angle at this intersection, so there are 5 streets converging instead of the normal four. The 39th-to-45° road has their own stoplight, and then my 39th has its own, separate stoplight where we're the only cars moving. We get both a straight-ahead light and a turn-left light. So, I'm stopped, waiting for my light to turn green. I see arterial 39th's light change to yellow and red, and get ready to go, since we're next. My light turns green, and I check to see that the other direction has all stopped (as I do habitually at this point). No one's moving, so I pull out, turning left down Fremont. As I get about 5 feet into the intersection, I see someone pulling out of arterial 39th (which has a big NO TURN ON RED sign), so I honk my horn. The person driving looks up at me with a sort of aggrieved look on her face, and slows down, then speeds up again, then pulls all the way across the intersection. All this time, I've got the horn on, which was half reasoned reaction and half forgetting to stop in the face of this person's driving. I was in no extra danger (unless the person behind me didn't see any of this and rear-ended me), but this performance was just astounding. First of all, how do you stop at a red light, and I mean come to a full stop, and then pull out, apparently intending to not only defy the light (and the NO TURN ON RED sign) and cross across the intersection, but in the face of oncoming, honking traffic? If there were no one coming, sure. It's illegal, but at least it won't involve getting someone's car or motorcycle smashed up. If the car had had out-of-state license plates, I could have cut her a little slack. But no, it had Washington plates, and the driver just appeared slightly confused after I started honking. I am completely astounded that people like this continue to be allowed to drive. Surely, someone with such a visual deficiency or hurry-hurry complex should have encountered one of Seattle's thin blue line by now. Just. Wow. You'll never read this, I'm sure, lady. But, what the fuck!? Posted at 09:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 03 Aug 2004
Man, am I tired. I rode out to Scappoose, OR and back But, I was able to stop into the Wesco factory and get myself fitted for a custom pair of boots. It's a $30 charge for the custom fitting, and I don't really feel like it was a bad deal. The fitting itself took about 20 minutes, and the guy who was helping me brought out factory second boots he had to ensure that the sizes he recorded were right. The strangest part about the fitting was discovering that my left foot is a 10.5 US (as I expected), but that my right foot was a 9. Granted, that's only 3/8" of difference, but it was surprsing to me. I always knew my left foot was a little bit bigger, but I never figured it was by that much! The ride itself was pretty cool. I'm going to write up a formal ride report in the next few days, so I'll contain myself to some brief comments here. For one thing, Highway 7, once you're south of Spanaway and out from under the thumb of strip-mall "civilization" is a cool, cool road. Particularly where it meets up with 161, there are some incredible twisties, with perfect pavement, no gravel, and only light traffic on a Monday. I wasn't pushing very hard, because it's a public road, and I felt no need to discover the logging truck crossing the centerline around the next corner. I still had a great time riding through there. That section of road basically made the trip, riding-wise. I also got some good pictures -- one of the reasons it took me so long. I caught Mount Rainier at sunset, a lake near sunset that looks like it was transplanted from New Zealand, and some goofy shots of my bike. I think my chosen route was way better than droning down I-5 again, particularly from a scenery standpoint. Amazingly, I hit heavy, stop-and-crawl traffic in Scappoose, and outside of Puyallup, of all places. Not in Seattle, or going through Tacoma or something, where you'd expect it. Out in the middle of nowhere, where you'd never expect much traffic, but thanks to road construction you spend at least 45 minutes each time traversing about a mile and a half. Lame. The second backup, near Puyallup, was particularly galling, because I saw the traffic start just after I'd passed an exit where I could have turned around and taken a different road. naturally, there were no exits in the traffic jam. I gave somewhat-serious consideration to trying my luck with the 70-foot-wide median, but eventually decided I could live with it. I actually got off the bike and pushed it for a while, since we were moving literally at a walking pace, and I was sick of shifting in and out of first. Got me off my butt, too, which by that time (10:20 at night) was ready for a break. Overall, it was a very cool trip. I probably would have been more comfortable on the Le Mans, but there's also a certain amount of bike-geek cred to be had in having made 442 miles on the Ninja. If Leon (of the Ninja 250 board) can enter and finish the Iron Butt on a Ninja 250, much less place 11th, then I can take 442 miles in a day. There are only pictures there as of this moment, but the ride report will eventually be posted here. Until then, there are some cool pictures -- enjoy! Posted at 11:59 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 01 Aug 2004
I think I've finally found a boot that'll fit. Apparently, my feet So, I went out to a local store to try on a pair of these wonderful boots. Aside from the remarkably poor service in the store (owing mostly to language incompatibilities, I think), the boots were quite cool. Just what I'd been hoping for. Unfortunately, the sizes they had in stock had no hope of fitting me. Their advice (I think) was to call Wesco directly, and so I did. Whoever answered the phone at Wesco suggested that the very best way to do this was for me to come to the factory, and pay them $30 for a fitting. I suspect this involves them carefully tracing my feet onto a piece of paper, but what's compelling about it is that for that $30, they guarantee the fit of the resulting boot. After a month or so of searching, I've found no boots that actually fit me. Honestly, the idea of paying $30 for a guaranteed fit sounds pretty damn good. So, I'm going to make the trek down to their factory, which is in Scappoose, Oregon. It's about 30 miles northwest of Portland, OR. Since I'm in Seattle, and I know that the trip to Portland is only about 3 hours by superslab, that's not too far. Since I'm crazy, I'm going to go there and back in one day, by mostly back roads, with only about 20 miles of I-5. On the Ninja 250. I'd rather take the Le Mans, because this is exactly why I got it. But it's down for the moment, getting new handlebars. See previous entries in this journal for the reasoning on that. So the Le Mans is out of action until I can resolve the bar issue. I actually have all the pieces, but I got up this morning and tried to fit it all together. It looked great, holding the bar up to the bike at the store, but the Daytona bar just doesn't fit. No matter what I do, it's going to hit the fairing, and will result in the levers being rotated up too much for my comfort. Since comfort is the whole name of the game here, that's obviously not a great choice. I have another bar in mind, but I don't think any of the local stores have it in stock. Of course. So, the Le Mans has to sit for the time being. Should be an exciting trip on the Ninja 250. I know it's up for the trip, I just don't know if I am. The Ninja 250 is not exactly what I'd call a touring bike, so we'll see if I'm a wreck or not by the time I'm done. The GPS claims that this will be about a 180 mile trip each way by the time I've taken all my twists and turns. So, about two tanks of gas (a refreshing change from the Le Mans, at least). I'll see if I can snap a few pictures on my rest stops, and post a ride report later. Posted at 13:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 28 Jul 2004
I started taking apart the Le Mans' steering system this last I've now got the triple tree off and drilled for the bar clamps (not quite perfectly, of course, since my drill press and cross-slide vice aren't quite big enough to handle such a large piece). The clamps are temporarily installed, and the bar temporarily clamped, just to see how it all looked -- pretty good! At this point, I have to find some nylon washers (or similar) to go underneath the clamps, since they bear on a milled-out depression in the triple clamp kind of strangely. Should be a matter of 10 minutes and 57 cents at the hardware store. Then, I can mount it all up, and start putting things back together. It looks like I'll have plenty of bar real estate for things like GPS mounts and Autocom switches. A most pleasant change from the TBR setup, which was tight with just the stock pieces on the bars. Here's to progress! Posted at 00:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 21 Jul 2004
I stopped off at Ducati Seattle today, and looked at a Derbi GPR50. My overall take on it is, "interesting." The engine was slightly more powerful than I was expecting. I believe it's a stronger engine than that in the Aprilia RS50, although it's been several years since I rode an RS50. The fairing and body pieces were matte finished, and appeared to be dyed rather than painted. I was dissappointed with the overall fit and finish of the bike. For a list price of $3500 or so, I was expecting it would be at least as good as the Ninja 250 (which only lists for $3000). To some extent, that's an unfair comparison, since Kawasaki has had 15 years to get the Ninja right. However, I recall the RS50 being quite nicely finished, whereas the Derbi seemed kind of cheezy, and they have comparable list prices. The ride was only about 2 miles, twice around Ducati Seattle. It was all city streets, but I was able to get the bike up to about 40 MPH without trouble. Certainly it didn't rocket up to that speed, but it wasn't as slow as I was anticipating. The particular bike I rode was a 2003 model, and so was discounted, to about $3200. Even at the discounted price, though, I don't really find myself tempted by the bike any more. I fear it would be a curiosity that I would ride for a few weeks, then leave parked. Since I can't take it on the freeway (either practically or legally), it limits its own usefulness as a "commute to work" bike. I had thought about getting something like this for a track bike and participating in a track day, or even entering 50cc competition. While that's still an interesting idea, I need Yet Another Time Consuming Hobby (or YATCH, if you're following along at home) like I need holes in my head. So, I think the idea of a 50cc sportbike is kind of on the back burner for the time being. Jesse did mention that there was a KLR650 in the paper for $3000, though.... Posted at 18:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 11 Jul 2004
I finally finished the Ninja seat yesterday, woo! I didn't My staple gun was loaned to a friend, and of course I couldn't get a hold of her to get it back on the relatively short notice. I called up Jesse, my riding friend, and it turned out he had a staple gun I could borrow. I rode down there quickly and borrowed it. Stretching the vinyl over the seat was a much greater amount of work that I had been expecting. It wasn't very hard to do, skill-wise, but it took a few tries and a lot of patience. It's not perfect now, but it's not bad. I found myself thinking after I was done that I wanted to do it again -- the seating position is too far back, and try #2 should go noticably faster and with fewer reiterations. One of the problems I ran into was multiple layers of foam and glue interfaces, so that I was grinding through a "sticky layer" more times than I wanted. With just one layer of foam, it would be easier to come up with a smooth shape. I have a bunch of pictures I will be putting up soon, along with a more formal description of the project. It'll be on the Ninja page, so check back every once and a while. Posted at 12:44 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 08 Jul 2004
We went flying on the evening of the 4th of July. That was pretty The day had started out with a disturbing overcast layer, and I figured we might not be able to go up (I'm not willing to fly at night if there's a reasonable probability of hitting clouds, since they're so hard to see at night). However, by the afternoon, the clouds had cleared, and the sky was quite blue. I called and got weather and TFRs for the fireworks. Weather was basically nonexistent, with light winds and no clouds. There were three TFRs, one for 2 nm around Lake Union, up to 1500 feet, and two others that wouldn't be a factor for us, in Tacoma and Bremerton (I think). Interestingly, those TFRs were larger, and extended up to 5000 feet. I'm not sure what the purpose of the higher altitude was. In any case, we were at the airport by 8:15, to give me time to carefully preflight the plane, and fill the fuel tanks if necessary. Fortunately, the plane was in fine shape, except for a busted vacuum pump (I presume) and an inoperative attitude indicator. Since I was flying VFR, the attitude indicator wasn't legally necessary, and I didn't feel uncomfortable flying without it. I finished preflight, and we taxied over to the fuel pumps to fill up the tanks a bit. Tanks filled as much as the max weight would allow (still giving us plenty of fuel), we taxied over to the big runway and did the runup. Nothing showing in the runup (except the complete lack of vacuum), we taxied into position and launched. As soon as we were in the air, we started seeing fireworks. It was only 9:20 when we actually got in the air, but already people were setting off brilliant fireworks. We had debated bringing a camera, but I decided against it, since it would be so dark -- any pictures we could take would be so blurry as to be useless. Now that we were in the air, I regretted that we didn't have something to record the amazing sights. We flew off to the south at about 2500 feet. That's enough altitude that I didn't feel like we were dangerously low, but it was still low enough that we could see the ground-based fireworks quite well. As we flew south from Paine Field (which is about 20 nm north of downtown Seattle), the number of amateur displays increased. It was amazing in a way -- there were so many fireworks going off as we passed Renton Field that it was like being in a champagne glass, as Sibyl put it. For as far as we could see, there was a field of sparkling displays, almost making for an effect like static on a TV. I had told Seattle Approach that we wanted to do the VFR transition over SeaTac, which is where a small plane is allowed to fly over the big airport at a low altitude, right in the middle of the field. Approach handed us off to the SeaTac tower, and we made the transition at 1500 feet -- just 1000 feet over the runways. It was fairly amazing to look down over the wheels and see tens of jets parked at the concourses underneath us. There was even a jet on final approach as we crossed over, so we got a taste of the power of those landing lights. Neat! Once we were past the airport, I got permission to climb a bit so as to avoid hitting Vashon Island. Soon, we were past Vashon, and I got back in contact with the approach controller, and turned north. About the time we were over Bainbridge Island, the big fireworks finally started up over in Elliott Bay. I turned the plane 180° and flew back south to keep our view of the display. Big spheres of glittering light exploded over the water, and soon we saw the bright flashes of the flash-bangs. Then it was a series of multi-colored spheres: green, blue, red, white, sparkling, red-into-purple. As someone had said before we went up, the fireworks weren't all that spectacular compared to sitting on the lawn underneath them, but something about being in the air and seeing fireworks in any direction we cared to look made it far cooler. Eventually, we had circled enough, and I started thinking about how much fuel was left in the tanks. I had throttled back to 2100 RPM early on, so we weren't moving too fast (and burning relatively little fuel), but I was uncomfortably aware of the small probability of survival if we ran out of fuel. We continued north on our last pass over Bainbridge. I had brought along my GPS to aid me in keeping track of exactly where I was, and I saw our house coming up as we headed north. I turned to Sibyl and said, "do you want to fly over our house?" "Sure," she replied, and I turned us toward North Seattle. As we flew east across the Sound, the Lake Union fireworks display really ramped up. It was much more impressive than the Elliott Bay display, with complex fireworks sprouting multiple-layer spheres, multicolored floating embers, sparkling trails, etc. I regretted that we couldn't stay up longer to watch the Lake Union display. Reluctantly, we turned north, back toward the airport. We were still treated to a variety of amateur displays and some smaller professional displays. The champagne glass feeling remained, as we gazed through the slowly growing haze of gunpowder smoke, and saw fireworks arcing toward the sky as far as we could see. We made the approach and landing with no trouble, and taxied back to Northway, ecstatic over the sights we had just seen. I recorded my time (1.6 on the Hobbes, of which only .3 or so was on the ground), and did a quick postflight tie-down and inspection. Nothing seemed amiss, so we piled back into the car and headed home. I can tell you one thing, I'm definitely doing that again next year. Maybe in my own plane, even. (muwahahahaha!) Posted at 11:14 permanent link category: /aviation Wed, 07 Jul 2004
I washed my Aerostich on Monday (July 5th, the "Independence Day - Of course, Tuesday dawned overcast and actively raining. I could ride to work wearing the Aerostich and get grit all over it before sealing it all in with the waterproofing layer, or I could work from home. I elected to work from home, taking 10 minute breaks to apply ScotchGard to the suit at appropriate intervals. The Aerostich suit is now very stinky with chemical smells. In working at home, I found myself getting grumpy over little stuff. The computer room was a mess. I didn't have anywhere to set down the laptop I was using. Typical stuff for my house, which seems to always be a mess. But it was really getting to me for some reason. I think part of the reason was that I didn't get any riding at all in yesterday. With the suit still drying after its ScotchGarding, and rain pouring down, there was no way to get on a bike and ride even if I'd wanted to. It was surprisingly frustrating. But in positive news, I've made some progress on the driving lights project. I fabbed up some brackets for the lights, when they eventually arrive. The brackets look pretty ridiculous right now, since I made them about 3x too long just to make sure I'd have enough material to do whatever needed to be done when I went to mount the lights. I have to call Mouser and see if they stock some parts that aren't in their catalog, then I can place an order for the switch and relays I'll be using. Posted at 12:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 02 Jul 2004
I just ordered a set of I was originally looking at PIAA lights, specifically the 2100XTs. However, I took a look at a set of those at CarToys, and they were surprisingly large, and the beam they threw didn't impress me enough that I wanted to pay $154-250 for a set. What originally got me off the PIAA scent was this article on PIAA vs. cheap "knock offs". I looked around a little bit, but didn't really find any knock off 2100s (and I still thought they were a bit large). In searching around on the net a little bit, the other brand that always came up was Hella. I am quite familiar with Hella from my VW days. I've always had a (perhaps irrational) soft spot in my heart for Hella, so it was easy to swap my brain over to thinking on the German side of the street. One of my "it'd be really nice" criteria was that I wanted to find a light that had the same external appearance for both fog and driving lights. It's not hard, all that really changes between the two is the shape of the reflector. However, most knock off brands don't offer a fog light and a driving light in the same housing shape. Probably they want to make it obvious which one you're buying. Anyway, the Hella FF50 and FF75 are both available as either a driving light or a fog light, so I narrowed my search a bit on those two. They're also both available for around $70 for a set, so they start off being less than half the price of the PIAA 2100s in a smaller package. Score one for Hella. With some searching, I found several people who had successfully and happily installed FF50s on both motorcycles and cars/trucks. No long-term longevity reports, but that's hardly unexpected. I decided that this was probably the right thing, so I started phoning around Seattle to find a local retailer who carried them. Surprisingly, no one in the area stocks Hella driving lights. At least, that's what they all said on the phone. I'm pretty sure I saw some Hella lights when I was poking around earlier this week, so I'm guessing some of the people I talked to just didn't know what they had in stock. Since I couldn't see any in person (which I would have preferred), I decided I would just go ahead and order them. I've been wanting to do this light thing for a while, and when I found the $40 set on Ebay, that just clinched it. So, my grand plan is to mount the lights on the Ninja by fabricating mounts out of ~3/16" sheet aluminum, which will be clamped under the mirror stalks, near the top of the fairing. It's not an ideal mounting location, in that the fog light will be too high up, but it does keep them out of the way, and they should be relatively protected in a crash. I haven't yet decided on the mounting location for the Le Mans, and it may end up being more problematic than the Ninja. The most obvious choice is to mount them where the mirrors originally were, but that won't work if they're very heavy or too large. It may also look entirely too goofy. I'm leaving the Le Mans as the second bike in this project. Posted at 14:03 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 28 Jun 2004
I went and got myself night-current in the Cherokee last night. It The air was fairly calm, with the temperature never wavering from 14° C (about 57° F) the whole time I was there. Thanks to the relatively cool and calm air (and having no passengers), the Cherokee leapt into the air with a fair amount of vigor. Turning in the pattern was really pretty, as I watched the lights on the ground reflected off the skin of the wing. I was the only person in the pattern, and right now at night the only runway open is the long one, since the other two runways don't have any lights. The tower closed at 9, and civil twilight wasn't until 9:52, so I was making position calls for the whole time I was up. I was in solid control of my altitude by the second time around, which was a nice feeling. It was particularly nice considering the amount of attention I was devoting to just seeing the runway and keeping myself on track in the pattern. The actual touchdowns, though, were a different story. I guess I was having a hard time judging my height above ground, and so I was flaring a little bit early. It was alright for most of the landings, but #3 was a tad bit more solid than I like. I flared a bit high, and had the stall light steadily lit until I hit the ground, which was a few feet lower than I thought it was. Oops! No damage to the plane or myself, but it was pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from a "greaser" without getting into breaking parts. I guess ultimately, I'm happy I was flaring a bit high rather than a bit low. That could be bad. But hey, I got in 0.8 hours of night flight with four full-stop landings. I'm pretty pleased with that. And now I can comfortably head out to view the fireworks on the 4th of July. Posted at 11:56 permanent link category: /aviation Sun, 27 Jun 2004A friend of mine rode up recently on his Vespa scooter, to a yard sale we were having. It was sunny out, but not especially hot unless you were in the sun. He was wearing a flip-face HJC helmet, a t-shirt, and jeans. I looked at him, and said, "you need to be wearing more clothes." He responded in such a way to indicate that he thought I was talking about normal clothes. "No," I said, "you need to be wearing better gear than that." He then averred, with a completely straight face and apparently all earnestness, "oh, I'm not going down." I looked him straight in the eye and said, "you're kidding, right? You have exactly no control over when or where you'll go down." He smiled, said, "yeah, I know, but I'm not going down." And he was completely serious. This intelligent, rational person who I consider to be a good friend, was completely denying the reality of riding a two-wheeled vehicle. I am constantly amazed at things like this. I just don't understand how anyone can be in such complete denial about this issue, although I see people like that every day. In a completely different, but slightly related issue, I keep thinking how much I want Aerostich to make a mesh Roadcrafter. I mean, it would be so cool (literally) to have a suit that was as protective as a Roadcrafter, but ventilated throughout. If they made that suit, I would figure out some way to scrape together the $700 necessary to buy one. (Speaking of which, I just emailed them that suggestion. Who knows, maybe they can get some mesh in and just build a Roadcrafter with mesh instead of the non-ballistic nylon.) Finally, I'm approaching the point of ripping the Le Mans apart to install handlebars. I have a set of handlebar mounts, and I'm pretty sure a set of Street Master Supersport bars are in my near future. That will allow me to take off the TBR clip-ons that have so bedevilled me in the recent past. The thing holding me back from doing that is that at the same time, I want to finally install my long overdue radio box, which requires building new mounts, etc. It's a long story, but if I put my mind to it, it shouldn't be a hard problem to solve. Posted at 18:16 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 14 Jun 2004
I took part of my Saturday this last weekend to go fly some So, I let her know that I'd be going up this weekend, and she elected to come along. The day was nothing special, in terms of flying conditions. Fairly strong wind was blowing, although it was basically right down the runway, ranging from 170 to 180 degrees while I was listening, and up to 14 knots. I was using runway 16L, so it was just slightly across the runway. Unfortunately, it was also kind of bumpy. I'm glad it wasn't gusting more. There was a cloud layer at 3500 feet, but since we were leveling off at 1600, it wasn't a factor. The Cherokee was taken that day, so I signed up for one of the 152s. I'd never flown with Kimberlee (the massage therapist) before, so I gave her my whole spiel about what to do in different emergency situations, things I'd ask her to do, etc. I think I need to sort out a small checklist of topics I want to cover in my preflight speech to new passengers, since I usually forget something. Anyway, whoever had flown before us had left the tanks nearly dry, so we taxied over to Regal to refuel. I remembered one of the reasons I deeply dislike highwing airplanes as I clambered awkwardly and uncomfortably onto the wing on each side to fill it to the tabs. I was glad Kimberlee doesn't weigh very much as I poured in the fuel, since 152s have notoriously low maximum weight limits. Finally, the tanks were full and the tires were pumped up. We taxied out to the runway and did the runup. Everything checked out alright, but the carb heat didn't make much difference in the engine speed. It did change the speed, so to the best of my knowledge it was doing something. The first takeoff went smoothly, and the little airplane leapt fairly eagerly into the air. When I say it went smoothly, I mean that my technique was alright. The air was not actually very smooth, and we had a bumpy ride around the pattern. As usual, I was having trouble keeping track of altitude in addition to everything else, and the plane got to nearly 1700 feet before I corrected it back down to 1600. The first landing was alright, but went long. I was too close to the end of the runway to do an "and-go", so I called the tower and taxied back around. The next takeoff and landing went better, although altitude control was still lacking. The third landing was quite good, greasing right onto the pavement, and rolling smoothly into another takeoff. The fourth landing was highly dubious. I was drifting to the right, but couldn't remember quite what to do to fix it, in the heat of the moment. I was having a bit of trouble with crosswind correction on all of the landings, coming down with some sideways drift on every landing except the third. But on the fourth, we actually drifted 3/4 of the way off the centerline, and were less than 20 feet from the right edge of the runway by the time the wheels kissed tarmac. It was still an acceptable landing, in that nothing was damaged and no rules were broken. But I was good landings, not just acceptable. I know what needs to happen -- I need to spend several hours with the simulator, just working on pattern work. It's really hard in the simulator, which makes me think about it more. Since there aren't actual forces acting on me while flying the computer, I can engage my brain much more and not rely so much on muscle memory. That enhanced thinking can then be translated into real-world flying, which I need to do after the sim work. I also need to re-read some of my books on crosswind landings. The challenge may be to find actual crosswind conditions to practice in, once I've got my brain re-enabled. Anyway, the exercise was a success. I have a list of things I need to work on:
Kimberlee was grinning from ear to ear every time I looked over, so it seemed to be a success with her as well. I guess she has a friend who's a helicopter pilot, and likes to go up with him, but it's a rarity since helicopters start at $170/hr for the clapped out old tiny ones. Here's hoping I can get up again soon. Posted at 17:01 permanent link category: /aviation Sat, 05 Jun 2004
I bought a shock which was purportedly from an 86 ZX600R, which is I had the rear wheel off to replace the cush drive damper, so it seemed like an ideal time to give this shock thing a try. I've been happy enough with the EX500 shock that's on the bike, but getting this ZX600 shock was cheap, so I figured I'd give it a try. The dimensions are just about right, but there's a little protrusion near the top mount of the new shock which interferes with the mounting bracket on the bike. It means that the top mount of the shock and the hole on the bike never quite match up. It's possible that I was doing something wrong, but it didn't really seem worth fighting with it that much. Ah well. The EX500 shock is fine. I'll probably be quite glad to have the new cush drive damper, so it's not as if my maintenance exercise was fruitless. Of course, I can't ride the Ninja right now, since I overtorqued the brake banjo bolts. Galfer is kindly sending me new ones, but I can't do anything until they arrive. Ah well again. I'll just keep my eye on the handlebar crack on the Le Mans and continue riding that (25 MPG and all). Posted at 10:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 03 Jun 2004
Now, that's how it's supposed to work. I installed a new set of Galfer stainless steel brake lines on the Ninja a day or two ago, and carefully torqued the fittings to the factory spec, which is 18 ft-lbs. I posted my installation write-up on the Ninja 250 board, and one of the comments that came back was, "I thought Galfer only wanted to see 14 ft-lbs; check the packaging to be sure." I checked (fortunately, I missed this week's recycling pickup), and sure enough, buried at the bottom of the text was "Banjo bolts max torque 12 ft-lbs." Oops. On Jim Race's advice (and good advice it was), I put the Ninja to pasture until I can get replacement bolts. Overtorquing these relatively frail, hollow bolts by 50% is a bit more excitement than I want involved in my brakes. Having one go "pop!" just as I hit maximum braking power to stop for some asshole who just turned left in front of me would probably be deadly. Anyway, I called up Galfer today, and asked if they could either sell me a new set, or tell me what size/spec they were, so I could find a set locally. The woman I talked to at Galfer said, "no need, I can just send you a replacement set for being so honest." Apparently, lots of guys (yes, "guys") call up with a claim like, "I didn't do anything wrong, it just broke!" 18 ft-lbs is already a marginal amount of torque, and barely feels like they're firmly seated, so I can see how it would be easy to overtorque the bolts and break them right off (particularly without a torque wrench). My comment about "this is how it should work," above, is because this is a direct contrast to how Two Brothers Racing treated me a few days ago. Galfer was pleasant to deal with, put a human on the phone, and made a very small sacrifice to the greater goal of customer relations. So I should have a new set of bolts, probably on Monday. Then I can re-install the lines, flush in some new fluid, and I'll be set. I hate it when I make mistakes like this -- Read The Fucking Manual, dude. Posted at 13:48 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 01 Jun 2004
Wow. I just installed a set of Galfer stainless steel brake lines Anyway, I took a very short ride after the installation, to make sure that the brakes were still working and all. I did a few test stops, and the difference was huge. Stopping with the front brake was suddenly much more aggressive. The rear brake felt different, but I had yet to adjust the lever (which has been set too low for a while). I had read glowing, gushing reports of the difference SS lines would make, but I figured they were pretty much hyperbolic. I have discovered that they're not. Admittedly, I only took a 1.5 mile ride down the street and back, but the difference was not to be believed. I'm going to have to be very conscious of the change until I get used to it, or I will stand a chance of getting myself in trouble. They're that much better. In other news, I had Moto International order those new Moose bar mounts. I mentioned that in the previous entry, but I wanted to mention it again, because I'm really looking forward to getting a different bar setup on the Le Mans. The main benefit (aside from sticking my tongue out at TBR) will be having a lot more "bar space" to install switches, mounts, etc. The TBR setup is really tight, leaving practically no room for aftermarket "stuff." Notably, the Autocom PTT switch is over 1/2" wide, and I couldn't really figure out where I was going to put it. The GPS mount is on the wrong side right now, and with actual handlebars, I'll be able to move it to the left side where it should be. Yesterday was Memorial Day, and I took the opportunity to go for a little ride. I didn't do anything special, just the ride over to the Snoqualmie Valley and up and down the west side. But the day was overcast and cool, which is nearly my favorite weather. My friend Jesse couldn't make it, although I invited him with about an hour's lead time, so I wasn't too surprised by that. Since the Le Mans has a crack in the handlebar, I rode the Ninja. Nothing remarkable happened on the ride, but it was really nice to get out and ride. It'd been more than a month since I'd had time to just ride a motorcycle for fun, due to theatrical engagements. Being able to rack up 86 miles doing nothing but having fun was pretty cool. Posted at 22:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 28 May 2004Just, feh. I called Two Brothers Racing back, armed with the pictures from the previous journal entry. Apparently, they only have one person who answers the phone, and he's an asshole. The (heavily paraphrased) conversation went something like this: Me: Hey, I'm having a problem with a clip-on you guys made, and I was wondering if you could help me out. Load up this web page... Him: Ok. Oh. I talked to you two days ago. Me: Ok, well I was hoping seeing this picture would help you understand what's going on. Him: No, I will not help you out. This clamp is 2 years old and has been painted. For all I know, the bike's been crashed and acid dribbled on the clamp. There's nothing I can do for you. Me: So, even though we're looking at the picture that looks to me like a materials defect, there's absolutely nothing you can do. You can't sell me a pair at cost, or a single one at full retail [since they only come in pairs through normal channels] or anything? Him: No. There's no way we're going to warrant a part that's that old. Me: Ok, can I talk to your manager, then? Him: Hah! I'm as high as you're going to get. Me: You mean there's no one over you? No one else I can talk to about this? Him: Nope, the only person above me is the owner. Me: Ok, fine. Will you at least do me a tiny favor and sell me a single clamp so I don't have to buy a clamp I don't need? Him: No! There's nothing I'm going to do for you. Well, ok. Send me an email with exactly what you want, and I'll have the warehouse manager look around and see if he can find something. Me: Um. Don't worry about it. Thanks. <click> I took three important things from this conversation:
I could have taken a plain old "I'm sorry, it's out of warranty." I wouldn't have been happy, but I wouldn't have been anywhere near this unhappy. After the first conversation, I would have been actively happy if he had offered any of, "I'll sell you one clamp at retail," or "I'll sell you a pair at 20% off retail" or "I'll send you a clamp for the cost of shipping if I find a beat-up one on the ground somewhere." Instead, he got all up in my face, implying that I was either insane or a jerk to expect anyone to do anything other than laugh at me for calling the company and asking them to address a fairly obvious material flaw. He offered to sell me a single clamp if he could find one somewhere, and the conversation we had around that included that he'd figure out the cost based on what full retail was. Gee, thanks for offering to sell me a factory second for full price. Another thing that's bugging me about this whole thing was his implication that the paint probably caused the crack. Since when has paint damaged hard-anodized aluminum!? He compared it to scrubbing the metal down with Easy-Off. Easy. Off. The oven cleaner. So, the fact that these parts were painted means that the clamp failed? I'd better get the rest of that shitty aluminum off my bike then, because the bars are very likely to go next -- they were all painted black. I'm surprised I haven't crashed yet, due to the bars breaking off like little twigs! Remember to breatheSo, the bottom line is that I now think TBR is populated by a pack of moronic jerks. Anything I can do to avoid giving them any more money or indirect business will be done. This, obviously, means I need to find a new solution to bring up my bars. I've still got the original bars and clipons, but I don't want to put them back on -- they're not comfortable at all. Micha mentioned that he'll be putting a set of plain ol' handlebars on a Le Mans in the near future, and I think that's the way I'm going to go as well. I need to measure the angles and distances involved in how the TBR setup is installed, since I want to modify those a little bit in the bars I get. Hopefully, I can find a set of off-the-shelf bars that do all the right things. I'll have to find a set of bar risers with a little pull-back, but Micha showed me several different models in a catalog that would do just fine. The hardest part will be taking off the top triple clamp and getting it drilled. Probably the order I should do it in is to order the mounts first, so I have a hole pattern to drill to. Then I can pass off the triple clamp to the machinist while trying to find the perfect set of bars. If I can't find the right set of bars, there are apparently shops that will manufacture a set of bars to my specs, and I'll probably do that. I'm guessing that overall, I'll be able to do the entire handlebar setup for less than the $180 TBR charges for a new set of clamps. Disclaimer to this entry: my experience with Two Brothers Racing is just one experience. Make up your own mind whether you want to buy any of their products. Materials defect aside, I've been quite happy with the bars and risers. Dealing with the company has sucked for me. It's entirely possible that I got the guy just after his dog died and his girlfriend left him and he's normally sweet as flowers. Later... I've just ordered a set of these handlebar mounts for the Le Mans. They look pretty spiffy. I found a set of handlebars for $20 that look like they'll fit the bill perfectly, as well. I may just be able to pull this off for less than $100. Hooray for positive progress! Posted at 14:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 25 May 2004
Ok, now this is fucking annoying. Somewhat randomly, I discovered So I called up Two Brothers Racing, who originally manufactured the part. I described the situation to the person who answered the phone, and his suggestion boiled down to "shit happens, buy a new set." The longer version included that some "corrosive material" might have gotten on the clamp, causing the crack. Or the paint applied by Moto International might have caused the corrosion, and thus the crack. There was no hint in his voice that their materials or workmanship could have caused the problem. Oh no. That conversation ended poorly, with me saying, "so, my only solution is to buy a new set of handlebar clamps? Great. Thanks. Bye." Suffice to say that my voice was not full of glowing happiness. I called Moto International to see what they had to suggest, and Micha actually had a few interesting ideas that didn't involve giving TBR any more money. One idea is to put a set of actual handlebars on the bike (rather than separated clip-ons). Another involved the use of Centauro parts that replicate the function of the TBR parts. I think I'm going to head down to MI later today and poke through catalogs with Micha. I think I'm also going to email TBR back, including the photos I've linked above, with a fuller explanation of what has happened with the bike (ie, that I'm a relatively gentle rider, always kept in a garage but ridden in the rain, etc.). I don't want to dismiss them out of hand because of one phone monkey. I'll also suggest that the "correct" remedy in my mind would be to sell me another clamp (singular) at cost + shipping. We'll see if that gets better results. Hmm. Never mind that last one, I just found this on their Policies page: WARRANTY: All of the items sold by TBR are intended for off road use only and are not street legal, DOT approved or EPA approved. Any of the items sold in our catalog could possibly void the motorcycle manufacturers warranty. TBR warrants its products to be free from any manufacturing defects at the time of delivery, but makes no other warranty claims. Well, I might email them anyway, and see if I can catch the eye of an actual human instead of some policy gnome. How serendipitous. I loaded up the v11lemans.com forums, and the first post was about these new handlebars from Däs Mototec in Germany. Expensive, but cool-looking. Posted at 11:13 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 14 May 2004
My life has been incredibly full of Stuff lately, meaning that I I decided that, to preserve my sanity, I should take yesterday and today off from work, since my weekends are now full of theatrical activites, meaning I never have any time to do my own thing. Anyway, with my Thursday off, one of the things I wanted to do was go down to Rich's Upholstery and see if Rich could offer me advice on what I was doing wrong with the seat. I just couldn't get the seat to behave quite right, and there always seemed to be a ridge under my right hip-bone, no matter how much material I cut away. I also had a feeling that I wasn't doing something, which was leading to my problem. Rich did indeed have advice for me, saying I should dish out the butt-area more, which would allow my hips to rock further back, which would reduce the feeling of ridges forward of my butt. Hmm. He also veered at some point to the topic of his Yamaha RD400F (I think that's the model number): a 1979 era 2-stroke 400cc motorcycle which he described as being "basically a factory race-bike." He told me of riding it at around 118 MPH, and the frame wobble that resulted from small irregularities in the road. He then asked me if I'd ever ridden such a bike. When I said no, he said, "oh, well you should ride this one!" and proceeded to get it started. He rode it noisily around the block a few times to get it warmed up, and came back, offering it to me. With some trepidation, I climbed aboard and immediately killed it trying to start it rolling. "More throttle!" he urged. The second attempt was more successful. I must say, that 400cc two-stroke is one powerful, slightly scary bike. The correct way to wring performance from it seems to be to rev it up to around 6500 RPM before shifting, then just keep it between 4500 and 6500 RPM the whole time you're riding. It makes that very familiar "braaap! braaap!" noise I'm so accustomed to hearing from offroad bikes. Definitely an interesting and unique experience for me. Anyway, crazy motorcycles aside, I've managed to make some good progress on the seat, between Rich's advice and finally getting the Right Tool for what I wanted to do. I went out and bought a set of 36 grit sanding discs for my little battery powered drill. Rich said he uses around 40 grit discs in his shop, and turns them into three discs: one that's had its teeth slightly knocked off by grinding against concrete, which is used to seriously remove material. Another, with its teeth ground at least half way down, for lightly removing material. And a third, which just feels nubbly to the touch, not sharp at all, to smooth out the foam. I took my 36 grit (which was the closest Sears had available) and ground it against the pavement a bit, until it was about 1/3 ground down. I've been using that to shape the seat, and it's really nice to use, compared to the electric knife. It allows me to do fine shaping that I just wasn't able to do with the knife, and particularly allows shaping that isn't really possible with the knife: the deep concavity at the bottom of the seat. I've now got the seat to where I think it's pretty close to done. There's still minor trimming to be done, but it feels close. Of course, I've hit this point twice already, so I'm not feeling too elated yet. But I also feel like I now have a better tool to fix the problems I can feel. Hopefully, I'll be finished soon! Posted at 09:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 09 May 2004
Several interesting things have happened recently, so I'll touch on The seat projectThe Ninja seat rebuilding project is going more slowly than I would have hoped. Getting the shape just right is turning out to be fairly tedious, and involving a lot more test-riding than I would have thought. I think I just had a little breakthrough, though, when I discovered that the seat was wider on one side than the other -- that might explain why I just can't get the narrower side to feel right. I had been trimming everything to be about symmetrical, and that's just doomed to failure until the underlying seat is also symmetrical. Braking much?When I got the Ninja, one of the first things I did was to put new brake pads on it. I selected EBC Black pads, according to the servicelog entry. The pads which I replaced were in acceptable condition, with a millimeter or two of thickness left in them. Presumably, since I can't assume otherwise, those were the original pads. So, at 9200 miles, they were still in decent shape, although I don't really know how the previous owners rode the bike. When I pulled in last night, I heard an ominous scraping noise pulling up to my street, so I changed out of my riding clothes and went right back out to the garage to investigate. I've kind of given it away, but the scraping noise seemed to be coming from the front wheel, and definitely increased when applying the brakes. I pulled the caliper to take a look at the pads, and there appeared to be nearly nothing there. Figuring that couldn't possibly be right, I unmounted the pads from the caliper, and indeed, one pad was through to metal, and the other had around .7 mm left on it. That's not much. According to my rough calculations, that means I went through a set of brake pads in just under 5000 miles. Lame. I guess that's what I get for riding in-city all the time. The classSome months ago, I signed up for the Experienced Rider Course (ERC), a class offered through the Motorcycle Safey Foundation (MSF). My class date finally came yesterday. I debated with myself for a while about which bike to bring to the class, but finally practicality won over, and I decided to bring the Ninja. Being water cooled, and having a wet clutch, it was far better suited to the slow speed parking lot maneuvers we'd be doing. I got the paperwork about three weeks beforehand, and glanced through it. Intro letter, requirements, bike inspection form, etc. It all looked pretty standard. The class would be from 9:30 am to 6 pm. It was happening in Kirkland, near the original location of the now-defunct Cascade BMW. I woke up early yesterday morning, because I was excited about the class, and I couldn't precisely remember after three weeks whether the start time was 8:30 or 9:30. I figured if I were up at 7:30 and reading the documentation, that would give me enough "oh shit!" time to be there on time for an 8:30 class. If it was the later time, I'd have leisure time to get myself ready and not feel rushed. It was indeed at 9:30, so I read through the paperwork, and was glad I had done so. The requirement for insurance paperwork was surprising -- just a card wasn't enough. I was only able to find good paperwork for the R100, so I brought that and a current bill to show that the Ninja was really covered. The other requirement was that we actually complete the bike inspection form, which covered both sides of a sheet of paper. This is the T-CLOCK inspection, for thems what know. I pulled on a set of nitrile gloves and went to work, actually doing the inspection. Of course, when I got there, they didn't ask for the completed form, nor did they do the inspection like the letter said they would, nor, I suspect, did most of the other students do this inspection. Anyway, I got myself underway around 9:00, which was about 10 minutes later than I wanted to be. I managed to make it there on time, but just barely. The instructor called out, "you are so lucky!" referring to my tardiness. I apologized, and got to filling out their paperwork. Why couldn't they have sent out this extra paperwork three weeks beforehand? Seems kind of stupid. Anyway, at this point, the actual class got underway. We gathered around and got a briefing on hand signals the instructors would be using, as well as general class intro stuff. I vaguely recall the instructors being Dan and Mike, so that's what I'll call them. Dan was the primary instructor, and Mike was the secondary. Dan outlined our first exercise, which I think was a set of weaves down both sides of a rectangle. Mike got on his BMW R1100S and demonstrated. This was to the the operating procedure for the whole day. Before I get further into it, I made a number of interesting sociological observations on the class. My classmates were overwhelmingly riding Harleys, or Harley wannabe bikes. I counted 9 Harley-style bikes, of which 6 were actually made by Harley-Davidson. The other three were a Honda Shadow, a Honda Valkyrie and a Yamaha something. There were two other non-Harley bikes in the class: a Suzuki Burgman 650 (large automatic scooter) and a Yamaha YZF R6. The number of female riders was, as expected, low. There were three women out of the twelve students: one (mid-30's) on a Harley Sportster 1200-something; a 40's-ish woman on the Honda Shadow; and a positively circular woman on the Burgman. Of the men, none initially stood out, although the early-30's guy on the Harley with ape-hanger bars and a license plate spelling out "RUDE" caught my attention early on as being someone to watch. Notably, I don't think there was anyone younger than about 30 in the class, although there were one or two people who weren't an obvious age. The median age seemed to be about 35 or 40, with the extremes being around 30 and around 65. The class was largely a repeat of the maneuvers we covered in the Beginner class lo these many years ago. I think we did weaves, quick stops, curves, U-turns, S-turns, swerve/avoidance maneuvers and stopping in a curve. There wasn't much "classroom" time involved, with us reading about 20 pages in a tall skinny booklet. Topics included traction management, risk management, alcohol, etc. Normal topics. However, there was this ominous thread running through everything: age makes you WEAK! Every topic included a final paragraph that went along these lines: "An important factor in riding awareness is age. Age reduces a rider's ability to see clearly, think clearly and react quickly once a decision has been made. Age also amplifies the effects of alcohol and fatigue. Older riders have more than their share of accidents. Older riders should compensate for this by leaving larger following distances, and recognizing when riding conditions are such that their frailty should prevent them from riding. Age makes a rider WEAK!" Ok, not quite like that. That's more a conglomerate of all the "age" paragraphs into one, with some of the intent that the writer wasn't allowed to express thrown in. But that's the general idea. The stand-outsAs the excercises progressed, some of the riders began to stand out more. The first one to stand out was the Old New Rider. The Old New Rider was a guy in his 60's (I would guess) riding a large, full-dress Harley. It had the integrated stereo, CB, intercom, air suspension, spotlights, saddlebags and topbox, etc. I'm sure it was a $20,000 bike. We were doing a quick stop exercise, I think, when he first stood out. Everyone lined up before a 100' long run-up area, where a set of cones would mark where you should start braking. After braking and being coached on anything that needed to change, each rider was supposed to negotiate a 90° turn, and cross diagonally to the other side's waiting line. The diagonal cross included two pause-and-go points, where the rider's supposed to slow down as low as they can go without putting a foot down, and then continue. At the second pause-and-go headed for my line, he apparently had some trouble and dropped his bike. Now, on this big beast, that doesn't mean too much, since it's got all the crash bars and everything, so it just leans over at about a 30° angle and sits there. However, there seemed to be a lot of running around involved in this, and both instructors ended up coming over to inspect. It turns out that in allowing his bike to drop, the Old New Rider had also caused his bike to leak some vital fluid, on top of which it wouldn't start again. He got a helpful shove from the instructors back to the staging area, and things progressed. Later on, he dropped his bike again, this time doing serious but non-fatal damage to his clutch lever and pivot. He was effectively pulled from the class, and rode off to see if he could get it fixed at Eastside Harley, which wasn't too far away. I learned via the rider grapevine that it was a brand-new bike. He actually returned later, and was allowed to rejoin the class for some reason. I asked him how long he'd had the bike, and he said, "oh, since the first of last month." I then asked how long he'd been riding, figuring this must just be a far larger bike than he was used to. "Oh, since the first of last month," he asserted. Ummmm. He went on to explain that he last rode 31 years previously. I asked him if this was his first class, or if he'd taken the beginner course first. He said this was his first class. At this point, I was forced to write him off as being at least half moron. I gave him points for taking this class, but serious demerits for not taking the beginner class after a half-lifetime-long hiatus from riding a motorcycle. I also gave him serious demerits for buying the most expensive bike on the Harley lot as his re-entry into biking. The next rider to stand out, and in one way the first, was the youngest woman there, who was riding the Harley. She stood out initially because of the three women in the class, she was the closest to what I would consider "attractive," although that's just to say that she was height-weight-proportionate. We were given an hour to get lunch, and I returned pretty quickly after I finished, since hanging out at Taco Bell isn't really my idea of a good time. I came back and decided I'd like to work on the U-turn exercise more, since I was having trouble with it. I was running through the two boxes, and a couple of people joined me in practice: the woman with the Burgman, and the woman with the Harley. The woman on the Burgman gave up after a short while (she was doing just fine) and the woman on the Harley came out. I was having trouble in the sense that I would surpass the boundaries of the box by a few feet on my second U-turn, usually. She was having trouble like she would surpass the boundaries of the box by 10s of feet. She just couldn't get the hang of doing tight, slow turns. Anyway, I was working on the harder box (we were on a slope, and I found one of the boxes to be noticably harder than the other), when I heard her bike rev toward redline and come back down. It definitely wasn't a normal noise, and I looked up to see her bike on its side -- I jammed up to where she was and threw my bike on its side stand to help her get her big bike upright. Someone else had run over in the meantime, and between the three of us, we got it up with no trouble. Nothing was damaged, in a practical sense, but she was seriously shaken. As I departed the scene to park, she was saying to one of the instructors that she was going to leave the class, since she just couldn't get the hang of these stupid U-turns. Dan (I think) was reassuring her that even if she completely failed, the U-turn box was only a small part of the test. Interestingly, when the test finally came, I think she did the U-turns perfectly. Another stand-out rider was the guy on the RUDE bike. His bars were at the maximum height allowed by law, which is even with his shoulders. He was wearing the standard-issue puddin'-cup helmet, with the requisite white-on-black "bikers have more fun than normal people" type stickers on it. We were all required to have long sleeves and long pants on, so he had on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He first stood out because he'd cut me off leaving the staging area. Not badly, he'd just leave contrary to the established order -- we were in two lines, and the instructor would point to a person from one line, then the other as we were to leave. I didn't figure he was actually trying to get to me so much as he was trying to keep up with a friend. He seemed pleasant enough when we were standing around talking. He later stood out because his bike was so low. He mentioned early on that he'd probably be scraping parts around corners, and he was right. One of the final exercises was a racetrack-like oval, with an extra inward curve on one side. The MO was to ride around this "track" at about 15-20 MPH and practice looking through the curve and slowing before the curve, etc. Around every curve, his bike sounded like someone grinding an edge on a tool, with a long scraping noise as his bike exceeded about 15° lean. Both of the instructors cracked up watching this behavior, at one point or another. The final stand out rider was R6 Man. He looked to be about my age, in his early 30s. He was wearing decent gear. He was very quiet. He was also very plainly scared to death of his bike. He was riding a 2004 Yamaha YZF R6 with 126 miles on the odometer. It was very quiet, which means he hadn't yet modified it with an "off road use only" exhaust. He didn't really seem like the type who would, though, so I shouldn't be too harsh on him. Every exercise I saw him doing, he was riding as if his tires were 15-year-old rubber that more closely resembled slick plastic than tire compound. He was plainly very afraid that if he did anything abruptly or put more than the gentlest demands on his tires, they would betray him, and send him and his bike crashing to the ground, to inflict thousands of dollars worth of damage. I had the impression that those 126 miles represented the sum total of his riding experience. Ultimately, I can't say that "gentle" is a bad plan, for it's far far better than riding the bike as if one is invulnerable. It was just such a shock to see this guy riding a race-replica crotch rocket as if it was a 3-speed bicycle with training wheels. I think he did fine in all the tests, although he had a persistent problem with looking through the turns. Other than that of being overly cautious to a ridiculous degree, he left no impression whatsoever on me. Chaps are gonna help you how?With this crowd of Harley riders, I noticed an overwhelming abundance of crappy riding wear. Most notable among the offenders were the chaps. Nearly everyone who was wearing lower-body riding wear (rather than just jeans, of course) was wearing chaps. Nice, ass-exposed chaps. Who in their right mind imagines that chaps will provide any useful protection in a fall? What's gonna hit first and take most of the weight? Will it be your shins? Perhaps your thighs? Probably not! It'll be your ass or your chest! I'm sure that chaps look good. I just couldn't see past their complete deficiency as riding wear. The other remarkable thing was the number of people wearing long-sleeved cotton shirts as their sole nod to upper-body protection. Woo, that T-shirt material will sure help out when you're sliding along the pavement at 30+ MPH. I was not impressed with my classmates' ability to select effective riding gear. ConclusionI think that this was time well-spent. I ended up scoring 100% on the written test, and 97% on the riding test (I exceeded the box on the U-turn test, for -3 points). I was able to practice some stuff I don't normally get to practice, and discovered conclusively that I need to work on slow-speed maneuvering. Obviously, the most interesting part of the class for me was watching the other riders. I was fascinated by the dichotomy of their willingness to undergo training (since they were in the class) and their apparent inability to do some of the basic moves. To be fair, most of the class was just fine, and I didn't notice them. But those who stood out, really stood out. I also got to talk to the instructors after the class about becoming an instructor. They urged me to continue, since the system really needs more instructors. I think I'll sign up for the beginner course again soon (so I should be taking it in late fall or winter), and proceed from there. Posted at 10:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 30 Apr 2004
The Great Seat Experiment has started lagging a bit, as I've been At this point I've carved enough foam away that I'd like to glue on another layer and "start over" now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing. That'll probably happen tomorrow, since I have a large chunk of the day free. Starting over will also allow me to apply my newfound knowledge of "not overloading the electric knife," which was resulting in rough and sloppy cuts. I can't help but feel a bit of, "I should have done better than that!" But I need to remember that this is the first time I've ever done anything like this: I've never done 3D carving before, I've never worked with foam before, and I've never tried to tailor something solid to fit a particular body part. So, for a first attempt, I don't feel too bad. Posted at 13:58 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 28 Apr 2004
I have made a small amount of progress on the seat, after going for I was amazed that, as soon as I started riding, I knew exactly what had to change on the seat. The remaining 15 minutes of the ride just reinforced what I was aware of within the first 10 seconds. I rode the bike into work today with the new seat, and once again knew within 10 seconds that there's a little ridge under my right hip that needs to be knocked down, but it's getting close. Once I get the shape right, I'm going to spend some time smoothing out all the rough cuts and sharp angles you can see. The headliner foam should serve to smooth some of that out as well, but I'm guessing it'll show anything sharp, and anything that's much more than a few mm different from surrounding areas. I've also considered laying on a layer of the 1/2 inch foam I received as wrapping around a recent Ebay purchase. I'll probably try out the 1/2" foam without actually gluing it down, to see if it'll help or hinder things. Anyway, I'm excited about this whole seat reshaping thing. It's turning out to be as easy as I'd hoped it would be -- watching Rich do it gave me all the information I needed to do it myself. I will probably be writing up the method I used into an informative article after I'm all done. Most interesting. Posted at 10:23 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 27 Apr 2004
Yesterday was a day of both success and failure. I'll start with I was downtown getting ready to head for home after a play rehearsal. I had parked on a slight incline, and had left the Ninja in gear to prevent it from rolling down the hill and off its sidestand. As I always do, I stuck the key in the ignition, attached the tank bag, and got out my gloves and balaclava from the helmet. Gloves went on the tank bag, and the helmet went on the back of the seat, which is conveniently flat and fairly accomodating. After I'd gotten the balaklava on, I realized that I was quite close to the freeway, and so it would be a good idea to let the engine warm up for a minute before I took off. I pulled in the clutch, switched the key on, and pushed the starter button, only noticing after I pressed the button that I didn't see the normal set of lights on the dashboard -- the neutral light was off. The bike lurched forward a foot or so under the power of the starter, knocking my glasses and gloves to the ground at my feet, and I heard the hollow thud as my helmet plummeted onto the asphalt and rolled slowly downhill. I had my hands full (all this in the dark) getting the bike re-stabilized and back on its stand, which had retracted. Fortunately, I didn't drop the bike, but I was already kicking myself about the helmet. I picked up my helmet and inspected it for damage. There was a large scuff on top, probably where it landed. There were two small but deep nicks in the face shield. The front chinvent was popped out, but went back in with no trouble. When I put the helmet on, I found that the Autocom speakers inside had shifted, one completely out of place, the other just slightly. The speakers are just velcroed, so it's not a big deal. Having no other choice if I wanted to go home, I just stuck the helmet on my head, and rode off. Inspecting it later, in better light, I couldn't find any evidence of cracking or deformation around the major scuff, so I'm going to work on the assumption that the helmet is probably functionally unaffected. I'll probably accelerate my schedule for buying a new helmet, though. I've heard that dropping a helmet even a few feet onto pavement can impair its ability to protect in a crash. And if it's not going to protect me in a crash, what good is a helmet? Although I appreciate a lot of the benefits of a wet clutch, this is one of the things I could really do without. Had I done the same thing with the Le Mans, it never would have lurched (although there's every chance that I would have let out the clutch, not noticing that the neutral light was off). This is what I get for breaking from my routine parking habits. *sigh* It does reinforce that I should never start the engine until I'm fully clothed, sitting on the bike and ready to ride. Not a mistake I'll make again soon. The successMy spare Ninja seat arrived yesterday, but because of the aforementioned play rehearsal, I didn't have time to work on it until about 10 pm. Even so, I was able to pull off the original cover (amazingly cheap vinyl), and get started on building up the seat. I had my girlfriend help me mark where I wanted my butt to be when I was done, and it turned out to be right at the corner of the seat, where it goes from sloped to flat. I laid out and cut a piece of the 2" foam to fit over that section of seat -- from the nose of the seat to the end of the slope in the rear. I read the directions on the glue, and followed them to glue down the foam on the existing seat foam. Even though it was late, I was standing there with about an hour until I wanted to quit, and an electric knife. Time to start carving! I carved away, scooping out the concave shape that would be my normal seating position, and gradually shaping the foam into my desired shape. I kept glancing at the Le Mans seat, next to the Ninja, for comparison as I went. Eventually, around 11:15, I had managed to rough out the basic shape I wanted, having glued on new foam when the cutting didn't go quite right. This whole rebond foam stuff is really cool to work with, because properly done, there's no way to tell where "original" foam ends, and the glued on pieces begin. It's all little shreds of foam anyway. Yay new seats! Posted at 09:39 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 21 Apr 2004
I spent the last two weeks in New Zealand, wishing I had a Anyway. I stopped by Moto International today, to see what the status of my bike was. It was dropped off there just before I departed for NZ, to have the engine swap done. I also asked them to balance the engine, which will ideally make it smoother and last longer. Unfortunately, the parts are still at the machine shop, being balanced (which sounds like quite an involved process), so the bike is still a week and a half away from being in back in my garage. This is a bummer mostly because I've got the next two weeks off work. Yay sabattical! Boo missing motorcycles. While I was there, I managed to get a few pictures of the Le Mans, sans engine. It's pretty odd looking, with all these ancillary bits hanging off it, and the tank missing. Still, it'll be really nice to have the bike back with a smooth new engine case and smoother-running, balanced internals.
The Ninja is still running in top form, though, so that's good. I have a new shock to install on it, but that's not going to happen until the Le Mans comes back. The current shock (from a Ninja 500) is good enough, so it's not a great sacrifice. The weather is supposed to be clear in two days, and I'm planning to take a day-long ride then, to get some of the motorcycling-madness out of my brain from that two weeks with fabulous roads and nothing but a Lexus to run across them. Posted at 10:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 16 Apr 2004
D'oh! Turns out that I bought my Aerostich suit on April 4, 2002. Fortunately, since being repaired about a year ago, it's been just fine. It's gotten dirtier and floppier with time, but that's no surprise. No seams have started to come apart. No velcro getting badly fuzzed. I did have them send me a new set of zipper pulls (just in time, as it happens), which I installed myself, but that's pretty much it. The front reflective strip in particular is starting to look a bit worn, but not badly so. I guess I'll just live with it for now. Certainly nothing's bad enough that I feel any need to have it repaired for money. I'm just a moocher on free services when I can get them. Posted at 15:00 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 15 Apr 2004I just won the Ninja seat on Ebay. This seat project has been going in increments of $30-35 each: the foam and glue were about $32, the vinyl and headliner material were $35, and the final price on the seat was $21.50 + $10 shipping -- $31.50 total. Bummer I didn't get the seat for the $4.99 I was hoping for, but that would have been unbelieveably good luck... But, soon I should have all the pieces assembled for the great seat experiment. I have borrowed an electric knife from a friend (and a few test swipes at a piece of random foam I had lying around suggest it's the perfect implement). I got a good piece of advice from the guy who sold me the vinyl: throw it in the clothes dryer just before stretching it over the seat. This apparently makes it much more pliable and easier to work with, because of the heat. A hair dryer would have a similar effect. The only weirdness in all of this is that the viyl I got is not a piece of "whole cloth," if you will. It's been cut up, so I got it for a reduced price, but not much reduced. Now that I think back on it, it was not a good deal for me, since I'll probably only be able to get one seat cover out of it for $15, whereas if I'd had a whole piece I probably could have gotten 3+ seat covers out of it for $20. I guess that's the price I pay for impatience -- he would have had to order the right kind of vinyl. Still, I suspect I'll only need enough material to make one, since I doubt I'll do anything to ruin the vinyl in stretching it. If I end up having to make a two-piece cover (possible, if I don't want it to look bad), I'll have to ponder how to make the seams waterproof. There's probably some kind of marine-grade seam sealer I can use on the back of the material. It is a grand experiment, after all! Posted at 09:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 13 Apr 2004
Woo, this seat plan is coming together. I've got foam, glue and an I'm really looking forward to this, I'll be very happy if I can make the seat about 2 inches taller and set it up better for my butt. Then I'll fit on the Ninja much better than I do now. Yay more projects! Five minutes later... That was hard. Ballard Upholstery, $20 for a yard of black vinyl. Total outlay should be around $60-80, depending on what the spare seat costs. Posted at 10:58 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 12 Apr 2004
It's been an exciting few weeks since I last wrote. I did two Glenn of the Infernal Machine Shop had the Ninja last weekend, to do some more fitting for the rack. As long as he was taking it away, I handed him one of the ammo cases I picked up recently so he could see about setting up a rack that could handle them as side cases. I think that tripped him up (in terms of making progress on his previous rack design), then when he got back to return the bike, I tripped him up again. He had apparently never noticed the two threaded holes in the Ninja's passenger grab rail, which make excellent attachment points for rear accessories. Now he's going to have to rethink the whole thing again. On this latest ride, I was on the Ninja, riding with a group of Ninja 250 riders from the board I frequent. You can see the report on the rides page. One of the things I discovered is that spending 4+ hours in the stock Ninja seat is really painful. Even with about an hour and a half of breaks, my bum was really really sore when I got home. So, I put a bid on a spare Ninja seat on Ebay, and (if I get it) I'm going to pull off the vinyl and experiment with reshaping it. I'd like to reshape the seat to fit me, and raise the seating position up an inch or three to make my legs more comfortable. I'm going to try and find a foam shop that'll sell me that high-density seat foam that Rich uses, and see if they also have the appropriate glue to do it. Value Village may have a $1 electric carving knife for me, which would be an ideal low-class foam cutter. It won't have a clever gel insert, but just an improved shape will help an awful lot. And my grand total expenditure should be under $100, which is much more in keeping with the Ninja budget. I've redesigned the main motorcycle page (you can see a preview here if it's not yet live when you read this; otherwise that link probably won't work, and the main page is what I'm taking about). I'm not quite happy with it yet, although it's really close. I'll probably go live in the next few days. I think it's a lot more organized, and it makes finding information much easier. In doing the new page, I discovered that I've ridden something like 28,600 miles on my various motorcycles. Wow! Not bad for 5 years of mostly commuting a few miles each day. Posted at 10:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 01 Apr 2004
I installed a set of Fiamm Freeway Klaxon horns on the Ninja a I got the horns hooked up and approximately in place on the bike. I turned the key to the ON position, and tried the horn button. They tried real hard, but only came up with a kind of SQUERRRNK!, dying-goose noise. I tried again, thinking maybe I wasn't hitting the button fully. Same thing, but a bit less: SQUANK! I tried a third time, just to see what was going on, and just got sqnk! Not even upper-case worthy. I figured that the battery voltage was probably too low to operate them, and started the engine. Sure enough, with the engine charging the battery, it had enough voltage to produce the full noise, and I was rewarded with a very loud HAAAAANK! when I pressed the button. The next morning, on my way into work, I noticed a loud clunk from the front end as I went over a sharp bump. I checked later in the day, and discovered that I could push the front of the bike down hard enough to bonk the horn against the front fender. This was clearly no good. I think I'm going to look into the physically-smaller disc horns that Fiamm makes, and see if I can get a set of those that take up less space. The Ninja just doesn't have much room to install horns, unfortunately. Oh, hah hahThe above is not an April Fools entry. If I can come up with something clever I'll put it in here, but I don't really find myself in a jesting mood right at the moment. Just let me open this door over here.... [SPLOOSH!] Posted at 11:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 29 Mar 2004
I did the better part of a 6000 mile service on the Le Mans this The single biggest victory of the service was that adjusting the valves brought the bike from verging on unrideable to its familiar running condition. They were so tight that there was no free play evident on any of the valves. That accounts for the extremely low idle speed, and the odd character to the engine when running. I hope no damage was done, but since I only rode it about 100 miles between the engine going back together and adjusting the valves, it seems unlikely. For the transmission and final drive, I decided to try out synthetic gear oil. I selected the Mobil 1 75W140 at the local auto parts store, which was also by far the most expensive choice. The service manual recommends an additive by name, without saying what it is. I think it's a moly additive, but I'm not sure. I'll ask Moto International when I go in to get the brake pads and air filter. I don't know who exactly designed the exhaust system, and decided to place the crossover where they did, but it's a crappy setup when you're draining the transmission oil -- the tranny oil drain plug sits right over the exhaust crossover. Draining the transmission results in gear oil running laterally an inch across the crossover until it drops into the pan. If you've ever smelled gear oil, you probably know that it's not a pleasant smell, and it's worse when being cooked by the exhaust system. I was not pleased with that choice. Posted at 13:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 21 Mar 2004
Woot! The Le Mans is finally home! I got home from work on Friday (it being Sunday today), and checked my email around 5:53. I saw an email with the subject "D O N E!" from "MI Service Dept". I read the email, looked at the clock (hence I know the time), and leapt for the phone. Moto International closes at 6, so I wanted to get things arranged as soon as possible, since they wanted to close. I got Micha on the phone, and we arranged that I'd get down there as soon as I could. I was moving in about doubletime as I hung up the phone, leapt for my riding gear and mumbled to myself about mirrors and tool kits all at once. I imagine I must have been slightly blurred to the outside observer. When Dave came to take away my bike, his clever tiedown required that I remove the bar-end mirrors I had installed. Not hard, but it meant I had to remember to bring at least one mirror with me to pick up the bike. I had also taken out all the "loose" stuff that was in the bike, like the tire pressure gauge, tool kit, flashlight, etc. I wanted to have at least the tool kit with me for the ride home. I got myself set up and on the road in record time, and got to MI around 6:10. They were just pushing in the last bikes in as I arrived. There was my Le Mans, looking much as I'd last seen it, except that I couldn't see the ground through the oil filler tube. Riding the Le Mans back, I noticed immediately that the fast-idle "choke" control wasn't working as it used to. I didn't really notice a difference in the smoothness of the engine which might suggest the balancing work had had a big effect. The bike felt really weird to ride, although that was almost certainly because I'd spent the last six weeks riding the 150 lb lighter Ninja. The Ninja handles very lightly and has a very upright riding position, compared to the Le Mans. Riding the Le Mans on Saturday, I noticed that I grew more comfortable with it. I rode 12 miles up to Cycle Barn, the local annoying all-brand motorcycle dealership. Mostly, it was a convenient close destination that I could ride to without getting too far out of dealership-towing range. I noticed before the ride that there was a light oil weep coming out of one of the sensors mounted on the upper left of the engine case, and resolved to check on it when I arrived at the Barn. Sure enough, it had grown into a thick film on the side of the engine case. After I had walked around Cycle Barn for a few minutes, and located a bungie net I had been meaning to get for a while, I got myself ready to go. I called MI before heading out, to see when they had time to reseal the sensor. They said "today," so I headed down there. The reseal didn't take much time to accomplish, but then I had to leave it to rest so the sealant could cure. As long as I was sitting around doing nothing at a motorcycle dealership, I decided to test-ride something. My girlfriend had indicated an interest in riding a scooter, so I decided to test-ride an Aprilia Scarabeo 50. It had been a while since I'd ridden a 50cc scooter. They're interesting little beasts. Max speed is 35-45 MPH on most models, and apparently the Scarabeo 50 will go 47. I think the fastest I ever got was about 35, but I wasn't trying for a speed record. I'm also not sure it'll do top speed with a big guy like me on there. I was interested to note that, with a run-up head start, I was able to take a hill at 25 MPH. With less of a head start, I took the second part of the same hill at 18 MPH. Good thing I wasn't trying real hard to keep up with traffic. Anyway, scooters aside, it's nice to have the Le Mans back. Time to do some riding on it, so I can confirm that the engine is in good shape, and so I can get some time in the new seat. Posted at 10:17 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 18 Mar 2004
I got email from MGNA today, saying that the missing bolts (see the Anyway, the other thing Micha at MI said was that they ordered another set of conrod bolts, to be delivered next-day air. Ideally, they'll have the wily bolts in hand tomorrow morning or noontime. Then, the remainder of the engine work can be completed in about 1-2 hours of shop time, and chances are I can get the bike back on Saturday. "Chances are" We'll see what actually happens, but things are at least looking up for the Le Mans. Meanwhile, on the other side of town... I took my girlfriend out last weekend to do a little bit of "riding a motorcycle" work. She took the MSF beginner's course several years ago, but through a freak set of circumstances ended up flipping the bike over a pile of debris on the side of the training course. It shook her up pretty badly, and she quit the course half-way through, and shuddered any time I mentioned the possibility of her riding a bike. Finally a month or so ago, she again seemed receptive to the idea of learning to ride. I'm interested in it because she can't comfortably ride on the back of either of my motorcycles, and it would be great to be able to take the motorcycle to some of the places we like to go together. So, we got ourselves out in an empty parking lot with the Ninja. It was somewhat slow going at first, as all the old fear came rushing back, but she overcame that and was soon putting around the parking lot at idle in first gear. One of her complaints about the class setting was that she was learning and progressing slower than the rest of the class, so that she felt increasingly outpaced as the class went on. We were able to remedy that, since it was just her and me, with no one else there to comment or pass judgement or complain. In the end, it took about two hours to go from basically no skill to being able to make powered takeoffs (ie, using the throttle instead of very gradually slipping the clutch with the idle set at 2000 RPM), get her feet up on the footpegs, and come to a controlled stop. Soon, we're going to head out and build on the first lesson, probably trying for stopping at a target, perhaps some acceleration and gear shifting, and the beginning of turns. Later... I got a call back from MI, with even better news. They already have a set of conrod bolts! Another engine case swap kit came in this morning, which included the bolts, so they're going to take those bolts for me, and use my (ground shipped) bolts for this next case swap. It's convoluted, but that pretty firmly puts my bike on schedule to be finished by Saturday. Woot! Hopefully the weather on Saturday will be reasonable, because I'm going to want to ride! Posted at 09:44 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 17 Mar 2004
I just sent email to Moto Guzzi North America about my Le Mans, Time since balanced parts returned: 14 business days Time since the bike was dropped off: 39 business days Amazing. MGNA can't locate 4 stinkin' connecting rod bolts out of all its stock and dealers in North America. I have to say, Moto International has been treating me really well through all this, I have absolutely no complaints with their service. But MGNA has been stinking the whole thing up with their apparent inability to manage what should be easily-located stock. I remarked to Dave (co-owner of Moto International) a week or two ago that at least this whole "MGNA sucking" thing didn't really reflect poorly on him. He responded that of course it did, and upon reflection, of course it does. It's a real pity, too, because MI shouldn't be getting spattered by MGNA's incontinence. Unfortunately, the splattering is happening whether they want it to or not. Later... I just got off the phone with the good folks at MI, and they report that MGNA claims (via their online parts database) to have connecting rod bolts (part number 01062230) in stock! Aaron will follow up with them, and perhaps on Saturday, I will finally have my Le Mans back. But I'm not holding my breath. Posted at 17:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 15 Mar 2004
My frient Clint and I have been wanting to do an aerial photography We planned earlier in the week that this Saturday (yesterday) we should try to fly. He wanted to take pictures of the park to assist in planning for HempFest -- he's one of the organizers, and apparently their maps are somewhat sub-par. Aerial photographs would help them to correct their maps, and in turn make better use of the space in the park during the event. Clint is a pilot, although he's not current. His medical is expired, and he hasn't actually flown as pilot in command since before 9/11 happened in 2001. It's nice to have another pilot in the cockpit, since he knows just what to do when looking for traffic, and as the ultimate backup if anything happens to me and I'm unable to fly the plane. The plan was that we would take off from Paine Field in a Cessna 152 around 10 AM on Saturday. We'd fly down to the park, and do several passes, probably one "at an angle" to the park, and one more "directly overhead." Possibly there would be more passes, if Clint wasn't satisfied that he had enough pictures. As planned, we were at the Northway office around 9:15, and doing the preflight by 9:30. Time always slips a little bit around these kinds of events, so I wasn't surprised that we didn't really get in the air until 10:30 or so. But in the air we were, and we headed down to the downtown Seattle area. I had flown this route a day or two before, in X-Plane, a flight simulator. The 152 model in X-Plane has got to be the most skittish plane in the world -- I couldn't hold either altitude or airspeed to save my life. I suspect my yoke has seen better days, though, as it never quite returns to the same "neutral" position in pitch. Interestingly, in X-Plane, downtown Seattle was under about 20 feet of water. I guess the map needs a little bit of tweaking. Anyway, we got ourselves established with Seattle Approach, so they were watching out for any traffic that would get in our way. I told them what the plan was, so they didn't think we were terrorists, checking out the waterfront or anything. They were amazingly cooperative, and as always I was extremely grateful for their help. The first pass over the park was fairly exciting. I wasn't quite ready for the reality of doing a 700 foot pass over the waterfront, nor was Clint. However, we both kind of muddled through somehow, and climbed over Queen Anne hill and Magnolia to make another pass. The second run worked a bit better, with me in better control of the plane, and able to keep the wings set better for Clint to take pictures. The third pass was the best, and Clint was able to get everything he wanted. We told Seattle Approach, who were getting kind of frantic with traffic and wanting us to stop circling on the approach path to Boeing Field, that we were finished and departing the area. I think the controller was happy to hear that. We flew west, to Bremerton National, where we would land and have lunch. Approaching Bremerton, we called out our position on the radio several times, noting a distinct lack of radio calls from other planes. We couldn't see more than one or two other planes in the pattern, so we figured they were just old planes without radios, or pilots unskilled in radio work, or whatever. We safely got in the pattern and landed without hearing anything but one person call, fairly garbled. Lunch was excellent, at the Airport Diner. Good fish and chips. If you ever get a chance to fly there for lunch, I highly recommend it. Clint and I had discussed the fact of the lack of radio calls as we ate. We sort of concluded that it was an odd coincidence. I grabbed my handheld radio, to see if people were talking then, and we wandered the ramp looking at other planes. Plenty of people were talking on the radio, so we further concluded it was a fluke. We were able to watch some skydivers come down with their bright parasails, and we saw a very interesting Bell helicopter with about 10 Sheriff's deputies arrive and depart, apparently from a search mission to find a downed plane. We got in the plane again to take off, and immediately noticed that there were no radio calls going out. I pulled out my handheld again for comparison, and when my radio was alive with traffic, the plane's radio was completely silent. We decided that it was probably the particular frequency causing a problem, and proceeded with me plugged into the handheld to make calls for traffic. After getting out of the Bremerton area, I got back on the plane's radio, and called Approach again to get flight-following to Paine. Everything seemed well, and reinforced the idea that the particular frequency at Bremerton was the problem. Then, as we passed the north part of Seattle, and into Edmonds and the Everett area, I noticed that the radio went silent. Normally, there are calls every 2-5 seconds on the Approach frequency, so this was unusual. I called them, but got no response. Cursing in my mind, I scrambled again for the handheld. I couldn't raise Approach on the handheld, so I tried calling the Paine tower. According to the GPS, we were circling just outside their airspace, and legally I needed to make radio contact with them before I could enter the airspace. Of course, in the scramble, I couldn't remember what the transponder code was for lost comms, so I was doubly happy when I was able to raise the tower with the little radio. After that, landing wasn't a problem, and we made it back to Northway with little additional fuss. I told Jim, the proprietor, that the radio was out and he looked at me like I was crazy. I noticed when he asked one of his employees to check it out, he said, "these guys claim the radio's out..." as if I were a drunk who'd just walked in wanting to cash a particularly wrinkled check. Still, at least he seemed to be taking it seriously -- it would truly suck for the next person to get up in the air and discover that the airplane was lacking such a vital component. Radio goofiness aside, it was a really fun flight. Now, I want to do more flying. Maybe I can find someone to rent me a few hours in a Piper Tomahawk (there were several parked at Bremerton)... Posted at 00:21 permanent link category: /aviation Fri, 12 Mar 2004
I sort of passed over a mental road block yesterday, and started It looks like one must become a business (in the sense of getting a business license), and sign on as a private contractor with ESC. I'm sure that's so they don't have to fuss with all the extra paperwork of hiring instructors as full employees. So it would mean I'd have extra tax stuff to take care of. I'm still not clear on how much extra complication that would add to my life. Another factor that I'm thinking hard about is the impact on my free time. I already feel like I lack free time, but upon reflection it's usually that I don't spend the free time I have very well. So maybe it wouldn't be that big a deal. I have to wonder why exactly I want to do this. I think it's because I want to help people become better riders. Certainly, a lot of my website is oriented toward educating people, in one form or another -- either with reviews, or pictures, or how-to articles. I just set up the Beginner's Section on the front page of my motorcycle site, which is definitely aimed at helping new riders learn more and hopefully become better riders. I'm not really interested in instructing for the money. Don't get me wrong, I'll take it, but that's not a motivating factor. The thought of being able to write off motorcycle-related purchases as business expenses is somewhat fascinating. I kind of wonder what the laws surrounding that are. Anyway. Who knows if that'll actually go anywhere. In other news, the Le Mans is still sitting partially unassembled at Moto International. MGNA still hasn't shipped them the connecting rod bolts, which should have arrived with the case, back in mid January. According to an email Micha showed me, the bolts never arrived at MGNA from Italy, and it's probably a shipping company problem. Still. We're working on about 6 weeks, at this point. That's getting into the realm of "unacceptable." I'd really like to be able to ride the Le Mans again, if only so I can sit in my ridiculously expensive seat a bit. Posted at 11:26 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 07 Mar 2004
So, I had a sudden memory an hour or so ago. I was thinking about Then I remembered the following episode: At the age of 16 (around 1988, musta been), I was at a friend's house, being social. He had several friends over, and one of them had arrived on a 50cc Honda scooter. Probably an Elite, but I don't recall now. We were all admiring this scooter, and discussing how cool it would be to have a scooter like that (what can I say, we were 16, in a suburb of Seattle). Eventually, discussion got around to what it was like to ride such a machine, which sort of inevitably lead to the owner offering to let people ride it around the block. This being the suburbs, and one of those obnoxious suburban developments, "around the block" was at least a quarter mile, possibly more, through uncontrolled intersections. I think someone else went before me, sort of breaking the two-wheeled ice. When my turn came, I probably said something like, "cool, yeah!" and hopped on. I do remember having a helmet shoved on my head, but I don't remember what kind (ie, full face or 3/4 helmet). Other than that, I had my thin wool overshirt and jeans, and probably sneakers on. I don't remember if gloves were provided, but I'm guessing they were. Fortunately, I was familiar enough with the neighborhood that there was no danger of getting lost, and I knew enough to be careful through intersections, and ride conservatively. I mounted up and felt the thrill course through my body as I twisted the throttle and heard the tiny motor spin up with a "WINN-inn-ninn-ninn". I rode my chosen route without much incident, and was approaching the final turn to my friend's house when suddenly the world spun around me. I seem to recall my memory of the crash being this sort of instantaneous transition, going from riding to being on the ground with the scooter beside me. My friends came running down the street to see if I was alright. Fortunately, I couldn't have been going more than 15-20 MPH, and I didn't have any serious damage from the crash. I had a 3" length of road rash on my left forearm, near the elbow, but my overshirt was covering it, so all I had was the rash, with no gravel-picking involved. The scooter wasn't badly hurt either, with a broken left front blinker and a few scratches. The owner was surprisingly gracious and didn't ask me to pay for any of the damage. Reconstructing the crash afterwards, what had happened was that I came into this T intersection, turning left, at 15-20 MPH. Mid-way through the turn, I had hit a large patch of coarse gravel that had collected in a triangle in the middle of the intersection. I just didn't see it, and as soon as the front wheel hit it, all traction went out the window, and down I went. It's exceedingly fortunate that I wasn't trying to hotrod around the corner or anything. Had I been going much faster, I probably would have had broken bones and a considerably larger amount of road rash to deal with, and the bike would have been in worse shape. Hopefully, now, I will be able to keep this memory in my head, to remind me that there's nothing special about me. ;) Posted at 22:38 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 01 Mar 2004
Over the last two weeks, I've been riding the Ninja a lot, since Before I left for New Zealand, I had adjusted the clutch lever so that the engagement point was further back in the pull, closer to the middle than the far end. The adjustment had been pretty far out at the end, and I did the adjustment mostly to keep the clutch from slipping. Kawasaki recommends a 2-3mm freeplay gap at the lever's pivot, and I had adjusted it for about 4mm. There's nothing wrong with adjusting the gap larger, as long as the clutch is still full disengaged with the lever pulled all the way in. When I got back and started riding again, I noticed that the engagement point seemed to have creeped outward again, so it wasn't very far from the end of the lever travel. It wasn't bad, but I wanted it in the middle, and adjusted it again without thinking much about it. Not long after that, I noticed it seemed to be near the end of the range again! I couldn't figure out what was going on, since the engagement point should be moving inward (with cable stretch), not outward. Someone reminded me that if the clutch plates were shrinking (such as when abused), the engagement point would move as I was seeing. That's all find and good, but I wasn't abusing the clutch. I mean, I was riding exactly the same way I'd been riding for the last 3000 miles. It was really weird. I started formulating theories about the full-synthetic oil melting the plates, or having ridden around with the lever too tight and the plates having entered some "speedy wear" configuration or something. Nothing I could think of made any sense, since I know that these clutches are nearly bulletproof, and people report them lasting 50,000+ miles. I only have 12,800 miles on the bike right now. I even stopped into a Kawasaki dealership to see if their service department had any ideas. Was this some problem in the design that I just wasn't aware of? I had noted that I made an adjustment at 12,650 miles, and by the time 12,700 had arrived, it seemed to be engaging right near the end of the range again. They had no idea how that could happen. I finally solved the mystery last night, after arriving home from a long (and quite fun) ride around the Snohomish Valley. I accidentally bumped the clutch lever outward, away from the handlebar. The end of the lever moved over an inch! It was resting an inch inboard from its fully-extended position. It turns out that I was thinking about things wrong. The clutch springs (which provide all the resistance you feel pulling in the lever) pulled the lever back out as far as they could, which was about an inch from the fully-extended position. Since they never pulled the lever any further out, I had assumed that it was "all the way out." And, since it's only the springs I was working against, the clutch engagement point was always "right near the end" of the travel -- even though the lever could be moved another inch outward. In the total travel of the lever, the engagement point was right in the middle. In the range of travel I felt, it was right at the end. I just never felt the lever move any further out. Problem solved. The clutch isn't dying, I was just visualizing everything wrong. I adjusted the engagement point back out to about where it was supposed to be, and have stopped worrying about it. S'what I get for trying to be clever. Posted at 14:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 28 Feb 2004
I stopped into Moto International yesterday to see when I could No, the word was that it would take two more days to finish ("So, the end of Saturday..." I was thinking to myself). The kink: Jason, the mechanic who would be putting it all back together, is getting married tomorrow (Sunday). He had Friday and today off. sigh. So, the latest word is that the bike will finally be finished on Wednesday -- more than a month after I dropped it off. That's what I get for having "extra" stuff done like engine balancing. Posted at 16:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 26 Feb 2004
I did my first biennial flight review this last weekend. I had To some extent, I have MS Flight Simulator to "blame" for a lot of my navigational knowledge. Up until about MSFS 95 or 98, you really couldn't navigate by looking at the ground. I mean, you could try, and if you had a really good idea of what the ground looked like in real life, it would give you enough of a hint to make it work. Up until then, you really had to know how to use a VOR if you actually wanted to fly from one place to another. Anyway, ground was no problem, but the weather was. As we looked around the airport, the clouds were obscuring the tower. As in, we couldn't really see the tower, even though we were looking where it should have been. Not auspicious. I slung myself down onto the couch in the FBO, and we chatted of this and that. Todd took me out and showed me the panel of one of their new Cessna 172s -- very nice. We looked at the Beech Duchess that Northway rents (but only with an instructor). Eventually, it became obvious that the weather wasn't going to cooperate, and we rescheduled for that afternoon. 4 pm rolled around, and the weather had thankfully cleared up somewhat. It still wasn't ideal, but the clouds had basically cleared off. I preflighted the plane, and we took off. Our plan was to fly out to Arlington (AWO) and back, to work on an approach to a foreign field, as well as generally check out the various phases of flight. As we got up into the air, it became clear that the air wasn't clear. There was a layer of heavy haze limiting visibility significantly. It was still VFR, but it wasn't nice. It took me a good long while to even locate the airport, thanks to the double whammy of not knowing exactly where to look, and not being able to see well through the haze. Finally, after what felt like 5 minutes of looking, I spotted the airport. Todd's instructions on where to look had led me to stare at an empty field, trying to resolve it into an airport that just wasn't where I was looking. Airport located, we looped around to come into the traffic pattern. I announced my position on the Common Traffic Advisory Freqency (usually just called CTAF, pronounced "see-taff"), and started listening in earnest to other airplanes' positions. With Todd's help, we figured out that there were about 5 planes in the pattern, which is a really large number for an uncontrolled field (one with no control tower). We picked the position between planes that we'd enter the traffic pattern, and set about it. I made the turn onto the downwind segment of the pattern, and announced that I was there. (At an uncontrolled field, you announce every time you change anything significant in your position, like moving to different parts of the pattern, or anything that's not "flying in a straight line from where I last reported." This theoretically means that everyone is aware of everyone else's movements). We had joined the pattern behind a plane that can be best described as "pokey." Its' pilot used the callsign "experimental," which means it's probably a kit plane that someone spent 5000 hours building. Whatever it was, it was going sloooow and within a minute we had overtaken it, even after slowing our plane down by over 10 knots. I announced that I was making a wide pattern, to allow the experimental time to land ahead of us, and pulled out to the right, quickly passing the experimental plane. I made my pattern bigger than normal, and left space for the slow plane to land and do whatever it was going to do. As I turned onto the final approach path, another plane cut in front of us! This is the height of rudeness (well, one of them, at least) at an uncontrolled field. Todd called over the radio, asking if the pilot knew that he had just cut us off. He responded that he didn't and gracefully pulled out of the pattern and went around again. At this point, staring down at the close end of the runway, I realized with growing horror that the slow experimental plane was about to land on top of another plane that appeared to be just sitting on the end of the runway. I kept watching as the second plane slowly accelerated out of the way, and took off. I had forgotten how very slow the experimental was moving, but it was still a fairly frightening sight. Finally, it was our turn to land, and I brought the plane down in quite a graceful and pleasant landing. I was quite happy with the landing, particularly as it was my first landing in several months. I pushed the throttle in to the firewall, and prepared to do the "and go" part of the touch and go. However, looking ahead of me, there was the experimental, very slowly lifting off the runway! At this rate, we'd hit it in about 30 seconds. I yanked power back out and announced on the radio that I was going to stay on the runway and taxi around. I was going to fast to make the obvious exit off the runway, so I had to go all the way to the far end before I could turn off. I turned off and called that I was clear of the runway, and started taxiing back around. Todd commented that I seemed to be handling things well, which was nice to hear. The taxi back to the departure end of the runway was uneventful, but we did pass a Beech 18, one of my favorite "when I'm rich" fantasy planes. Todd said it was owned by Methow Aviation, which apparently flies cargo in them still, even though there are numerous cheaper and more economical cargo planes available. At the departure hold-short line, we waited for an airplane that was coming in to land. And we waited. And then, we waited some more. I think it was that experimental that was landing, and it floated down onto the runway at ultralight speed -- very slow. Finally, the experimental was clear of the runway, and I applied the raw power of around 160 horsepower (not much, in aviation terms, but probably twice the engine of that slow experimental). I made a smooth takeoff, and we were up in the air again, into the insane craziness that is the Arlington traffic area. Fortunately, in the intervening time, several of the planes had landed or departed, so we were only sharing the air with two other planes at that moment in time. I reached the traffic pattern altitude, and turned out at 45 degrees in preparation for a turn to the south. Once clear of the area, I turned south, and we headed back to Paine Field. The return trip was fortunately uneventful, and I was able to make another excellent, if slightly off-center, landing. When we got back into the office, Todd gave me a little debriefing. In general, he said, I was doing quite well, but I needed to work on maintaining an altitude when I got there (I had said we'd cruise to Arlington at 2500 feet, but slowly drifted up to 3000). I also needed to work on maintaining the runway centerline when landing, which is a problem I've had for as long as I've been flying. I'm never far off, just not quite centered. So, overall, my first BFR went pretty well. I have a few points to work on, but I also have confirmation that I've been maintaining my skills pretty well, despite only being able to fly an hour every month or two. Posted at 10:33 permanent link category: /aviation Sat, 24 Jan 2004
My, but a lot has been happening lately. As I may have casually mentioned in the ride report, I rode from Seattle to Ocean Shores this last weekend. It was a pretty good ride, although on the cold side. Read the report for the full run-down. When I got back from Ocean Shores, literally the next thing I did was stop in at Rich's Custom Upholstery in North Seattle. That was also its own little adventure, that I'll be writing up more formally. Suffice to say that although I'm glad I did it, I haven't had enough time "in the saddle" to prove to myself that it really was a wise investment. Pretty much as soon as I got home from work on Tuesday (having returned from the trip on Monday), I drained the oil from the Le Mans, preparatory to switching it over to synthetic oil. However, after draining the oil, I discovered that I didn't have the necessary tools to get the oil filter out. On the Le Mans, the oil filter lives inside the sump, behind a big round cover that looks like a manhole cover. It's the same kind of metal can that you find on most cars, just hiding inside the engine. Because of this, the filter access is very limited, and in fact all you can see is the very "top" of the filter, and you have to use an end-cap wrench to get the filter off. The first challenge was to get the manhole cover off. The tool needed to remove it costs around $90 from Moto Guzzi, and they don't even make it any more. The cover's got a 27mm hex hole in it, and the next most obvious answer is a 27mm hex wrench. I found one at Tacoma Screw (a local professional hardware store). It cost a dollar per millimeter, at about $27 before tax. Although that's an acceptable price in the face of the Guzzi tool, the thing probably weighs 5 pounds (perhaps more), and is more than a foot long. (If you've seen a "normal" sized hex key, the 27mm is the same ratio of sizes, so it's huge.) The recommendation I got for an alternate tool was an M18 metric bolt with a couple of nuts threaded on it, and locked together. That's actually why I was at Tacoma Screw, but the salesperson grabbed the 27mm wrench just in case I wanted "the real thing." An M18 bolt has a 27mm head, so it will fill the role of a 27mm hex wrench, when coupled with a wrench of suitable size. The best solution would be one of these M18 nuts welded to an appropriate handle, or to a 3/8" drive socket. Anyway, this bolt-and-nuts combination did the trick pretty well, after spending some quality time with the vice, getting the nuts well and truly tightened together. I got the cover off, to reveal the white oil filter sitting tantalizingly close to freedom. You have to understand, it had taken me three days to get to this point, between draining the oil and getting that manhole cover off. I really wanted to get done with it, so I grabbed the filter wrench I'd acquired, and started turning. Unfortunately, the wrench just turned on the filter, no matter what I tried. The filter appeared to be welded in place, it was on there so tightly. So, I recalled at this point, I had read that you could poke a screwdriver through the filter, and use it for leverage on really tough filters. I grabbed a scratch awl to make the initial hole, and a medium-sized screwdriver to do the actual turning. All was going well, but the screwdriver I had grabbed was just bending. I selected a larger flathead, and pounded it in place. Finally, after a surprisingly hard series of whacks from the mallet, the filter started turning. I ended up having to punch several more holes before the wrench would turn the filter. Finally, the filter was out, and peering into the sump, it didn't appear that I'd done any damage to the engine case. I had the bright (ha ha) idea to check with a flashlight, and found to my dismay that I had actually scratched the hell out of and deformed what appeared to be a copper tube running near the floor of the oil pan. I couldn't be sure whether I'd punctured it or not, but I wasn't going to take chances. I looked through the service manual, and after several minutes of searching, finally found the tube in a diagram. There was no indication of what it was for, but it appeared to be related to the oil pressure regulation system. Of course, before finding it in the manual, I spent several hours fantasizing about what sort of hell I was in for. Was it attached to the pan? The crankcase? I had no idea, and had the complete and total sinking feeling that I had let myself in for many hundreds of dollars worth of repair parts. I called Moto International the next day, and got the list price of the part I'd mangled: $92. Yow! I guess that's the price I pay for being impatient. Anyway, the same day I called to find out about this tube, I was informed that my warranty engine case replacement had arrived. I hadn't really been waiting with bated breath or anything, but I was glad to hear it finally arrived. I made arrangements to get the Le Mans into the shop for the swap. I just watched my bike get carted off in Dave's truck (Dave wrote Guzziology) to have the engine case swapped, and the moving parts balanced. Woot! Hopefully this replacement tube will arrive in time for it to be installed into the "new" engine. Pretty good timing, actually. Posted at 11:05 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 11 Jan 2004
I picked up the new fork springs for the Ninja a few days ago, and Anyway, installing the new springs was a challenge, but not for long. The hardest part was getting out the ridiculous interior circlip holding the spring cap in. Since Kawasaki was too cheap to design something with an actual circlip that can be accessed by normal circlip pliers, it ended up taking three tools (and about as many hands) to actually get the clip out. It's just a piece of wire, so I had to use one implement to push down on the spring cap, jam a small flatblade screwdriver under the clip to keep it from spinning, and use the smallest flatblade screwdriver I had to lever it out of the groove. Riding the bike, there is a significant difference from the old springs. The front end feels immensely more composed. Stopping is no longer an exercise in front-end dive. Hard braking now results in perhaps 40% compression of the front end. It's an amazing difference. The ride is also more juddering, and much more like a normal sportbike. I suspect that something like a .65 or .70 kg/mm spring would have been a better choice for maintaining the Ninja's "city bike" feeling. Unfortunately, the lightest spring Race Tech makes is a .75 kg/mm, so it was the best choice in any case. In all, a fabulous upgrade to the Ninja. In combination with the Ninja 500 rear shock, the bike is much better composed and set up for my weight. I think the rear shock could actually use a slightly stiffer spring, but it's good enough for now. So, hey, yay for a well set-up bike! Posted at 22:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 08 Jan 2004
I got the new BT-020 front tire installed on the Le Mans today. I Suffice to say that I'm not crazy enough to ride a motorcycle with street tires in the snow, so I didn't make my Tuesday appointment. I had been planning to bring the Le Mans in this morning, but forgot all about it by the time I was getting prepared in the garage, and hopped on the Ninja. As I was about 3 minutes from Moto International, I mentally slapped my forehead as I remembered what my clever plan was. I decided I could deal with it at lunch. Indeed, lunch worked out to be a fine time to do it. I dropped in (having gone home to switch bikes) and set them about the task. I hung out in the showroom, waiting to talk to Dave, who was on the phone. He was the right person to borrow a bike from, so I needed to wait for him until I could actually leave -- my plan was to go back to work, and retrieve my bike on the way home. Time stretched on, and Dave was still on the phone. I wandered between the shop and the showroom, occasionally checking to see if he was still on the phone. Eventually I just hung out in the shop, watching Micha change the tire. It was an interesting process to watch, and I'm glad I did -- I feel more comfortable with the process, having seen him do it. Even though he was using neato, purpose-designed equipment, I got a good feel for what actually goes into changing a tire. I feel like, if I were faced with changing a tire on the road, I could do it now. Anyway, we had one little side-adventure. Micha eventually agreed to go prep a Scarabeo 150 as a loaner bike so I could get back to work. He got it putting on its centerstand, and a license plate attached. Preparatory to getting on and riding away, I grabbed one of the brake levers, and noticed that the left blinker indicator lit up as I did so. I poked around a little bit, and discovered that either brake lever would do it, and both left signal lights would come on in sync with the brake light. In fact, the left blinker didn't work at all, although the right one did. Micha and I agreed that maybe riding a bike like this wasn't the best idea, so I went back inside and kept waiting for Dave. Eventually, Micha had finished my bike, so I just paid my tab and logged the lost time to education. Riding back into work, the bike immediately felt better balanced, but I'm not going to have the real measure of it until 50 or 100 miles have passed and the tire is scrubbed in. Given the wet conditions (there's still dirty snow heaped up by the side of the road), and the potentially slick tire, I was being very careful. It didn't feel like it was falling into the corner as much as the Pilot Road, though, so it's an immediate improvement. So, I now have a Pilot Road for sale, with a mere 284 miles on it. Posted at 15:20 permanent link category: /motorcycle Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
![[Out of the fog]](images/img_4640-md.jpg)
![[Me and the Le Mans in some nice sunlight]](images/img_4641-md.jpg)
![[The Le Mans with Mt. Rainier]](images/img_4646-md.jpg)
![[Nighthawk 250 and GZ250 rigs at sunset]](images/sidecar-sunset-md.jpg)
![[EVT scooter, front]](images/evt-168-front-md.jpg)
![[Picture of the crack, #1]](../guzzi/bar-failure/images/img_3867-md.jpg)
![[Picture of the crack, #2]](../guzzi/bar-failure/images/img_3869-md.jpg)
![[The seat after day 2 of work]](images/seat-day-2.jpg)
![[The seat after ~2 hours of work]](images/rough-seat.jpg)
![[Horn installation]](../ninja/images/horns.jpg)
![[Just one horn]](../ninja/images/one-horn.jpg)
![[picture]](../../random/newboots.jpg){kind=link}
