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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Sat, 28 May 2005
The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems to keep the In the last three months, I've pulled the Le Mans out to ride four times. Three of those were in the last week, as I started feeling guilty about how long it'd been sitting there, unused. That doesn't seem right, particularly when the Le Mans is the only bike on which I'm making payments, and has the highest insurance premium of all of them. Part of the thinking is that if I'd done this trip to Kent (which is not a real trip-worthy place, if you're not familiar with it, it's just where I happened to be going today) on the Ninja 250, it would have worked just fine. The bike's a little light on weight and horsepower to make a really good freeway cruiser, but it does the job very well in any case. What I would have missed from the Le Mans is mostly the ease with which I could pass any traffic I wanted to. The thing is, I very rarely go long distances on the freeway. I got the Le Mans to be the long-trip bike, but have so far taken exactly two longish trips on it: one to Ocean Shores (for which the Ninja would have admittedly been marginal) and one to Portland (for which the Ninja was fine when I did the trip on it a few months earlier). Now that I have the Goldwing rig, I have far more carrying capacity with the sidecar than I ever could with the saddlebags on the Le Mans, and the Goldwing is certainly a capable distance bike. It's not "riding a motorcycle" in the sense of being able to lean gracefully through curves, but it has its own joys. Bottom line is that after today's ride, selling the Le Mans sounds like a better idea than it has in a while, where I had thought the opposite would be true. That surprised me. I had expected that taking a trip on the Le Mans (even a short trip to an otherwise unremarkable destination) would remind me just how much I like it, and how worthwhile it would be to keep it. Sure enough, I was reminded how much I like riding it, but I was also thinking a lot during the trip, "gee, this would be fine on the Ninja." If it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself, that's partially because I am. Logically, I should probably keep the bike. It would lose me a fair whack of change to sell it, not to mention the tens of hours I've invested in working on it, installing new handlebars and intercom/radio, etc. But emotionally, every time I see it sitting there, thin layer of dust covering all the bodywork, I cringe a bit and wonder why I'm still holding on to it. I'm trying to work the logical and emotional together into the same place. I thought I'd done that earlier, when I decided I'd hold onto it through the summer and see again what I thought then. Now I'm not so sure that's the right plan. Jesse mentioned that something I could do would be to post an ad on Craigslist listing my "ideal" price, and if I got any action from that, go ahead and sell it. If I didn't then it's probably still worthwhile to hold on to it. That's a pretty good idea, and I have a feeling I'm going to pursue it. *sigh* "Motorcycle angst." That evening.... I just sat down and made a rough draft template for the headlight bracket I'd like to put on the Goldwing:
This is my first try, so I don't know that it's what I'll finally go with, but it's probably close. The height has to remain at least that large, unless I switch to a side-by-side design, which is unlikely. The vertically stacked design is just too convenient as far as attaching the whole assembly to the existing bracket. Since I don't have extensive metalworking facilities, it's got to stay pretty simple or I won't be able to make it. Although it's tempting to try to find someone who can make something prettier, that sounds beyond my (very meagre) budget. Also, I really want to get it done soon, so I can drive the sidecar rig again. It's been sitting for far too long. I also took some detail pictures of the EML front wheel brake carrier and caliper for someone who requested them:
Posted at 20:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 21 May 2005
How frustrating: I had to take trip number four to deal with So, I'm now passing time while the bearing cools down in the freezer. That's frustrating too, since I really wanted today to be as productive as possible. I have all the parts I need, I should have been able to Just Work. I did take a moment to install the new wire brush wheel in the grinder I got this week. I may have to trim it a bit, since it seems to be brushing against the guard to some extent. Not badly, but it's certainly not a clear fit. So, with a bit more care, soon to be pounding in the new bearing. Maybe I'll use a smaller hammer this time... Mere moments later... I just discovered that there are two 6003 bearings in each brake caliper carrier. They feel like they've got sand in them. I had thought I was going to have to wait until Monday to deal with this, but I just called Seattle Cycle Center, and they have "lots of them." Woo! Hours later... Actually, upon closer examination, those bearings don't need to be replaced. They never spin (which probably explains why they're in such horrible shape). But as shaft spacers, which is all they're doing, they're in great shape. Finally finished the brakes and the front wheel. That was about five jobs all going at once. I'm really glad I finally got that part finished. "All" that's left now is the headlights and the turn signal. Some other day. Posted at 16:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 18 May 2005
The headlights have arrived, and are pretty cool. A bit bigger The bearings for the front wheel have ended up being a big pain in the butt. I went down on Monday to buy replacements, having called around until I found a bearing shop that had them in stock. I picked up the new bearings and a new dust seal for the side that has one (the other side has the speedo drive). I went to Sears and got a socket that appeared to be about the right size to drive the bearings in. I put the bearings in the freezer to shrink them down a little bit, and went to check the socket's fit. Damn! Too big. I'll have to grind it down (and finally got a bench grinder last night, which I've been wanting for years now). Ok, well, maybe between the freezer and the heat gun, the bearing will go in without the socket. I grabbed the bearing from the freezer, and walked out to the garage. I put the bearing in place, and it was waaay too small! What the heck is going on? I actually wondered for a second if the cold had actually shrunk it that much. No, no chance. But yes, I did in fact get the wrong bearings. Argh! It turns out that I wrote down the wrong number when talking to one of the bearing houses. I had a 6303 bearing in my hand, pulled out of the bike, and I ended up writing down 6302. Ooops. So naturally, when I got to the actual store where I was buying the bearings, I read off what I'd written down, rather than reading the number off the bearing itself. *sigh* It turns out the 6302 bearing has a 41mm outer diameter, and the 6303 has a 47mm OD. Yeah, that's a lot of shrinking. So, I went back yesterday to exchange them. No luck -- they had a set of 6303s in stock, but they were of Chinese manufacture, and when I looked at the guy behind the counter and said, "would you trust your life to these bearings?" he looked down and replied, "yeah, I guess I would" after a pause. Not a ringing endorsement. He called his Tacoma store, and determined that they had a set of Japanese bearings (which I'm much more inclined to trust) in stock, and had them transferred up. So, today, I made trip #3 down to South Seattle for a pair of simple bearings. What a pain. But at least I finally have the right ones. Of course, now, I don't have any time to work on it until Saturday. D'oh! I blame my busy schedule. On the positive side, I now know many times more about bearings than I did in the past. I mean, .01 times 4 still isn't very much, but at least it's more. I now feel comfortable removing bearings, and I have some ideas of the nomenclature and variations of bearings. I think I was scared off by the idea of having to heat the wheel and wield a big hammer. I guess I got over that. On the headlight front, I was able to determine that the headlights will in fact fit in the space I have, and fairly handily, too. It's going to look pretty cool when it's all done. The aluminum stock I got at Boeing Surplus will work perfectly, and is plenty strong enough for the job. Fortunately, the light modules are quite light. With any luck, I can get it all done in under about 10 hours of work. I'm hoping for less than 5 hours, but 10 is probably more realistic. Posted at 17:11 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 15 May 2005
I have successfully changed the front tire of the sidecar rig, On my way home last night, from a late-night theatrical thing-bobber, I stopped counting drunk drivers after I got to 5. Nothing untoward happened, fortunately, but I was riding in super-paranoid mode. It was really scary to watch the person in front of me weave part-way out of their lane, while the person behind me comes up too fast, and the person to my right is just hanging out in my blind spot, doing god knows what. Ick. All this was in the space of about 5 miles, from downtown Seattle to North Seattle. This is one of the reasons I don't end up staying out for a lot of late-night events on weekends. Anyway, on the sidecar wheel, it was surprisingly hard to get the tire off the wheel, considering how little the bead actually seated. No "snaps" at all. I suspect that if this tire deflates, it'll come right off the rim, unlike a "real" tubeless tire. So for all that it's holding pressure with no tube, it doesn't offer all the advantages of a better-produced tubeless rim. I guess it was also very hard to get the bead broken, so maybe I'm worried over nothing. I've picked up the aluminum sheet I need to build the headlight bracket for the Goldwing, but I still don't have a saw blade for cutting aluminum. That'll probably be the same trip when I go to get replacement bearings. All I can say is that Boeing Surplus is a wonderful place. I spent about $8 on aluminum sheet that would have cost me about $80 if I'd bought it at Lowes. Lowes isn't the right place to be buying sheetmetal, but it's an interesting reference point. Hopefully, the headlight modules will come in on Monday or Tuesday, and I can start figuring out how it's all going to fit together. Posted at 12:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 13 May 2005
I know this isn't strictly motorcycle related, but I'm very glad I In actual motorcycle news, the brake parts for the sidecar are trickling in. I hope that I'll be able to get the brakes assembled by the end of the weekend, although that still leaves the headlight and turn signal to be dealt with. Apparently the headlights shipped out on the 10th, so I'm hoping I'll see them come Monday or Tuesday. I have a clever plan to mount them: I'm going to get some aluminum at Boeing Surplus (being a cheap bastard like I am), and make up a bracket that looks kind of like this:
It will bolt on where the "inertial damper" weight was attached before, and will be constructed of three plates bolted to angle stock. It should look pretty good, and will be a decent mounting solution for the lights. Here's hoping they're not super heavy for some reason. But that should allow me to get the headlights mounted up with a relative minimum of fuss. My tasks now are to get myself to Boeing Surplus for some aluminum, to Tacoma Screw for some black oxide metric bolts (I hate mixing SAE and metric parts if I can possibly avoid it), and to figure out whether I need to get a different blade for my mitre saw to cut aluminum. I probably do, but I'll get plenty of use out of it if I get one. Posted at 14:23 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 07 May 2005
Today is my next big "get the sidecar running again" day. It's For one, my new brake lines came yesterday, so I'm that much closer to having the brakes done. Of course, the banjo bolts they sent along with the lines are all wrong, for various reasons. The master cylinder bolt is wrong because the bolt bottoms out before it can compress the banjo fittings. That's a relatively easy hacksaw job if it comes down to that, which it probably will. Apparently Galfer's banjo fittings are slightly narrower than those of most other brands, so they have their own special banjo bolts. I called Cyclebrakes today (they're open from 9 to 12 on Saturdays, woo!) and discussed the situation with them: I guess they sent me the one and only type of double-banjo bolt in fine pitch thread they have. So, they probably won't be able to get me a different one, thus the hacksaw remedy. They also sent fine-pitch bolts for the calipers, and it turns out the calipers need the coarser thread. I'd just use the bolts that came off them, but wa-hey, the Galfer banjo fittings are too narrow. Boo! So, they probably do have those in stock, so I'll get a new set sent out on Monday. As soon as those come in, and the bracket kit comes into Moto International, I'll be able to put it all together. Also today, I removed the last vestiges of the big Goldwing fairing. This was much harder than I was expecting, because it involved partially disassembling the sidecar mount(!) to remove the support bracket for the fairing. But I got it all off, and although there are some rubbed spots where the fairing and bits were hitting the bike and moving, it looks pretty good. I'm really looking forward to riding the rig without those freakin' leg deflectors that were keeping moving air off my legs. I was boiling, with the engine right there! My friend Jesse thinks I'm kind of crazy for removing all the fairing pieces, but he also looks at a Goldwing and sees a potential nasty-weather commuter that'll keep the rain off him. I agree, it does have that side effect, but I ride the Ninja year round without minding the basically non-existent weather protection there. I think I prefer to have the weather hit me, because the trade-off of being too warm in summer would literally keep me from riding. Getting wet in winter doesn't bug me so much. On the headlight/electrical front, I got the last piece of fairing-related wiring off the bike (well, excepting the big antenna, which is going soon, but that's easy). I also finally have a Plan for the headlights. I'm going to use the bracket that's there, which was holding up the 3 pound "inertial damper" weight, as the basis for my bracket. The bracket itself will be based on a plate which coincidentally covers up the mass of wires hiding behind that weight, and will support the two headlight modules in a vertically stacked arrangement. It'll take some time to build, but I think it should be a good solution. I think my next task is to get the handlebars finalized. To do that, I have to drill some locator holes for the switchgear (which has little studs that go into the holes to keep it all from twisting or shifting on the bar). Once that's done, I can bolt it all together, which will be one more task accomplished. Hooray! Then, it's just brakes and headlight to get the rig legally rolling again. Later... Cool, finished the handlebars up. Bar-end mirrors, and everything's hooked up. There's some clean up that could happen, but it's good enough to ride on now, so I'll call it good on that front. After doing that, I decided I'd had enough for the day, so I cleaned up, and pulled out the rig to reposition the Le Mans (I really need a better/bigger storage space). Figured as long as it was out, I'd take some pictures:
If you look closely, you'll see that the new master cylinder is in place, but the brake lines aren't attached yet. Since I'm still waiting on the very important attachy-bits, it seems silly to even bother with trying to hook anything up. I was pleased to find that the custom, unreturnable lines I'd ordered were in fact long enough with the new master cylinder and with the suspension fully extended. It was a bit of a gamble, since I ordered the lines before I had the new master cylinder in hand, and I hadn't owned a jack at the time I placed the order. Of course, I got a jack a day or two later, and it would have been far less risky to wait for that to order the lines. Ah well. It all worked out. Posted at 17:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 05 May 2005
I just picked up a new Brembo master cylinder from Moto I finished rebuilding calipers last night, and I can safely say that they're in far better shape now! The old seals were actually working fine, but the pistons and chambers in the calipers were pretty gross. There was a lot of evil-looking crud built up in there. I'm glad I got it all cleaned out. The calipers "float" from side to side, so that they can meet up with the disc precisely, and the float pins were all dry and clearly not lubricated like they needed to be. Fortunately, getting them out wasn't too hard, and I didn't have to resort to heat or drastic measures to free them. Steel bolts in aluminum calipers -- very easy to get them seized up. All were reassembled with antiseize compound so the next person who has to do that doesn't end up cursing my name. It's a decent chance it'll be me doing that work, and it would be a horrible thing to have to curse myself. Anyway, the whole thing has been put back together with proper lubrication everywhere it's supposed to be, all the grunge cleaned out, and all made as beautiful as 23 year old brake calipers can be made. Now I just have to wait for the new brake lines and the reservoir bracket to show up, and I can hook the brakes back up. Yay for functional brakes! Before everything goes together, though, I have to sort out what the heck I'm going to do about the headlight situation. Everything else is pretty straightforward. I mentioned before about the Hella lights from rallylights.com, and I still think those will work, but it's going to be interesting getting them mounted and set up. Where the headlight would normally be mounted, there was a weight attached to the forks, which helped prevent a headshake when the fairing was attached. With the fairing gone (particularly with a huge sidecar steering damper attached), it's no longer needed, but that leaves this big nest of wires exposed. The new headlights will be in front of that spot, but what to do with the wires is an open question. Apparently, some of them are just extensions to the connector that went to the fairing, but there are far more there than those that went to the fairing. I'm going to have to spend a few hours tracing through them all to figure out what they do, and what I need to do with them. Should be an interesting exercise. Posted at 13:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 03 May 2005
I've spent the last two nights working on the Goldwing's brakes. I Rebuilding and cleaning the calipers has been very satisfying yet also frustrating. I don't really have the right tools to clean all the crevices as I'd like, although I was able to get one side finished today so that I'm fairly confident it's back to perfect health. The only thing I couldn't clean up was some slight rust pitting on the exposed ends of the pistons. Fortunately they're, well, exposed, so it's not a big deal. At $30 each to replace, it would make more sense to simply buy new calipers than replace the pistons. Anyway, it's nice to make some progress on the brakes, finally. There's still a lot of work to do on the Goldwing before it's roadworthy. I pulled off the "inertial damper" (ie, 3 pound slug of iron) from the front of the forks today, to reveal a rat's nest of wiring that'll have to be sorted out and dealt with before I can get the bike back on the road again. Not quite sure how I'm going to deal with all that. But, progress is progress. Slowly but surely, the Goldwing is improving. Posted at 23:20 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 01 May 2005
This weekend was chock-full of motorcycle maintenance and stuff. Using a C-clamp, I got the beads off the rim, and took the tire off using some borrowed tire irons (have to get some of my own very soon). I located the plug on the inside, and noticed that it wasn't quite perfectly installed, with the mushroom lip a little bit pinched in two places. Not bad at all, but I probably could have pulled on the plug even harder when I installed it. It was a simple matter to push the plug out, and I prepared the hole for one of the mushroom plugs (the big kind) I'd purchased. I abraded the area around the wound, applied rubber cement, and let it dry. I pulled the patch/plug through until it was seated, and stitched it from the center out (stitching is done with a kind of lightly toothed wheel called, interestingly enough, a stitching wheel). When I was stitching it, though, the patch seemed to be awfully mobile, and not really sticking at all. I decided to see how it'd worked anyway, and remounted the tire to the rim. Remounting the tire was almost more work than dismounting it. Just getting the tire over the edges of the rim was a lot of work. Seating the bead was remarkably easy, since I had the valve core out, and the air chuck was able to pass a lot of air very quickly. The beads seated with twin BANGS! (although not as loud as I was expecting), and I reinstalled the valve core and filled it up to 40 PSI. When the air compressor shut off, I was admiring my work when I heard a faint hissssssss. Crap! I located the hissing noise, and sure enough, it was the patched hole. Muttering to myself, I dismounted the tire again (C-clamp, lubricate, levers, rim protectors, dammit, rim protectors again, levers, pull! move! urrrrgh! argh, different lever so I can use this one over here, mutter). The patch hadn't really stuck down at all, there was just one tiny spot on the patch that looked like it had been vulcanizing. I followed the instructions pretty closely, but it really wasn't working. I grabbed the second patch (I'd bought a set of two: one medium, one small, and had installed the small) and looked it over. It was going to be a really really tight fit, but I figured I could make it work. Long story short, it worked, but it didn't feel much like it was sticking any better than the first one. The plug part was a bit oversized for the hole, and I suspect that it's that oversized-ness that's really sealing the hole. The patch didn't seem to be sticking. I suspect it's going to fail at some point, and when the new patches show up I'm probably going to redo it. I suspect that the patches I bought were old, like 5ish years old. I'm kind of annoyed by that, since self-vulcanizing patches like this are pretty much dead after 2 years. Anyway, I feel pretty good about the whole tire-changing routine, and no longer need worry about finding a shop to do it. The rest of Saturday was spent getting the fairing off the Goldwing, which was far more involved than it should have been. That thing is indeed heavy, and I bet by the time I'm done, the Goldwing will be 70ish pounds lighter. Today (Sunday), I pulled off the handlebars on the Goldwing and tried fitting the spare handlebars. It looks that will work pretty well. I still have to figure out what kind of fairing I want to put on, although I think for now I'll just run without a fairing at all. I'm going to get some very neat-looking Hella headlights from rallylights.com, which will require some fabrication to get it all mounted up. And, finally, I was able to figure out how long the new brake lines need to be. That was the whole purpose of this days-long exercise, so I'm glad I got it done. I can order those lines as soon as Moto International is open on Tuesday, and hopefully it won't be more than a week or two before they arrive. I got the newer master cylinder taken apart and cleaned up, too. It looked fine inside, and the seals appeared to be alright. It was nice to get it all cleaned up and inspected. I still have to figure out what size of banjo bolt to order for the new master cylinder, although I measured the threaded section of the banjo bolt at 18mm, and I'm pretty sure a bolt with a threaded section of 15mm would fit right (18mm bottoms out with about 2mm to spare). Posted at 22:19 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. |
