Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
The cold starts are always the hardest
I decided to try riding the Ninja 250 into work today, my first "practical" use of the bike, rather than riding around trying to break in the engine. A fine plan, but fraught with difficulty.
As I mentioned a few posts down, my bike came with the apparently mis-adjusted carburetors. In the last day or two, I'd actually thought they got better, but this morning cured me of that freakish delusion.
The morning was cool, perhaps mid 60s Fahrenheit. I pulled the bike out, and put on my helmet and gloves. I hopped aboard and hit the starter button. It was a bit fiddly, but by very careful (sub-millimetric) manipulation of the choke lever, I was able to get the bike to idle at a decent speed.
I knew I'd have to wait a moment for the engine to warm up, so wait I did. I tried putting the bike in gear after a minute or two, which killed it (the first shift in the morning usually finds the clutch plates sticking together, since they're immersed in oil, which can kill the motor if you're not holding some throttle on).
I uttered a gentle "crap!" to myself, and restarted the bike. The idle was dancing, possibly like a ballerina. Up, and down. Up and down. But I wasn't touching the throttle. Hmm. I tried adjusting the choke a bit, to see if the bike would be happier with a bit less. Putt -putt-putt... putt... silence. Ok, that didn't work.
The engine started again, idle once again dancing up and down. I'll save you the time and jump to the end of the story: I sat atop that bike for a bit over 10 minutes this morning, occasionally killing and restarting it, waiting for it to do whatever it needed to do. Trying to add any throttle would immediately pull the engine speed down as if I'd switched off the key. Finally, it was running just well enough that I could pull away and down the street, the engine hiccoughing and bucking any time I tried to speed up. This just isn't acceptable.
Fortunately, mysterious as this all sounds, each of these symptoms points squarely at the problem I'd already identified. I just have to pull off the carburetors, remove the silly EPA caps, and adjust the idle mixture screws back to a sane value. I think this weekend will see me taking the carbs off. My previous Ninja 250 didn't have this problem even remotely. No reason this one should, they're practically identical bikes.
At least once it's warm, it runs and idles fine. Getting to "warm" is just a huge pain right now. Good thing it's not winter time, or I'd have to wait 20 or 30 minutes to leave in the morning.
Posted at 14:19 permanent link category: /motorcycle
I'm laughing, but I'm crying on the inside
I contacted Maxton Suspension about the possibility they made a Ninja 250 rear shock yesterday. I didn't have very high hopes, but I figured what the heck, choice is good.
I wasn't particularly expecting a speedy response, so I was surprised when I opened my email this morning and found a message from Maxton. It reads as follows:
Ian Thanks for your enquiry, unfortunately this year we have been unsuccessful in obtaining product liability cover for the United States. Whilst we have every confidence in our product, we are also very wary of the legal system in the U.S. I apologise about this, we had been enjoying building up a customer base in the U.S and dealing with your country. Regards Richard Adams Maxton Engineering
Yep, that's... well, that's about right.
Posted at 08:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater