Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Fri, 29 Feb 2008

So close I can taste it

The race bike progresses very well. I confirmed that the cam timing is correct (well, at least that the camshaft is as aligned with the crankshaft -- there's an alignment dot on the right side of the camshaft gear). I've replaced all the case screws I'm likely to replace.

I have three things that aren't yet done before it's streetable:

1. Shifter linkage: I need to make a longer linkage rod to make my shifter setup work correctly. The stock CBR600 F2 length (which is where I got my shifter) is about 2.75" too short. I've gone around on this about the best way to do it, and I've finally settled on threading a new rod -- the key trick is that one end needs to be left-hand threaded. Finding a 6mm LH threading die is no simple task, but I've finally got a couple of reasonable leads.

2. Clutch springs: The manual I have says the clutch springs should have a free length of 32 mm and change. Mine are 28.3mm. The F-160 list says that even new springs don't hit the "normal" length, but 4mm is quite a difference from the nominal service limit. So, I've got some new racing springs on order, but it'll be some time next week before they show up.

3. Cleaning the oil filter: Apparently, there's a kind of centrifugal filter in these bikes, which needs to be cleaned out every so often. Unfortunately, no art of man which I've been able to apply has cracked it open. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if it's just really stubborn. This is the only thing that's really holding me back from starting the motor for the first time. Unfortunately again, the manual describes an opening process which clearly doesn't apply to my bike. I should ping the list and see what the story is.

Fortunately, of all those things, only the third really stops me from starting the motor tomorrow, and it's not a sufficiently big deal that I'd have to delay too much. It's important, yes, but much more important than cleaning it now is that I want to be able to clean it mid-breakin.

Speaking of breakin, I'm going to follow the same procedure I did with my current Ninja 250. It worked really well for the 250, so I don't see any reason to avoid it on the CL175. It's described, at least in abstract, in this article. The basic summary is to progress through a series of increasingly-strenuous runs, starting with idle, and running up through full-power up-to-redline blasts. Once again, I'm glad I'm riding a little, underpowered bike -- doing this kind of breakin on a "real" street bike results in super-legal speeds, commonly even in 1st gear.

I'm looking forward to trying to start the wee beastie tomorrow. All I really have to do is button up the case again (it's apart on the clutch side as I dealt with clutch springs), pour in oil and gas, and start pushing/kicking. I have no idea how difficult it'll be to start. I think I left the carburetors in reasonable adjustment...

Posted at 23:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle

Advanced math

I finally caved and got an iPod last night. My old MP3 player finally pissed me off enough that I don't want to mess with it any more.

Anyway, the iPod is a demanding beast, and requires that it basically sync with one computer. All my mp3 files are currently on my work computer, but that's not a good situation to carry forward with the iPod for a variety of reasons.

This led me to wonder, as I was loading my mp3s up onto an external hard drive, what exactly is the bandwidth of my bicycle?

It's a 500 GB drive. It takes me 30 minutes to ride home. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the drive is 100% full of data.

500 GB/30 minutes is 16 and 2/3 GB per minute. Divide that by 60 to get seconds, and we get .277 GB/s. Multiply by 1024 to get megabytes, and I see that my bicycle is capable of 284.4 MB/s, or 162x faster than my 14 Mb/s (small b means bits instead of bytes, or a factor of 8) internet connection.

Not bad.

Posted at 10:53 permanent link category: /bicycle

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.