Stuff-mo-tron

Sun, 30 Mar 2008

The day was essentially a success: I didn't fall down, I completed all the practices and races I went out for, and the bike ran great. There were problems: the footpegs are seriously wimpy, and I keep bending them; the handlebars are set at the wrong angle, which will take some welding to properly fix; the seat needs to be fastened down much more robustly than it is. However, that's a teeny tiny list.

The weather was freakin' cold in the morning (I have pictures with snow coating the trees), but ended up being sunny and almost not-frigid by the end of the day. The two races were held on actual dry pavement.

In race one, I came in dead last, due to a variety of factors. In race two, I came in 12th out of 20, but most of the people who came in after me didn't actually finish, they crashed. Fortunately, I was so far behind them, that by the time I got there, they were well off the track and wandering around collecting pieces of bike. So, practically, I came in last, but the score sheet says 12th out of 20. Rejoice in a fiddling technical victory! My best lap in race two was two minutes and 22 seconds, which isn't terribly far off a real race pace (which is more like 2:10 to 2:05).

Jesse also did well, although he sat out race 1, having heard a bizarre and potentially ominous noise from his engine. It turned out to be absent once he got back to the pits, so who knows what that was. I actually kept pace with him for about a lap in race 2, but it was probably my fastest lap, and his slowest.

I had a good time, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I have some issues to fix before then, but before I do that, I'm going to take a good solid week or two off from working on the bike. I've done enough. Now it's down time.

Today's the day. I'm up well before oh-dark-thirty. We tech at 7 am, rider's meeting at 8:30, then a practice or two. My race heats will be at 1:45 and 3:00 pm today, as you can see here.

To get to the track, just follow the directions. I believe the gate entry fee is $10 this year, although I've heard varying reports. Be prepared to sign away a surprising panoply of rights when you arrive. Racing is, apparently, dangerous business.

Jesse and I got the bikes loaded yesterday in shockingly shining sunshine (of course we decided not to go to the track yesterday, since the weather was so likely to be cruddy, so it was nice yesterday, and will be terrifying today).

Jesse will be here in about five minutes, so I have to go get my stuff together. See you at the track, you hardy souls!

Sat, 29 Mar 2008

I finally got off my lazy keister and made another CL175 video installment. This one is about the dyno time I had last Tuesday. It was a lot less mental inertia to overcome in order to get this done than it is to even consider going back 10 tapes and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing in late November.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008

Tomorrow is my first race day. The CL175 is pretty much ready: the new coil from the dyno run has been firmly attached in place, everything that needs to be safety wired has been so wired. I've even oiled the chain. All systems go!

It seems someone neglected to mention to the weather gods that I'm supposed to be zipping around a racetrack tomorrow on a motorcycle with 2" wide tires.

I've talked to Jesse, and he's no more excited than I am by the prospect of loading bikes in the snow and driving 50 miles only to stand around under a meager half-tent thing for six hours. There's dedication and then there's dedication. I'm all for racing in adverse conditions, but snow is one ad too verse. I've ridden in snow before, in many layers and heated clothing. It sucked. The idea of doing it with nothing but perforated (aka, ventilated) leathers and some thermal underwear is pretty much a non-starter.

So, we're now thinking that maybe waiting a day will be a fine thing. It's supposed to be better on Sunday, with NOAA even hinting that there might be sun breaks in the afternoon. Raar!

It may be that I have to wait a little bit on my first motorcycle race experience.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008

After a slightly mad scramble to get myself and the CL175 down to Twinline, we arrived right on time. Jesse came with me, rolling his eyes when I said it'd probably take two hours. Little did he know.

Twinline is situated in an industrial district south of downtown Seattle, and occupies a small but well-organized space. Well, it's small for a workshop, perhaps 1500-2000 square feet. Ian (the head honcho, for lack of a better term) was out when we arrived, but we were instructed to roll the bike up onto the dyno, which was in the back of the shop.

The dyno itself is a big metal box with a substantial roller on one end. The bike is rolled up on top of the box so that the rear tire sits on the roller, and the front end is strapped down so it doesn't move. There's a computer attached to the roller, with a rat's nest of cables snaking around hooking various things into the system.

Ian's setup now includes an air/fuel mixture readout in addition to the spark pickups to determine RPM. We got the bike all strapped down and hooked up.

I'd asked Jesse to do some filming for me, but he was more interested in talking shop, and was uncomfortable jamming a camera into people's faces, so the footage I got is almost all tripod-mounted. Even then, I didn't film the majority of what happened, since I was too busy solving problems and working on the bike to operate the camera. The story of my life.

The first run was fine, but a little weird. The spark pickup just plain didn't work, so we had no indication of RPM, which is a fairly important part of the process. Still, we got a power curve out of it -- the engine produced a stunning 11.14 HP. (That's not very much.)

The second run was really exciting. Something was wrong with the engine, and it was producing thrilling gouts of flame out of the exhaust, running quite rough. Ian stopped the run, and we talked about what it could be. After a minute, we decided it was probably the coil, and set about testing: indeed, something was odd with the coil. Every once in a while it'd produce a big fat spark, but the rest of the time was producing really weak sparks. I also recalled that the right sparkplug cap seemed increasingly loose, so that it could be rattling around on the sparkplug, effectively moving the spark from the end of the plug to the cap. Not terribly useful, and it would certainly produce the flame-exhaust we were seeing.

The end effect of this was that I bought a new coil from Ian for way more than I would have normally paid. It's also a better coil than I would have gotten, so at least that's one thing I'll never have to think about again on this bike. It did sort out the rough running, though.

Of course, the new coil didn't fit where the old one did -- it was considerably larger, and had different mounting holes. So, we did what any good bodger does: ziptied it to the frame, to sort out later. Ian made up some cables for it out of the ridiculously expensive matching sparkplug wire, using his ridiculously expensive crimping tool. As an interesting aside, he mentioned that he's still at least a year away from actually being able to pay himself. Running a small independent motorcycle shop is no way to quick riches.

By this time, it was probably 10:30. Figuring out how to solve the coil problem took up at least half an hour, probably more. We'd wasted a lot of time trying to sort out the RPM-recording problems on the dyno. Ian got it second-hand, and I was actually his first paying customer for the dyno.

Finally, we were in the position to do what I'd showed up to do: get the jetting sorted out. The first real jetting run showed some wacky results, so we re-did it. It started making a bit more sense, and we were able to see: the engine was running too lean at high speed, which makes logical sense (finally!). We swapped out parts to fix that, going from #90 jets to #92 jets, basically up a size. That helped, but wasn't enough. There were no #94 jets in the shop, so Ian gently drilled out my #90 jets to approximately #94 size. This is not the best way to do it, since jets have a venturi-shaped cutout, but it was closer, and looked about right.

Unfortunately, doing the air-fuel mixture check on the second (right hand) cylinder showed that something extremely wacky was going on: it was all over the chart, literally describing a spastic sine-wave, like a rhythm-impaired earthquake. Some probing and prodding produced the conclusion that something was probably jammed up in the right hand carburetor, which was preventing it from filling properly sometimes, and overfilling it other times. Another thing to fix.

The final dyno run must have been around midnight. I think we did 14 runs in all. The best (ie, highest power) run we got was 11.81 HP. Not, in other words, very much. Still, between the first and the best run, we did manage to increase power by about .7 HP, which is a whopping 6% increase. More importantly, we were able to get the torque curve to look really good: flat from about 5k RPM nearly to redline, at around 7.5 lb-ft. It doesn't sound like much, but the bike and I will probably weigh under 450 lbs as we plod down the track.

It was nearly 12:30 by the time we left. Much later than I'd wanted to stay, but it was all worth doing. The one aspect I wasn't as fond of was that I was very aware that time was literally money. Ian charged me shop rate ($80/hour) for what we were doing, which was the special "first dyno customer" discount. Even so, it meant that pausing and deliberating on a problem cost a dollar thirty-three a minute. Thus I was inclined to do things quickly. This combined with the increasingly late hour to make mistakes more common than they should have been. Fortunately, there were no important mistakes, but it's definitely not my preferred way of working.

The night ended with me riding the Ninja 250 home (having dropped off the race bike at my house with a longing look at the front door, which I was still at least half an hour from entering) at about 1:15 in the morning, through pounding rain. I finally got to bed around 2, and spent a restless night once again trying to solve motorcycle problems in my dreams.

Tonight is dedicated to figuring out my coil and carburetor problems. Perhaps once I've got those solved, I'll sleep better.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008

If you've been following along, you'll know that I've been preparing this old Honda CL175 for racing duties. I'll be racing in the Vintage 160 class.

Last night, I finished off the seat (which looks much better, with about an inch of padding, a bum-stop, and mediocre quality vinyl covering the whole thing). But I noticed as I was working on it that my hinge arrangement leaves something to be desired, and was already torquing against the seat uncomfortably.

I worked on it, and worked on it, but couldn't seem to make a difference. It was like I was staring at the problem, but couldn't work out the solution.

Then, it was time to race. I got myself set up on the bike, and took off in a roar of engine noise. For some reason, I was alone on the track, but I figured it was alright, I was probably just the first person there for that practice session.

It was all going well, but then in the middle of turn 2, something went very wrong, and I found myself sitting in the brambles at the side of the track. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there, exactly -- one moment I was riding around the track, and the next I was in the weeds.

I was alright, but my Aerostich suit was ripped. Someone, who was helping me up, mentioned that surely I shouldn't be wearing a textile suit on the race track. I agreed, but what could I do? There was a big flap hanging off the suit, but I was unharmed.

I tried again, but once again, the bike mysteriously ejected me on turn 2. There was nothing on the track, that I could see. There didn't seem to be any problems with the bike, but I was on the side of the track again. No one would tell me what had happened to my bike, they were more worried that I was hurt. But I was fine.

Of course, around this time, I woke up enough to realize that I was having an anxiety dream. I seem to have anxiety dreams all the time, although it's much more common for them to focus on how I've slacked off on a college class, and now it's too late to go join it again. I probably have that dream once a night or more. Lately, there have been a lot of trips to Edinburgh involved, and invariably I end up skipping out on 3 of the 4 classes I signed up for.

What's interesting about this crash dream is that this is the first-ever anxiety dream I've had about motorcycle riding. I don't feel especially anxious about being on the track, but I can't shake the feeling that the other racers could be a problem. I know they're not -- I've watched vintage racing for years. It's just one of those "tackling the unknown" things that seems to crop up.

A very positive aspect of this whole racing experience (he said before actually doing it) is that it's challenging my conception of myself. I'm not a competitive person. I don't like being in contention with other people. Yet I'm taking on this role of racer, where the whole point is to do better than others. Of course, when I say, "I'm not a competitive person," what I really mean is that I'm fiercely competitive, and I don't like that about myself. I keep it from coming out in almost any situation. So this whole racing thing embodies a kind of rock-and-hard-place situation for me. I'm interested to see how that turns out.

I'm fully prepared to come in last. I'm also secretly prepared to shock everyone by winning my first time out. Riiight. Stay tuned. The racing starts this weekend, and I'm sure I'll have some kind of report early next week.

I don't normally post link-fests, but I just read through this article, and found it interesting in that grim, Schadenfreude sort of way:

Sat, 22 Mar 2008

I got the belly pan attached today, which was the last major operation to be completed. The numbers are attached, the belly pan is on, and the seat is.. well, not finished, but good enough. You can see more pictures of the bike in race-ready trim in the gallery.

I still have at least one thing to do: I need a catch-can for the crankcase breather and carbeuretor overflow drains. This will most likely be a soda can zip-tied in place, just to be really high class. But at least it won't melt.

I'll be taking it to Twinline Motorcycles next Tuesday for dyno testing, to get the jetting spot-on. I don't think it's very far off, but the gummint is giving me money back this year, so why not spend it slightly frivolously? I'll also be interested to report back on how many ground-pounding horsepower my rebuilt engine can generate. I'll guess between 12 and 14.

Fri, 21 Mar 2008

One of the things that I'm surprised by is that I haven't really seen any other regular bicyclists on my route. It's a popular route, being largely flat from 80th to about 45th, a span of several miles. It has nicely marked bike lanes, and is very low traffic due to a high stoplight density that affects cars much more than bikes.

Yet in the year and a half I've been commuting daily, I've only found one person who is consistently riding a bike other than myself.

She's always riding north as I'm riding south, in the morning. I've never seen her going the other way. She is perhaps most remarkable to me for the way she dresses: a medium grey parka coat with a fur-lined hood, tall black cavalry boots, and usually some kind of dark pants. Honestly, I never get a very good look at her, as we're passing on opposite sides of the street, and I only see her for a split-second with any proximity. The only reason I'm sure about the boots, even, is that I passed her as she was stopped in front of a coffee shop.

She makes almost no nod to the fact that she's on a bicycle, which is what first recommended her to my attention. No helmet, no lights, dull, hard to see clothing. I would be surprised if her parka were particularly waterproof. This morning she was wearing a white knit cap, and I was able to make out brown bangs poking out underneath the cap.

Her bike is some kind of cruiser, reminding me of the old Schwinn 3-speeds my grandparents would keep in the garage for my brother and I to ride when we came to visit. It has a basket on the front, a detail that I only noticed this morning.

She never looks happy to be riding. She always faces straight ahead, never looking out of her path. I'm pretty sure she's not aware of me passing her every day. Not a good riding habit, unfortunately, and if I've interpreted correctly, she's bound for an accident sooner or later: although Greenwood is a fine bicycling road, it's also absolutely packed with parked-in intersections. I use my very loud horn a lot, just to make sure they see me.

I realized today, as I was riding in, that the girl from the other side is the only regular rider I've seen. Of course, there are probably many more riders going south than going north, and they are probably going earlier than I am. I've now seen one other rider twice: a 20-something man on a folding bike. Twice isn't much of a percentage against 300-some days. I've lately met a few regulars going down Dayton (which is not as bike-friendly a road as Greenwood south of 85th, but is better than going up Greewood north of 85th, where it's steep and there's zero accomodation for bikes); they are older, probably past 60, but I've only seen them in the last few days.

There will certainly be more bikers on the road as the weather warms up into summer. However, I remain impressed that the one reliable, regular cyclist I pass is the girl from the other side, pedalling along in her grey parka with the fur-lined hood.

Sat, 15 Mar 2008

I had a work thing happening at 11:30 tonight, so I figured I'd blow an hour in the garage, after I'd finished watching my latest Netflix disc at 10:30. (Negima, Magic 101 or something; fairly typical anime, I guess.)

So I trundled out to the garage, and set about the tasks I knew I had: retorque cylinder head; adjust valves; check compression.

The first two went well enough, if you discount the copious gasoline spill that resulted from trying to empty the tank by removing the petcock (note to self: just be patient next time).

By the time I got around to checking compression, it was 11:20. I screwed the compression tester into the left cylinder, and tried kicking over the motor. With the bike up on stands, it's surprisingly tall, and between that and a weird angle, I managed to let the kickstarter fairly mangle my leg: I'm now sporting an angry abrasion on my shin, and a throbbing proto-bruise on my calf.

The real kicker, though, (so to speak) was that the compression gauge read a paltry 120 PSI. 120 PSI!? Between the throbbing leg, the late hour, and the baffling compression test, I went to do my work with anger in my heart. It was supposed to read 140-170 PSI if the engine is normal and healthy. 120 meant that all the rebuilding work I'd just done was completely in vain!

I did my work (very minor, as it turned out), and got up to return to the garage. I swore to myself, "I'm just going back to lock the door," since I knew I was definitely too tired to do anything more tonight. But I got there, and as I was regarding the traitorous motorcycle, a random synapse fired: I'd forgotten to open the throttle! You always do a compression test with the throttle wide open, otherwise you're guaranteed a low reading.

Renewed with this momentary inspiration, I tried again, and was richly rewarded: 160 PSI. The right cylinder read 165 PSI. That's so much more like it. Way better than 120 PSI. But now, it's definitely time for bed.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008

I'm one of these people who's got a sort of sparse utility belt -- I have a big multitool and a flashlight in little holsters on my belt. The flashlight holster in particular looks exactly like something a policeman would wear.

So I'm in at BF Day Elementary, tutoring today. My normal student pushed too hard, and I found myself working with a new kid.

This kid, whose name I never clearly heard (not uncommon in this situation) is black, and speaks with some kind of African accent. I think he's in 4th grade, but I'm not sure. I sat down to help him with his math assignment (a graph-reading assignment involving a feisty flea's ability to bench-press dog hairs of varying weight).

It's pretty common to get attitude from these kids, of some variety. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's them. I'm not sure. This one was generally accepting of my help, but a couple minutes in, I saw his head crane around to look at my belt. He looked back up at me, an odd expression on his face.

"I'm not a cop," I said, guessing what was on his mind. Someone a year or two ago immediately accused me of being a cop, and hid from me.

"How did you know that?" he asked, wondering that his private thoughts had been intercepted. Not waiting for an answer, he continued, "Are you sure?"

I thought this was the end of it. We settled down to the feisty flea again, and I led him to the answer for each question, as I do every time -- I never tell them the answer outright, but generally have to resort to such hugely leading questions that I might as well.

Then another tutor showed up (I was nominally helping three kids, but the other two seemed pretty self-contained for the moment). The volunteer coordinator had my student and one of the girls go off with the new tutor, and I was left with the other girl.

However, before he went, the boy I was working with got more excited about accusing me of being a cop. "You're a cop!" he exclaimed, half way between excited and horrified. Then he laced his fingers behind his head, and put his forehead down on the table. I was at a complete loss for words.

"Aren't you going to arrest me?" he said, looking up, his face pressed against the table.

"You're a cop!" He turned to face down again. I really couldn't tell if he was playing or not.

I turned to work with the girl, which took up the rest of the session, and the rest of my attention.

I'm afraid the whole encounter was terribly depressing. I was raised to believe that the police were who you went to when you wanted help. Obviously this kid thinks the police only exist to arrest people. The problem is, I don't think that's just based on hearsay or watching TV. And that, I must say, is tragically, mind-alteringly depressing.

The quick update on the race bike can easily be summed up: things are generally going well.

I discovered a big jetting problem yesterday, and corrected it: the left float was hanging up on the bowl gasket, which was making things all kinds of screwy. So I figured tonight, I could go out and see where things are knowing that I'd solved one of the weird problems.

I warmed the bike up, and took it out to a big empty parking lot, so I wouldn't be annoying anyone. I sat there with a tiny screwdriver, and started playing with the idle settings.

This bike has two idle settings per carb, and two carburetors. One setting is the idle speed, and the other is the mixture. It was idling alright, but I thought it was probably super-rich, since I'd richened it considerably last night.

So, I started adjusting the right carb in the direction of lean. This should, in an ideal world, make the engine run slightly faster then slow down as you pass the ideal mixture. To my dismay, I turned the screw all the way in, until it was seated, and the engine didn't change pitch one iota. I backed the screw out a turn or two, and moved to the other side.

Tried the same trick on the left carb. Turn screw in, turn screw in... engine dies. It never sped up. So I backed it out again, re-started (good thing these bikes are so easy to kick-start), and pondered.

I swapped sides again, and tried turning up the right idle speed screw. The sides aren't linked in any way, so each adjustment as to be made to match as closely as possible. I was breaking away from that, but I was trying to figure out what was going on. The idle speed went up, as I had expected it would. I returned it to normal, and swapped sides.

On the left, I turned in the screw, and in, and.. the engine died. Now, what should have happened is that the engine speed should have gone up, exactly as it did on the right.

I played with it some more, but couldn't really make sense of it. I rode around a bit, and got some gas (discovering that even despite my throttle-heavy breakin style, the bike had turned in around 67 mpg). I tried adjusting the idle again sitting at the pump, but it got even weirder, dying with a little pfut!. I think at that point it was getting pretty warm.

So I rolled on home, my head abuzz with question marks, but no answers were forthcoming. I'm totally boggled how the bike could act like this. There's got to be some factor that's completely messed up.

I guess my first tasks tomorrow are to check compression, and adjust the valves. I can't think what else to do: the float levels looked good (I even checked with the "visible fuel" method where you jam a piece of tubing into the float bowl drain); the spark plugs looked good, perhaps a bit on the dark side; the new air filters are fitted, but didn't appear to change the mixture or performance at all. It should be working like a new bike, but it's definitely not.

At least the problem is with idle. That's essentially the last thing this bike will be doing while racing. However, it does seem like it points to other problems that may come around to bite me in other operating modes. Hopefully I can get it all sorted out.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008

I went out for my fourth breakin ride tonight, in high spirits. I'd put 56 miles on the newly rebuilt engine, and aside from fouled plugs the last time, it was going pretty well.

There was some initial trouble with jetting, which I was able to solve by making a simple adjustment to the carburetors. Eventually, the idle got pretty terrible, and I had to keep the engine above 4000 RPM at stoplights or it'd sputter and die. Fortunately, that was mostly solved by replacing the plugs.

Then, at about 9 miles into this ride, I noticed that the rear brake (the only one that lights the brake light) felt strangely soft. I pulled over to investigate, and discovered that a vital nut, which was part of the system that held the brake steady, had disappeared, and the brake plate was rotated around -- that explained the strange softness. I retrieved the special bolt, which was fortunately still there. Of course, the problem with this is that someone (such as myself) should have safety-wired that nut in place before the first time the bike was rolled out of the garage.

When I stopped to grab the bolt (having not realized at the first stop that it could now disappear as well, which would have actually been quite disasterous), I also noticed that the left rear turn signal was hanging at an odd angle: its mounting bolt was backed most of the way out. I tightened it as best I could, and decided that it was definitely time to go home.

I made it home without further incident, although when I got to my garage, I noticed that I had arrived in a much more substantial cloud of smoke than I liked. I shut the bike off, and a quick inspection revealed that the front of the engine was covered in oil. Once I got it inside and under the light, I could see that the special bolt which holds the camchain adjustment had disappeared as well. Arg! Again, some certain bike rebuilder should have double-checked that the locknut on the special bolt was tight so it wouldn't vibrate out (although I thought I'd done this).

So, all told, not the best ride tonight. And now I see that Bike Bandit (a parts website) lists the special bolt I lost as being discontinued. Double-arg! Definitely done for the night.

Sat, 01 Mar 2008

I got the oil in, and the gas tank full of not-too-old gas. Started the camera rolling to catch the historic, momentous event. Turned on the gas, waited. Sure enough, one of the carbs overflowed, interestingly, through its actual overflow tube this time. Removing and reinstalling the float bowl seemed to solve that -- the carbs have been living on their side for a long time, I'm not too surprised something got slightly out of whack.

Turned on the gas again, no more leaks. Turned on the key. I'd already checked to make sure I had spark at both plugs. And started kicking.

And the kickstarter kept slipping off my foot, and coming back to whack the back of my calf, which is now throbbing unhappily. So I came in and got boots on, which have a more-definite heel, and provide protection higher up my leg (although not actually high enough).

Fortunately, I was starting to get the interested little pops and kerfuffle noises that suggested it was getting close to firing. Then, it did! Didn't stay running, though. I played with the choke and throttle position, and finally found a combination, along with a lot more kicking, that got it to fire off and run.

Finally, after a few episodes of, "Ooops, guess the idle speed isn't set quite right," I got it to settle down into a nice idle. The throttle cable needs to be rerouted somehow, as it's raising the engine speed and binding up at full lock of the handlebars, but it was really running!

My breakin regimen calls for running at idle for about 10 minutes, to get the engine up to operating temperature. Along with the aid of a big fan, I let it run. Around 8 minutes in, as I was revving the motor a little bit, trying to determine the problem with the throttle cable routing, I heard a loud, dismaying CRACK! noise. It obviously came from the bike, but I couldn't tell if it came from the engine or the exhaust. It could have been a backfire, but sounded much more like a bolt breaking.

After I turned off the engine, I crawled around with a flashlight, looking for anything that was obviously broken, but didn't see anything. The engine ran perfectly both before and after the noise, so it wasn't something big, like a valve snapping or something (although I would probably do well to take a look at the valve train before too long, just to be sure).

So now, I have about four hours to sit back and do something other than operating the CL175. Perhaps I'll actually (gasp!) work on putting together the next video installment. Maybe after lunch.

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