|
Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Tue, 30 Mar 2010Somewhat frustratingly, after putting in all the work over the weekend, I was unable to actually start the bike up and see if it ran on Sunday. Some crazy garbage about disturbing neighbors or whatever. Anyway, tonight I was able to fire up the bike, and I am extremely pleased to report that it started as easily as it ever has. Once I got it warmed up a bit, I took a few experimental first-gear rides down the shoulder of my street (the bike not being street-legal), and I was impressed with how much power it seemed to have. I'm really looking forward to getting it onto the track, and see how it does in the real world. I was hoping to get it onto the dyno before this weekend's race, but it looks like I waited too long to call Ducati Seattle -- there's no time available when I'm free. Well, that's not entirely true, I'm to call on Thursday to see if they can slip me in just before closing, but that will require that I drive the bike to work, and I'm not sure I'm that committed to the project. I can always put it on the dyno after the race. Also, as a side note, I took a glance into the left cylinder of the street engine, and was pleased to see no obvious gouges on the cylinder walls, so it's unlikely I broke any rings there. That lends more credence to my theory that I may have left some crud in one of the ring cutouts, leading to the ring binding in the piston rather than pushing against the cylinder wall like it should. Stupid mistake on my part, but a very easily remedied one. Posted at 23:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 28 Mar 2010This has definitely been the Weekend of Motorcycles. The first race of the season is coming up next weekend, and the race bike had been essentially ignored all winter. I'd put it away with vows to do a bunch of stuff "over the winter," and of course, nothing came of that. Well, that's not entirely true, but nothing happened until this weekend, which makes a pretty poor showing of "over the winter." As I've mentioned before, I made up an adjustable camshaft last fall, and then left the project to sit for about 6 months as other bits of life intruded. Finally, a month or so ago, that camshaft made it into the street CL175, and I've been riding it around. However, piston ring problems have plagued me, and so I don't really know if it made all that much difference. Well, I'd reserved time in my schedule this weekend to work on the race bike. The main thing I wanted to do was to put new tires on, which I accomplished in a surprisingly short period of time on Friday evening. Faced with the remainder of the weekend, it occurred to me that I actually had time to swap that camshaft from the street bike to the race bike. Heck, I needed to take the street engine apart again anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone? The point of the cool new camshaft was to put it into the race engine anyway. So, out came one engine, then the other. I'm getting really good at pulling engines from CL175s, I must say. Lots of practice. The head came off the street engine this morning, and I went through the procedure of degreeing the cam on the race engine -- it's potentially different for every engine, so you have to check. As it happened, the cam as set was working out to 104.5° or 104.75°, which is so close to perfect (in theory you want it a tiny bit advanced for race use) that it wasn't worth changing anything. Of course, it wasn't as simple as all that. In the process of pulling things apart, I discovered problems that had to be solved, notably a dent in the cylinder head that was right on the border of the right combustion chamber. There were actually scorch marks on the head where hot combustion gasses had escaped, and I'd found soot outside the engine right there earlier. That required about an hour of patiently swirling the cylinder head on top of a piece of sandpaper on the granite surface plate I picked up over the winter for exactly this purpose. Life got a lot better once I figured out how to tape the sandpaper down so I wasn't trying to hold it with one hand while grinding the head with the other. As long as I was at it, I also removed the brittle, ancient gaskets from the cam-end bearings, a process that took way longer than I had hoped. However, this will hopefully cure that head of its oil leaks without resorting to sealant goo like I did last time. The sealant goo was perfectly effective, but I was worried that it might be clogging vital oil passages. Earlier, on Saturday, I'd actually pulled the head off a spare engine to swap it on to the race engine, and reworked its valve seats. Then, of course, I discovered that one of its sparkplug threads might be stripped, which would have complicated things unnecessarily. The reason for all this head swappery was that my original race head, due to a communication error with a machinist a couple years ago, has the wrong size sparkplug holes. This rendered one of the special tools I made useless, so that I couldn't set up the fancy new cam. Anyway, today was spent almost entirely standing in the garage, making slow but steady progress. The new race head (which was formerly the head from the street bike) has been beautifully reworked: it's newly very flat on its sealing surface, it has newly cut valve seats and new valves, and the cam-end bearings have new gaskets. This combined with the known-good rings of the race engine should make for a respectable engine. I hope I can get it out to the dyno before the race, just to see what changes I made (I took it to the dyno last fall to get a baseline). I wrapped up my work this evening around 8:45, and decided judiciously that although technically still legal, firing up my mega noise machine late on a Sunday night was probably not the best way to keep my neighbors happy. Still, it was nice to get the race bike completely back together this weekend, and know that I don't really have anything outstanding I need to do. There are surely things that it still needs, but at least it's back together, and I don't have any more work ahead of me than I did before the weekend started, and the bike is at least theoretically in better shape. It was a good weekend, although I'm ready to not stand for a while. Posted at 22:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 19 Mar 2010I've been riding with my Supernova E3 Pro for about a week now. After the initial shock of the beam pattern wore off (see previous entries), I had some more thoughts I suspect will be welcomed by searchers on this subject. Effort: I haven't actually noticed any difference biking with the new hub and light. I've got a front wheel built around a Schmidt Dynohub, and if I were to judge only by riding, I don't think I could tell you it's any different from a normal bearings-only front hub. Of course, when you lift the front wheel off the ground and give it a spin, it slows down noticeably quicker with the light on than off. But still, that should give you an idea -- spin the front wheel with your hand, and it goes around for a while. The hub just isn't taking much energy from the wheel. Hardware: The light itself continues to impress me with its design and construction. I've got the Lefty mount, and flipped the arm over so that the light hangs pendulum-style, and then used the straight arm to mount the whole thing under the handlebar stem. To mount it, I just drilled a hole through the stem itself, and a M6x45 bolt with some red thread locker holds the whole thing together. In an effort to make it less glaringly obvious to potential thieves, I colored the bolt head with a black marker so it's not shiny and stainless-steel looking. I should probably redo it with matte black paint so it more closely matches the anodizing on the stem, but it's not a big enough deal for me right now. Support: When I contacted Supernova via email about my beam shape problem, I had a response the next day. Their support has been very good, and I certainly have nothing to complain of in that realm. The fact that they're in Germany complicates shipping and means that email exchanges take a day apiece due to time differences, but I knew that going in. Overall, if you discount the fact that I ordered the wrong lens on mine, I've been very happy with the light. I really enjoy having a light that just comes on when I ride, and incurs so little penalty that it makes sense to leave it on all the time. I have the Supernova tail light that I still have to install, but once I do that, I'll have front and back lights that are always on, which is very cool. Once I get a different lens in my front light, I think I'll be quite happy with my bike light setup. Posted at 10:51 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 12 Mar 2010
Supernova further update -- wanna buy a light?
Supernova has indeed agreed that they can swap lenses for me, and that the turnaround will be right around 3 weeks. They also offered me the option of buying a symmetrical-lens'd light at a discount, so I could sell the glare-free unit on Ebay or some such. Honestly, that sounds like the best option. Are you interested in a slightly used glare-free lens'd Supernova E3 Pro? Scroll down for video of the lens pattern. I have to admit, my reaction to the light definitely falls under "personal preference," and clearly Supernova thinks enough of the design to produce and sell it. I suspect it would be a good choice for someone whose average speed is a bit lower, or who rides in different situations than I do. If you're interested, please contact me at reaper at obairlann dot net. I'll post a picture of the light as installed in the next day or two. The only thing that's not absolutely shiny-brand-new about it is that I cut off about 12" of the supplied dynamo wire, and one of the mounting screws has had a wee bit of the black paint chipped off. This could work out well. Posted at 16:43 permanent link category: /bicycle Wed, 10 Mar 2010I got an email back from Supernova, to the effect that they are quite capable of swapping lenses, but that it will require me to send the whole light back to them, as it will involve soldering in a different LED in addition to putting in a different lens. Hopefully I can pursue that course of action soon, as riding with the light in its current configuration is irksome. Posted at 16:40 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 09 Mar 2010I just uploaded this video showing the headlight pattern of the Supernova E3 Pro with the "glare-free" asymmetrical beam.
My ride home last night was enough to show that I'm not at all happy with the asymmetrical beam pattern. It casts far too much light too close, with the result that I found myself repeatedly staring at a spot 10 feet in front of my front tire. That's incredibly unsafe when compared to keeping your eyes at the horizon, and I really don't want a light that encourages that kind of unsafe riding. I would be very happy with an asymmetrical beam pattern that wasn't so deep, and could be focused further out, but my hope now is that Supernova will be able to sell me a symmetrical lens, or swap out the one I have, or something. Peter White won't take the light back, because I actually installed it, cutting off some of the supplied wire. Silly me, actually installing a light. Still, I've read anecdotally that Supernova will swap lenses, so hopefully that will work out. I really don't want to have this ridiculously spendy light on my bike that angers me every time I ride in the dark. Posted at 10:58 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 08 Mar 2010
Supernova E3 Pro first impression
Last night, I finally got my new Supernova E3 Pro headlight installed. I received this, along with the new Schmidt Dynohub, a few months ago. I finally got the hub built into a wheel last month, and I finished installing the light yesterday. The E3 is a dynamo headlight that was designed to be the ultimate dyno light, and the price reflects that fact. If I weren't biking every day (and getting incredibly sick of batteries that need constant recharging), I wouldn't have sprung for it. But I am, and I did. I opted for the shaped beam version, which has a pattern similar to a car's headlight: a sharp cutoff at the horizon, so as to avoid blinding oncoming drivers, while casting as much light as possible on the road in front of you. I had actually temporarily installed the light a week or two ago (with a hilarious combination of zip ties, alligator clips and safety wire) and gone for a brief ride along a dark trail. That proved that the beam pattern was pretty useful, and showed that my intended mounting location (right under the handlebar) would work well. My very first impression of the beam was that it wasn't very bright. That is, it seemed about as bright as my current headlight (a NightRider MiNewt X2). Then I realized that, although it seemed about as bright, the bright area covered something like 5x the area of the MiNewt's bright spot. That means it's a tremendously brighter light, it's just spread out into a much larger, more useful area. There's not much point in spearing a single point in the distance on a bicycle, it's not as if I ever move any faster than 40 MPH at the fastest, and 25 MPH normally. The beam pattern itself is a bit odd, being quite wide, with "saddlebags" of brightness off to the sides, and not as much right in front. I have a feeling it was designed to be multipurpose, including being useful for offroaders. I'll see if I can get a photo or video of it, and post that here. The LED or optics give the light a greenish tint, which is a bit displeasing -- when spending this kind of money on an LED light, I expect excellent color, and greenish is not an excellent color. Now that I look at posted pictures of the beam pattern on both Supernova's site, and the Peter White beamshots page, I also have the impression that my beam is a weird shape, and not what I thought I was getting, particularly compared to the beamshot on the Supernova page. I may be talking to Peter White (where I got this light) after tonight's ride. The light itself, in terms of construction, seems to be well built. The mount is a very pretty machined piece, and the light body suggests high quality. It's fairly heavy, but that's to be expected, since this light includes a lot of aluminum to dissipate heat, as well as a large capacitor to act as a "stand light," keeping the light on for a few minutes after you stop riding (for use at stoplights). The stand light is about half the brightness of when riding, but it's still enough to be seen pretty well. I didn't time it, but my stand light was still glowing 5 or so minutes after a ride. It seems to slope down brightness over time. Other than the beam pattern, I'm pretty happy with this light. It was spendy, but ideally that's bought me a bright, durable light. I'll post updates as I have them, but I hope to get some photos and possibly video in the next few days. Posted at 10:58 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 05 Mar 2010
A Lovely Non-Motorcycle Picture For A Change
Goodness, but those flowers look gorgeous...
Posted at 10:38 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 04 Mar 2010Well, taking the engine out of the bike and getting the top end off goes a lot quicker when you have some motivation. My findings so far: the piston rings were in fact in the wrong order (the correct order is square profile first, then stepped profile, then thicker oil scraper; I had the square and stepped rings swapped); the combustion chambers were positively swimming in oil, far more than I had expected to be there; the oil didn't seem to be coming from the valves, or at least not much; still nothing that should be making that clunking, rattling sound at idle; oil all over the engine is from the points cover gasket not sealing. It was nice, at least, to get the engine torn down enough to confirm that I'd done the rings wrong. I can probably get it corrected, cleaned up, and back together this weekend, assuming nothing goes wrong. Hopefully, that's not a big assumption. I have discovered (well, more confirmed, I guess) that Orbital is excellent engine tear-down music. I'm sure you were dying to know that. Posted at 23:03 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 03 Mar 2010I did several more CL175 break-in runs tonight, and it's very likely I've done something wrong in my reassembly. The engine is coated with a thin film of oil, and the exhaust is a perpetual blue haze. The crankcase breather is dripping an unhappy looking mixture of water and oil, and has been blown half off its attachment point. The best guess I've got is that I messed up installing the piston rings, and got the top two swapped. That would mean that oil is not effectively removed from the cylinder walls and is getting into the combustion chamber, and combustion pressure is not adequately sealing the top ring against the wall. That would lead to positive pressure in the crankcase, which might be responsible for, oh, I don't know, oil seeping from every gasket. I guess I'll be taking the engine apart again to check on the piston rings. Not an auspicious beginning. But maybe my new valves will come in while I've got it apart, and I can send the head off to the shop. There's a reasonable chance that the valve guides are worn out, which could lead to some smoking, but not as much as I'm seeing (and especially not considering that the engine didn't smoke before). It is highly suspicious to me that only the left side sparkplug was oiled, and the left side is where I bent that intake valve. Hopefully I don't have multiple problems cascading upon each other! Back to the workbench, I guess. At least I'm not facing anything mysterious -- tearing down the engine is almost something I can do in my sleep at this point, and either the rings are in the right order, or they aren't. Of course, one mystery does remain: that clunking in the head is still there, exactly like before, and I still have no idea what's making it. Hooray for progress? Posted at 22:22 permanent link category: /motorcycle I took this picture of the CL175 today, and thought it was pretty cool. Figured I'd share.
Posted at 16:48 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 02 Mar 2010As I mentioned in the previous post, I made myself an adjustable CL175 camshaft last fall. That must have been around October. In order to do that, I pulled the camshaft from a spare engine I had, and did the modifications, cutting down the sprocket and pressing on an adapter flange. Around the same time, I realized that my street CL175 (as opposed to the race CL175) was making these odd, and somewhat disturbing clanking noises at idle. It sounded like a loose cam chain, or loose valves, or something. I adjusted the valves, and adjusted the cam chain, but all to no avail. I knew I wanted to test the adjustable camshaft I'd just made on the street bike, so this seemed like a perfect confluence of events: tear down the street engine to look for the rattle, and reassemble it with the new camshaft installed.
That way, I could make mistakes on the street engine without imperilling the race engine. I have another street bike, so it was no hardship to do without the street CL175. I don't have another race bike, and if I messed up that engine, I would be unhappy. It turned out to be a good choice, as I ended up bending one of the valves as I was working on the street engine; the street engine has old valves, while the race engine has new valves. I would have been annoyed indeed to make that mistake on the race bike. The problem, of course, is that life (in the form of holidays and theater) got in the way. I found that between Thanksgiving and the end of this last run of shows a few weeks ago, I just didn't have time to work on the project. What little free time I did have was dedicated to things like sitting still for a few minutes, or going to bed before midnight, or occasionally collecting the terrifying dustbunnies around the house and introducing them to their new home in the circular file.
Finally, though, all the shows ended, and I've been able to pick up the project where I left off. The last few days have been full of engine work. This morning, I was mysteriously awake two and a half hours earlier than normal, so I decided to seize the opportunity and work on the bike. I was close to done, and it was just possible I could finish it this morning. As I continued work on the project, I realized that I just had two major tasks left: reconnecting the exhaust, and reinstalling the gas tank. Both of these things are fairly simple to do, and by around 8:45, I had the bike completely reassembled, adjusted, oiled, gassed up, and ready to go. I kicked the motor over a few times to get the oil system primed and pumping. Then, it was the work of mere moments to flip on the choke and press the go button.
Lo and behold, after a few cranks, it fired up, and ran as if nothing had happened! It's just as finicky about starting as it was before the teardown, but I can't say I'm entirely surprised by that. I ran it through the initial 10 minute "Do nothing but idle" phase of Duke's break in method from the Ninja250 board. I'll have to modify it for the CL175, in terms of target RPM, but that's the basic method I'll be following to break in the new rings. It was a glorious feeling to finally have this long-stalled project going, and working again. I can't wait to go home tonight and start riding it again. I'm sure there's more work to be done to get everything set just right, but the correctly aligned camshaft promises noticeable improvements in power and economy.
(Man, you can really tell the difference between the real camera and cellphone camera pics, can't you.) Update: It's been pointed out to me that I left my handful of readers hanging! Did I find the rattle? Well, maybe. As I tore the engine down, I was discouraged to find that there really wasn't anything that should be causing the rattle. It sounded like it was coming from the head, which is why I was thinking valves or cam chain. It all looked about right as I took it apart. When I reassembled the bottom end, I did discover that one of the oil baffles under the crankshaft (which are held in place with spring tension) was loose. I bent it a little bit so it'd exert some pressure against its retaining pin, but that was the only thing I found that was a likely source of rattling inside the engine. As I was reassembling the whole thing today, I ended up inverting the muffler a couple of times, and noticed a very loud clanking coming from it -- apparently one of the internal baffles has come loose. That's even less likely to be the source of the rattle, but it was pretty loud as I handled the muffler, and I suppose anything is possible. I'd love to ditch the stock muffler (which is heavy and makes taking off the exhaust pipes a serious pain), but that's more fabrication than I'm ready for right at the moment. So, the answer is a solid maybe. When I started the engine this morning, it didn't rattle, though. I'll take it. Posted at 11:00 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. |
