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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
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 Wed, 24 Feb 2010So, last fall, I made myself an improved camshaft for the CL175 streetbike. (Seriously, if you're not into engines and tuning, you can completely skip this entry.) Then, life got in the way, and I've only been able to get back to it in the last few weeks. Finally, a couple days ago, I got all the bits and pieces put back together, clean, beautiful, new oil seals, the works. I had stalled enough. Time to degree the cam. Degreeing the cam is not, in concept, hard to understand. The camshaft is locked to the crankshaft with a chain. The tensioner makes sure there's a minimum of slop in the chain. As the crankshaft moves the pistons up and down, the camshaft controls the opening and closing of the valves. Easy enough. If a valve opens too early in, say, the power stroke, then some of the expanding gas gets blown out the open valve instead of powering the crankshaft. If that same valve opens too late, then the exhaust stroke isn't as effective, wasting some power on compressing the exhaust against a closed valve. Likewise a bunch of similar scenarios -- the cam has to open and close the valves at exactly the right time, if you want to make the most power. Degreeing the cam is just the act of making sure the cam is lined up exactly where it should be in relationship to the crankshaft, so that the valves open and close as the manufacturer intended. Honda, at least with the 60s and 70s era 160/175 motor, wasn't always super precise when pressing the cam sprocket onto the camshaft, as far as how everything lined up. It could be off. It could be off by a lot. According to Mr. Bateman's article on cam degreeing, even 1 degree of cam timing is pretty significant. That's what made my degreeing experience so interesting. After first bending a valve and cursing a great deal, and then remembering that I had a couple spare valves from the race engine (note to future cam degreers: no really, don't stick the piston stop pin in the cylinder with the valves adjusted to .002"! Really!), I got my shiny new adjustable cam degreed. What should I find, upon degreeing the cam as I'd pressed it back on (admittedly without any precision at all)? 98°. The 175 is supposed to be at 105°. Yeah, that'll never work. I did the math real quick, and decided I had to move the cam 3.5° thataway (the cam rotates at 1/2 rotation per crankshaft rotation). I did, and was almost blown away by how easy it was. Turn the crank around a couple of times, loosen the three bolts, and give 'em a quick tap with a drift and hammer. Done. Without the adjustable adapter, you have to take the head halfway apart, pull the cam out, press the sprocket off, and press it back on to do the same thing. I'd taken a ~30 minute operation and performed it in about 3 seconds. I had marked 5° increments on my adapter (you can see a few more pictures of this stuff here), and moved the pointer what looked like about 3.5 degrees, more or less. I re-tested, and found I was at 103°, so I'd gone the right direction, and adjusted it just a tiny bit further. The numbers worked out to 105° on the nose. Hot! So now, the engine awaits final assembly, and I can finally put it all back together, and see if it works! I really hope the old cam was actually at 98° (but don't expect it was, I'm not sure it'd run at all in that condition) -- the performance increase from re-setting the cam at 105° would be huge! And the best thing is that the increased performance would come along with improved fuel economy. I've got my fingers crossed. Posted at 11:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 09 Nov 2009Just in case you've always wanted to know how much power a well set up (but largely unmodified) 1972 Honda CL175 makes, have I got a treat for you! I took my racebike to the dyno at Ducati Seattle this weekend, and did a few pulls on the dyno. I wanted to get a snapshot of how the engine is behaving before I go tearing into it this winter to clean a few things up. Specifically, the cam is getting timed, and the head/cylinder interface at least is getting cleaned up, if not actually decked a few thousandths. I'm undecided on decking the head, because that will involve a whole bunch more work vs. just timing the cam. Fortunately, I have the CL175 streetbike (which is even now getting a teardown and rebuild) as a test-bed for engine changes. I'm looking forward to some fun this winter. Posted at 14:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 28 Oct 2009This is just a quickie, in case you're interested. I'm getting myself and my race bike out to Ducati Seattle on November 7th to put it on the dyno, and see how much power it's making at the moment. This is preparatory to installing the adjustable cam and setting the cam timing precisely, which should result in a bump in power. I'd like to have a "before" picture. Anyway, if we can get other folks out to Ducati Seattle for some dyno time, Mark (a fellow racer) thinks we can get the hourly rate reduced from $100 to $60/hr, which would be pretty cool. If you're interested in joining me, give me a shout by email. No guarantees that the price will change, of course, and Mark thinks we'll need at least 6 bikes to make the jump. In other news, hooray for progress! I got my adjustable cam finished a few weeks ago, and am now doing a top-end rebuild on the street bike's engine, so I can test it out and see what kind of a difference it makes. This also frees up another cam to modify (although that likely comes later). Posted at 15:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 05 Oct 2009I can't say I have a ton of experience with the final-session races, but being early October, you're definitely in for a crap-shoot as far as the weather goes. For our last race of the WMRRA season, we had cold mornings with spectacular afternoons: full sun and into the high 60s at least. My racing has, for the last few sessions, been steadily improving. Two sessions back, I was running about 2:15 per lap. Then last session, in September, I hit a personal best of 2:13. This session was a huge surprise to me: I not only had a "best lap" of 2:11, but for the second race, I turned 2:11s for pretty much the whole race! I'm still 10 seconds off the fast guys' time, but with a 2:11, I'm finally keeping up with a few folks, which is a nice feeling. I have three "most memorable moments" from this last session. The first one came during practice on the first day. It was the second practice, and I was doing really well (I'd later learn that the one lap I managed to finish was 2:11, smashing my previous best time). I came around to the entrance to the Bus Stop for the second lap, hotter than I ever have, and was all set to blast through there like a champ when suddenly the engine spun way up, and I started slowing down. It only took a moment to realize what had happened: my shift lever had finally, catastrophically, touched down. I'd been grinding the rubber off it for a couple sessions, as I had it adjusted really far down to provide me with comfortable shifts. It was aligned in such a way that it was the first part to touch down in a left-hand corner, and I kind of knew in the back of my mind that sooner or later I'd end up in the wrong gear because of it. I tried to keep going, but when I upshifted out of the Bus Stop, the shift lever clung to my boot like glue. I looked down, and realized that it must have been quite substantially scraped up, and there was now a dime-sized raw spot on my boot where the shifter had taken hold. I shot my hand up, and laughing that my petty "comfort" concerns had finally come back to bite me, made a slow lap back to the track exit. I was able to fix the bent shift lever with some big pliers, and a bit of work with a file. For the second memorable moment, I was keeping up pretty well with Tim Fowler, who's one of the medium-fast guys, in the first race on Sunday. If he did up his bike like Tim O'Mahoney has done, he'd probably be around 2 minutes per lap, but right now he resides in the 2:08 to 2:10 category, which put him in my sights for this race. We were nearing the end of the race (although I probably would have sworn it was the middle at the time), and exiting the Bus Stop (a particularly tight and technical turn just before the straightaway), I was close behind Tim. I have just a little bit more power than he does, so I was actually able to creep up behind him. As we were going down the straight, I was drafting in behind him, and gaining quickly, when I saw the flag waving. In a spurt of optimism, I pulled out to pass him just as we passed by the flag, and thus the official timing line. I figure I just about had my front wheel even with his rear wheel when we passed the line, so I didn't quite pass him, although I passed him shortly thereafter, before turn 2. Excited at my reasonable finish, I kept up my pace, but slowed down a few times on the cooldown lap. Tim passed me going into turn 3 (which he always does), and I followed him, curious if I could still keep up with him. It should have occurred to me at the time, but didn't, that Tim was keeping his pace up, and definitely wasn't letting up at all. Finally, around turn 5/6/7, I realized that I wasn't seeing any yellow flags, like the corner workers usually fly once the race is over. As I passed turn 8, it clicked: was that actually a checkered flag we had passed? Then as I got into turn 9, where there should be a big sign saying "PIT," I realized it was not a checkered flag we had passed. There was no PIT sign. The race was still on. I was still running close behind Tim, and figured I could pass him in the straight again, and maybe even do it before the timing line. I kept close through the Bus Stop (the next turn after turn 9), and passed him through the kink just before the timing line. Sure enough, there was a waving flag this time, and it was the checkered flag. I was faked out the first time through because I don't think I've ever passed a white flag (which indicates one lap to go) before. I'd always been lapped by one of the big bikes, costing me a lap, and meaning that the only flag I'd ever seen waved like that was a checkered flag. Oops! The third memorable moment also involved Tim. For the last race, he and Ron Blocker from Portland were trading passes ahead of me, but both were solidly beyond my grasp for most of the race. Ron has a decidedly fast bike, and he's pretty good through the corners, a combination which is guaranteed to leave me in the dust. Thus it was with great surprise that, on the final lap (having carefully scrutinized the first waving flag I saw to make sure it wasn't checkered), I came upon the following situation: Ron and Tim and Arash (who's way faster than me, but had slowed down so as to have someone to race with) were all packed pretty close together through turn 9, and packed even tighter into the Bus Stop. There, some kind of alchemy happened, and both Tim and Ron just weren't accelerating. With someting approaching glee, I swerved around Tim, and followed several bike lengths behind Arash into the straight. Clearly I wasn't going to catch up to him before the line, but I was actually gaining. As we crossed the line, Arash was maybe a dozen feet in front of me, and Ron and Tim had disappeared behind me. That was a pretty odd feeling. After the races, of course, I discovered why I had done so well: Tim was chasing an intermittent misfire in his engine, so that he wasn't able to accelerate or maintain speed as well as normal. That was true for both races, as I recall. Ron had somehow lost 4th gear (his top gear) midway through that last lap, managed to actually break and fix his shift lever while riding along, and once again lost 4th exiting the Bus Stop that last time. So, really, I gained those places by dint of having the most trouble-free bike. Still, it's a victory, and I've gained places more than once because I've had less trouble with my bike than other riders. For all the excitement of passing people and gaining places, my real victory comes from my own lap times. To have gained two seconds between sessions is nothing short of remarkable for me. I'll take it. Of course, come next season, I'll probably be back to 2:25 laps, but that's the way it goes, I guess. Posted at 14:55 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 11 Aug 2009Go here for more pictures taken by fellow rider Tim O'Mahoney, including a few of yours truly. It's on some kind of "you must sign up" service that I'm not willing to sign up for, so I don't have a demo picture to show you here. Look for bike #823 with a yellow number plate -- that's me. These were taken at the kart track on Friday. Posted at 15:00 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 09 Aug 2009I had a really good time at the race this weekend, although I seem to have plateaued at 2:14 as my fastest time. There were a bunch of folks up from California, and Aaron Frank, a staff writer for Motorcyclist magazine, was there to do an article on 160 racing. He was a really nice guy, and a fast rider. I'm glad I got to hang out with him over the weekend. I ended up actually getting to race, with some of the Californians. It was cool having other people around who are about my speed, although my lap times suffered from it -- I couldn't concentrate purely on doing it exactly right, and had to split my attention to also figuring out how to get around the guy in front of me. A new wrinkle, but a welcome one, and if not getting my time down a second or two is the price, I'll take it. There was also a day at the kart track on Friday, and there's nothing quite like a go-kart track on a 160 to produce the following effects: incredibly sore legs; painful wrists; face-splitting grins. Since there's no possible way to ride more than 10-15 minutes at a time on the kart track, I ended up spending a lot of time photographing as well. I kind of wished I had brought my SLR, but the G10 put in a good showing for itself:
I also took pictures over the weekend, but not very many, and none of people racing -- if they were racing, I was out there, too! Marcia (I think that's her name, in any case, Tim O's girlfriend) put on an amazing spread on Saturday night, after the Sounds of the Past races. It was a real blow-out, and garnered universal praise. There's nothing better than being served a feast, unless it's being served a feast for free. My riding was alright, but nothing too special. I switched main jets on Saturday night, and ran with the new jets on Sunday. They should have made a noticeable difference, but I didn't notice anything, so who knows what happened. I did get an opportunity to ride the bike Tim prepared for Aaron, and it was a real eye-opener. My bike is a dog. That thing is fast, and I'm making it my project this winter to build a motor to Tim's plan. He did it in three weeks, a winter's probably enough time for me to try the same thing! I seriously think I'd pick up 3-5 seconds just by having a bike that performed that well, without changing anything else. I also had a couple friends come down for Saturday, which was a really cool surprise. Andre showed up, and was my assistant for the Le Mans start race (on which, duh, the camera completely failed to work, I swear I'm about to give up on the whole video thing); he held the bike ready to go, so I could sprint to it once the cannon went off. Jeniffer also showed up, and the money quote from her was, "I swear, coming down here is like crack," as she looked at all the vintage race bikes, obviously lusting after at least half of them. Andre (who you should vote for as Seattle Public Schools board member) also took video and pictures of me riding, which he said he'd post later, and I'll include a link here when he gets those things up. For the pictures I took of the non-kart-track portion of the weekend, click here:
There's my quickie report. If you weren't there, you should have been. This was a really fun weekend, and I'm glad I got myself down there despite schedule entanglements. Next, of course, I dive into tech week for my next show, Penguins, which is a delightfully sacriligeous romp of a latenight at Annex, but also means that I don't actually get any breathing room until next weekend. And next weekend, I'm going to sleep for 17 hours straight. Posted at 21:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 19 Jul 2009I've been riding the CL175 streetbike around quite a bit lately, enjoying the tiny, lightweight bike. In the last month or so, though, the engine had started making this odd clattering noise, particularly when it was cold. On a 35 year old bike, even when it only has 14 thousand miles on the odometer, odd clattering noises are not at all comforting. My mind ran through some of the chilling possibilities: bearing wear on the camshaft or crankshaft, either of which would require tearing the engine down and possibly replacing huge chunks of it; broken pieces in the valve train, potentially causing more damage for each revolution of the engine; a broken camchain tensioner, leaving the camchain to flop around inside the engine, messing up valve timing and shaving chunks off the engine case... The possibilities were myriad and daunting. I decided, however, to try the simple solutions first. The simplest is to adjust the valves. If they're out of adjustment (gap too wide) they can make ominous clattering noises like what I was hearing. After a certain amount of grunting and swearing (because nothing's ever easy, even on super-simple vintage bikes like this one), I got all the valves adjusted. I found that the intake valves were both fairly loose, and one of the exhaust valves was loose. Not enough to cause the clattering, I thought, but enough to cause performance problems. So no matter what, it was a fine thing to do. Imagine my relief when I started the motor, and the doomful clanking noises were no longer present! It was a beautiful moment, and one that I felt like sharing (and here we are). It's so nice when the solution you really want to work is the one that actually does work. Posted at 12:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 29 Jun 2009
New bars make all the difference
I installed new handlebars on the CL175 this weekend, as you can see above. I just came back from the first test-ride with them, and it is amazing the difference they make. The bike feels more solid, control feels more positive, my arms are much less stressed due to the levers finally being aimed right. It even felt faster, although that had to be 100% perception, because the bike's performance hasn't changed. Certainly more sporty. So that's very positive news. The bars are the $25 Street Master bars you see at every motorcycle shop, the Drag model. I'll assume they mean drag racing, and not drag queens. I had to drill and mill the bars a bit to accomodate the internal wiring used by the CL175 -- the wires from the switch pods run through the handlebars, plus there's a locating pin in the switch pods to keep the wires from getting pinched due to pod rotation or sliding. I would have been happier with the pods and grips further inboard, for a narrower profile, but as a practical matter, they had to be out that far for everything to fit. My knees are now a bit in the way for sharp turns out of driveways or other slow-speed maneuvers, but I think the peg relocation will solve that pretty easily, so that's probably the next step. I have all the pieces, just have to start making them. I'm very pleased with this change, the CL175 is even more appealing to ride, now, and I think the new pegs and new seat I have planned will contribute even further. It's so nice when a change works the way you want it to! Posted at 13:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 26 Jun 2009I just uploaded some new video to YouTube for the first time in quite a while. This time, it was footage from a practice session on June 13th, where I was following a new rider around to see what help she might need. Not much, as it happened, and it was nice to be able to record her as well, so she can see what was happening. Thus, with no further ado: Posted at 11:23 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 15 Jun 2009According to the timing information at mylaps.com (our clever new timing system's website) I've set a new personal record: a 2:14.443 lap at Pacific Raceways. I'm definitely getting better. I just wish I had anyone else to race with -- everyone else is way ahead of me. Posted at 10:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 31 May 2009I decided last night that I'd head out and finally catch Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which was playing at Balagan theater. I've got a couple of friends in it, and it seemed to be getting good buzz. I decided, since I recently replaced the tach drive oil seal in the CL175, to take it out again. It's a little goofy to ride very far, but Capitol Hill isn't a bad trip, and I wanted to see if I could figure out the appropriate change to make to the carburetors to fix a mid-throttle weakness. The ride up to the hill was fine, and I provisionally decided on the carburetor change I wanted to make (drop the needles a notch, since the mid-throttle feels a bit rich). Unfortunately, as I was riding up Pike, just about to turn to the cross-street where I was intending to park, the engine suddenly died as if the key had been switched off: engine not running, headlight off, no brake light, etc. Bad news. Fortunately, I was literally a couple dozen feet from 11th when I ran out of momentum, so I duck-paddled the bike to the turn and into a parking spot on the side of the street. I didn't have time to work on it just then, so I left it parked and went to the show. After the show, I came back and did some poking at the bike. I checked the fuse (looked fine), unplugged and replugged previously troublesome connectors, looked over anything else that might be the cause of the problem. There really wasn't anything I could see. I finally pulled the fuse out so I could check the size of a replacement (you never know), locked up the bike as best I could, and walked down to the bus. Much later that night (between the walk to the bus, the bus ride, and the walk home from the bus stop, I figured I must have spent about an hour on a 20 minute motorcycle trip), I was able to pull out the multimeter and check the fuse: no connection! This was a bit of a hallelujah moment for me. The bike had previous done this trick, where it would shut off like someone had flipped a switch, but then it would come back as if nothing was wrong. This was incredibly frustrating, because there was then no way to find the problem and fix it. I had to sit back and hope it would manifest again in a situation that wasn't too unsafe. I'm just lucky it died when it did, instead of riding down Aurora, or on the freeway. Visual inspection of the fuse revealed no problems -- it hadn't blown from a short or something. This was very good news, and I realized it explained the whole problem: in one of the end-caps of the fuse, the link had probably vibrated loose over the life of the bike. It was now probably waving around and occasionally re-connecting in a way that would perfectly explain the off-on faults I saw before. I've seen light bulbs do this before, but never a fuse. So, I'm off soon to bus back to the hill, new fuses clutched in my nervous claws. In the absolute worst case, Jesse has offered that he'll be passing through Seattle on his way back from a dirt-biking weekend later today, and he could give me and the bike a lift back to my house. Fantastic timing! Posted at 10:22 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 12 May 2009Someone on the F-160 mailing list (a list for 160 Vintage racers) mentioned shoving a track-vendor hotdog into his peg as a substitute for a peg slider, and it inspired me to find this clip: Hopefully clear enough from the visuals and the tone of voice, the only helpful clue I can provide is that TUV is the German equivalent of the DMV, sort of, only every change to a vehicle has to be approved by TUV. Suffice to say that bike customizers and TUV don't usually get along. Posted at 16:51 permanent link category: /motorcycle I'm working on a full report of this weekend, but I'll give you the quickie review. Basically, I didn't have a very good time. There was a lot of self-doubt and wondering why I was bothering. I didn't have any overt problems, no crashes, no big goofs, just a steady stream of "why am I doing this?" This was all capped off by a range of annoying things, from the GoPro camera (which has always been spotty, but was at least kind of working last year) completely crapping out to dropping my shift linkage to coming in dead last, behind a new rider who hadn't even come to practice on Saturday. He was literally riding his first laps around the Pacific Raceways track on Sunday, and it was only his second time out on a track, ever. Humbling and thoroughly demoralizing. Still, I loved hanging out with the racers (although the new guy rubbed me the wrong way somehow), and being at the track, and all of it except the actual riding around the track "competing" for last place. I'm not giving up yet, but it's hard to be too fired up about the whole thing right now. It was also a massively over-committed weekend for me, so I was operating on far too little sleep and a pretty constant feeling of stress. I'll mention it here when I get the race report finished -- it's mostly done, I just have to add pictures. Posted at 11:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 08 May 2009I've gone over my lists, prepared my stuff, cleaned and adjusted. I think that I'm about as ready for the race this weekend as I could be. And if you look hard, you can see that I'm (temporarily) sporting two cameras:
For a laugh, I might try turning the one on the handlebars around to aim at my face so you can all see the weird faces I pull as I race. I'll be curious to see how well both cameras work, since I had such generally spotty luck with the GoPro last year. The camera on the handlebars is an Oregon Scientific ATC-2000. The one on the left fork is a GoPro Motorsports Hero (who comes up with these names?). Posted at 16:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 28 Apr 2009I had an early day today, and decided at the last moment to stop by Online Metals to see what they had in their cutoff bins. In actual fact, they had a great deal, and the only thing that kept me from going crazy is the fact that whatever I bought, I'd have to cart it home in my shoulder bag. Even with this constraint, my back hurts from the 13 lbs of metal to which I limited myself. Specifically, I got metal for two interesting projects. The first is for the street CL175: footpeg relocation. The footpegs on the CL175 are provided by this heavy steel bar which runs under the frame. You can kind of see it here: 
The main footpeg is the bigger one, on the right. Anyway, that peg is in a weird spot for me -- I really expect my footpegs to be further back, and a bit higher. Well, for the race bike, I ended up making these thick steel reinforcement plates for the passenger pegs (further back, and folded upright in the picture above); why not make new reinforcement plates like on the race bike, but extend the plates down a bit? That would put the pegs exactly where I expect them. It would require some extra engineering for the shifter and brake pedal, but that's nothing I haven't solved before. So, I picked up some more 1/4" thick steel plate to make those peg relocators. The other project I have in mind for the latest haul of metal is velocity tubes for the race bike. Fellow racer and inveterate tinkerer Michael Bateman made up some velocity tubes for his development bike, and forwarded me the dimensions -- no problem to make. That would be a fun project that might even make a practical difference: velocity tubes smooth the airflow into the carburetors, which should at least theoretically allow the engine to run a bit more efficiently. As I understand it, non-laminar airflow into the carbs reduces the amount of air they can suck in per piston cycle, which reduces the amount of air-fuel mix, which reduces the amount of power possible. It's probably not a difference I'd see on a dyno so much as while riding (with the attendant moving, chaotic airflow), but I also don't race on a dyno. Now, of course, I find myself wanting to read up on the design of velocity tubes, to see if I'm headed in the right direction. If so, I've got enough metal to make 3 pair of tubes, I'm pretty sure. Posted at 17:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 10 Apr 2009
That default standard picture set
Enjoy! Click on "High Res" for 14.7 megapixel versions Posted at 15:15 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
