Month: August 2008

Bike still needs a paint job but the building is picturesque 😉

Here’s where all I went today. Sunshine, mid 80s, not too bad. About 50 miles total including the stop at Kroger’s earlier. No events mechanically, as I get more confident in the bike I’d like to go a bit more out in the country. Hopefully with company. Only annoying part of my day was a left turn signal that wouldn’t turn green for me. I’m getting much smoother taking off in 1st tho. I haven’t stalled it yet, but I have bucked it once or twice. Either I’m getting better or the clutch is getting smoother the more it’s used.

I had to go downtown today, and I really wanted to ride the bike. I checked the radar, and it looked clear from my house on in. I put on the jacket and helmet, got the bike out, clear skies. Let it warm up then headed north, I got about halfway when my blue skies disappeared and a wall of water appeared in front of me. So I chickened out, exited, took the turn around and tried to beat it back home. Almost, I got a little splash for about a minute. Dropped the bike off at the house, got in the truck, and headed for downtown again. Not a drop on the windshield the whole way in. I must have somehow stumbled on an Indian rain dance between my clutchings and shiftings.
My pants are still wet 🙁

Finally got the correct grips delivered. They feel pretty good, they’re foam grips without the chrome ends. Nice I think. I tried the fancy grip glue, that was a mess, literally. It set up way too fast, I only had a couple inches of the grip on before it got sticky and I had to pull the whole mess off, thus gluing the rubber end cap inside the grip. I forced that out with the handle of a ratchet, which I promptly found my grip glued onto… I cleaned that all up with some grease cutting kitchen cleaner and a 3M scotch pad then started fresh with the good old hair spray. Took me a while to find some hairspray in this house as it’s not the 1980s anymore, but eventually I found an old can in some of my mother-in-law’s stuff that she left in the guest room. This worked much better, stayed slippery most of the way on. I’ll let it set up over night to bond, besides its storming and I’m too big a weenie to go out in the rain.

I also took this opportunity to put my fuse block cover on. 1 coat of primer, and 3 coats of black, and plenty of sanding later you can’t see that God awful gold paint anymore.

I finally settled on new grips. I chose the “Comfort Road” grips by Grab-On. The shop called to day to say they arrived, and I drove all the way over just to find out that the wrong ones were shipped. Well mebbe I’ll get them by Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime I’ve pulled my brake master cylinder off. The sight glass was leaking so I figured I’d pull it off and fix it. The epoxy fix I did on my clutch mastercyl is working really well so far so I’m pulling the same trick on the brake mastercyl. It’s set up on my bench waiting for the epoxy to dry. Hopefully it’ll be dry when my new grips come in and I can put it all together. It’ll be nice to finally ride it to work and such.

Well, the tripodometer reads 81miles now. I rode it across town, and realized that my brake master cyl has a moderate-slow leak same as the clutch mastcyl had. So I’ll be doing my same epoxy fix to it this week. I also desparately need to find new grips that will fit my handle bars. The ones I have are split and I spend half my time just trying to hold it together. That makes your right hand sore after a few miles. I also noticed that there’s alot of wind at 60mph. I never thought I would admit this, but I might like a windshield someday.

Continue reading “And the Ugliest Nighthawk of the Year Award goes to…”

Well, it only took 4.5 hours, and 2 retarted inspectors, but I finally got the sticker. The hangup? Not the bike, the bike passed perfectly, I didn’t have the damn “plate” to put the sticker on! Well I picked one up for $5 at the salvage yard, where I found the ugliest bike I’ve ever seen…

Well, I was putting the wheels back on today. They seemed to come off much easier than they went back on, but anyhow, I was back there hanging  around the rearend, and thought I should change the gear lube. I had checked it before, and it looked good. Wasn’t low and the oil still looked healthy, but changing it would be cheap insurance.
So, the book says to ride it for 15 minutes to warm it up before draining it, and I thought I would just ride the bike to the autoparts store at the end of my neighborhood to warm it up. Now, I have been keeping the tank low on gas while I was working on it since I had been removing it frequently but I thought surely I had enough to go to the end of the street. Well, as I pulled into the autoparts parking lot it sputtered and died. So I had my first experience of switching to reserve and leaning way over while trying to get it to fire up again… Atleast it happened to me sooner rather than later. Luckily the autoparts store is next door to a gas station.
Long story short, my rear gear oil is changed, my tank is full, and I’m hoping to pass inspection tmrw.

Continue reading “Tires”