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Alceste posted:McKinney just tightened their water restrictions even more so someone around here apparently thinks the drought is still getting worse, despite all the rain you've been causing. I guess rain next weekend is a guarantee since that Oklahoma ride is on the calendar again. Checking the valves is not a big deal, and I'd done it before which is why I knew I needed to adjust them. Adjusting them adds a whole lot more work. The cam chain tensioners are a real pain in the rear end to get off, and it's apparently even worse on the first gen and requires a special tool. I didn't exactly work all day but all I managed to get done was adjusting the valves on the rear cylinder and about half-way through the front. I'll probably go back out there and finish it. It'd go a lot quicker if I had to do it a second time though. Still need to install my new clip-ons and stainless steel brake lines in the front this week too.
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Jun 23, 2014 03:58
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Are we still on for Talimena this weekend? Can we get a head count?
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Jun 26, 2014 03:59
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I was worried that the forums wouldn't come back up in time to resume planning this.  Assuming decent weather this time, and as of now it looks like dry and about 90, I'm still in. edit: for the 29th that is
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Jun 26, 2014 04:29
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Weather's looking pretty good, or at least as good as it can in late June in Texas. It is showing occasional rain in Mena, AR, but it's always saying just a couple hours and light rain, still keeping an eye on it though. I've had an uh, adventurous week in motorcycle maintenance. Despite having taken my valve covers off before, and put them on, and no issues. And then done it again to adjust them. For some reason the rear cylinder has decided it wants nothing more in life than to vomit oil. I'm pretty sure I've got it locked down finally but I won't know for sure until tomorrow since I have to wait for the RTV to cure. If it still doesn't stop leaking I'll get a new gasket and try again and should still have it done by Sunday but there's a small chance my motorcycle will prevent me from going on my own trip. On the plus side I swapped my clip-ons for ones with an inch rise over stock and got SS lines in the front and that's all working well. The actual valve adjustment also went fine in the sense that the valves are all now well within spec.
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Jun 26, 2014 06:37
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I'm in Albuquerque this weekend, taking a cousin through the MSF coure. Should be pretty entertaining, this'll be the first time I've taken the beginner class since I started teaching.
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Jun 26, 2014 08:54
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I'm back to iffy. My track bike *may* be getting delivered some time this weekend and I need to be available to collect it.
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Jun 26, 2014 22:41
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It would be weird if I turned out to be the only person available to ride on a sunny weekend. I had to go to Plano for work today and while I was there I exchanged something at Cycle Gear and noticed that all their Heat-Out stuff is half off, and they are throwing in a T-shirt for $9.99 if you buy anything else. I don't know how well it works compared to better brands, but I figured $20 was okay to gamble on one of their long sleeve shirts.
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Jun 26, 2014 22:55
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kuffs posted:I'm back to iffy. My track bike *may* be getting delivered some time this weekend and I need to be available to collect it. What track bike are you getting? You going to do a track day soon?
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Jun 26, 2014 23:53
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I bought a 2001 Honda F4i. Since it's potentially being delivered to the track, I may be doing a trackday as soon as this weekend.
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Jun 27, 2014 00:40
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kuffs posted:I bought a 2001 Honda F4i. Since it's potentially being delivered to the track, I may be doing a trackday as soon as this weekend. Decent pick up. There are tons of them out there, the fuel injection system is well known, crap ton of aftermarket stuff for them.
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Jun 27, 2014 06:36
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kuffs posted:I bought a 2001 Honda F4i. Since it's potentially being delivered to the track, I may be doing a trackday as soon as this weekend. You decide to stay at your job so have track access again? I've got my oil leak sorted I'm pretty sure, at least the 30 seconds or so I let it run at midnight were oil leak free, I'll give it a more thorough test tomorrow and put the wheel back on, but I'm tentatively good to go do *something* on Sunday. If kuffs is running at Cresson we could go do FM4/something around there and then go check that out. The closer we get to Sunday the more the forecasts are saying rain in Oklahoma. Texas weather looks really nice temperature wise though since it'll be cloudy.
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Jun 27, 2014 07:00
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I'm up for a ride that's not to Oklahoma.
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Jun 27, 2014 11:23
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I just want to ride somewhere. For the love of God, I need to get out on the bike and away from the house and work for awhile. I'm already resolved to go somewhere alone if nothing else works out, but I'd rather be with at least part of this group if possible.
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Jun 27, 2014 14:22
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IS FM4 that one that runs N/S up by Bonham and Whitewright?
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Jun 27, 2014 14:44
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Welp, bike is actually going on a truck in 30 minutes, headed to Cresson. Looks like I'm on for my first bike track day! Still don't know what my schedule is like. Kinda depends if I can get the bike ready to run on the first day.
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Jun 27, 2014 16:03
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Congratulations, that sounds like lots of fun. I'd love to be able to do that someday.
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Jun 27, 2014 17:09
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PadreScout posted:IS FM4 that one that runs N/S up by Bonham and Whitewright? Nah, that's usually a bunch of roads you take in order to get on FM697, which is kind of the highlight of riding up north past Mckinney. FM4 runs from Jacksboro to Cleburne. We could do FM455 west out of Mckinney and then head to Jacksboro and do FM4. We finish a fair bit southwest of Dallas though so linking those two together makes something like a 275-325 mile day depending on where you live. Though we could probably shave some parts off FM455 to get that down a bit and take a more direct route to FM4. The real downside to that ride is that the last 60-90 miles are basically just slabbing it back home through DFW. We could try to do something where we loop around through FM455 and FM697 and then finish in Mckinney, I think it might be possible to get like a 150+ mile loop out of that and finish pretty close to where we started. It's also back down to scattered light rain for a couple hours in OK. I really want to do that ride but I may wait until the fall or something and hope it stops raining all the time there. Kinda depends on how my bike is looking. I rode it to work this morning and it seemed to be fine once it got done burning all the oil off the exhaust header, but don't want to strand myself 200 miles from home on a Sunday cause that'd suck.
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Jun 27, 2014 21:50
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Is there a plan for tomorrow or is it every man for himself? I appear to have sprained my left wrist, but it doesn't feel too bad on the bike so I am planning to go out anyway. Just might need to keep the miles reasonable.
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Jun 29, 2014 01:28
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Looking like every man for himself. I'm at a BBQ that might go kind of late. Probably go out for a bit tomorrow but not sure when.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:10
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I did a trackday and didn't die!
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Jun 29, 2014 02:40
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What was it like?
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Jun 29, 2014 03:30
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Exhausting. My new track suit is not very pliable yet, so my sessions were fighting both gravity and tanned leather. Also very revealing with respect to some bad habits I've developed on the street. I had a tank slapper after trying some very sloppy downshifting while braking.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:44
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Also, I would ride with someone tomorrow anyway. Especially if it's gonna be lighter fare than the OK trip.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:08
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I am taking the family to breakfast in Plano tomorrow and leaving directly from there for a bit of a ride, but not too long of one because of that sprained wrist (which I have absolutely no idea how I got). I remain absolutely committed to getting the hell out of the house for a chunk of the day tomorrow, and besides, I got that hot weather gear and I want to see if it works. I don't have a real route plotted yet, but I'm thinking of taking Parker Rd. east to 1378 and joining up with this "East Dallas Bowtie" route that I found here: http://www.motorcycleroads.com/75/903/Texas/East-Dallas-Bowtie.html I don't know what anyone else is doing, but if you have any interest in that, I can plan to be in a specific place at a specific time to meet up, though it would probably be no earlier than 10 AM or so.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:33
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Alceste posted:
I could make 10am. Pick a place that's convenient for you. Left my BBQ at Lake ray Hubbard and accidentally went West. So my bike got a 125 mile test ride. Seems fine. Need to get some new bar ends cause oh man the buzz.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:25
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I ran without bar ends for a while and it caused this horrible rash on the backs of my hands. So bad I couldn't even sleep. I thought it was my gloves and went through a few pairs before I figured it out and cobbled up some weights to attach to my bar end mirrors. We are going to be at The Egg & I at Custer & Parker in Plano. If you're interested in that route I mentioned we could meet somewhere near Parker & 75. There is an In N Out just south of Parker on the northbound side near a Best Buy, for example, or a Starbucks a bit further west at Alma.
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Jun 29, 2014 13:45
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Well hopefully you see this, I'll be at the In-N-Out at 10.
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Jun 29, 2014 15:05
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I did. See you then.
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Jun 29, 2014 15:14
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Sorry I didn't make it guys. I ended up being much more tired than I thought. I might have been able to do a trip starting at noon or so, but I elected to just sleep in.
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Jun 29, 2014 23:04
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me too
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Jun 30, 2014 00:18
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No worries, had fun riding around near McKinney and talking about being married dudes in their 30s with motorcycles.  . Alceste, how effective is that skull cap thing under your helmet? I'm thinking of coating myself head to toe in tech fabric.
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Jun 30, 2014 01:42
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Yeah, I had a good time too. Turned out to be a pretty decent little route overall (except 470). I actually got the skullcap thing to keep my hair grease out of the helmet pads, and it does a good job of keeping the funk out of my helmet. I know I can wash the pads too but I've never had to. Now that you ask, though, I realize my head has never ever felt hot. I felt pretty comfy the whole time with that new shirt I got, too, so I guess that stuff was a good investment.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:08
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I understand about sleeping in. I think you earned that. It was not a real long ride anyway. I thought I would have trouble with my sprained wrist so I picked a short route, but it ended up being totally fine, of course.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:11
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I've been riding to work this week after the generous help of M. Night with some of my routine maintenance. Hasn't been too bad and haven't had any scary moments, but going home to Dallas from Fort Worth on 183/35 I go through some loving insane wind. Blows me around a bit on the bike and freaked me out once when I felt the front wheel move a bit more than I would like. Sometimes I have to lean to the side just to go straight. Only issue I'm having with the bike right now is poor idling. I think, and some of the other riders I've talked to think it's dirty carbs so I bought some B-12 Chemtool to add to my tank and some of the B-12 spray stuff as well that I can spray directly into the carbs. Going to try that out tomorrow or Friday and see how it goes. I really don't want to take the carbs out and clean them but I'll probably have to do that eventually anyway. I'll try to join you guys the next time you go for a ride but I've heard some of you like to go pretty fast. I've only gone up to 80 so far, usually do 70-75 on the highway. Might need some more miles under my belt before I do tag along.
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Jul 3, 2014 03:49
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Spankydoodle posted:I've been riding to work this week after the generous help of M. Night with some of my routine maintenance. Hasn't been too bad and haven't had any scary moments, but going home to Dallas from Fort Worth on 183/35 I go through some loving insane wind. Blows me around a bit on the bike and freaked me out once when I felt the front wheel move a bit more than I would like. Sometimes I have to lean to the side just to go straight. The wind thing just takes time. I went for my first ride with kuffs a few days after my first time on the interstate, only way to get better at riding bikes is to ride bikes.  Though you should definitely ride your own ride and not feel pressured to keep up or whatever, we won't leave you.Speaking of your carb issues, does anyone have a vacuum balancer gauge? I want to try syncing my throttle valves to see if that removes some of the vibration my engine has. If not I'll just pick one up but figured I'd ask around since it doesn't seem like something I'll need every day.
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Jul 3, 2014 03:58
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I ended up using a long length of tubing, a yardstick and some oil (I hear ATF works well but I used 3-in-1 because that's what I had handy) to cobble up a homemade manometer when I balanced my carbs, so I don't have one. Doing it the way I did it was cheap but annoying because there was nothing to break up the vacuum pulses and the oil jumped up and down in both tubes quite a lot at idle. Is it possible to "bench sync" throttle valves (with cigarette papers or feeler gauges) like you do carbs? At least with carbs that's supposed to be almost as good, or equivalent, to doing it with the vacuum tool. The wind thing sucks. My neck was sore for two days after Sunday's ride, due to the wind I think. But after you've been dealing with it for a while you'll probably build up stronger muscles, which might help. You will get used to stuff like the bike moving around in weird ways. I used to have one turn on the way to work where it would feel like my back wheel would slip about every other time I went through that intersection, even when it was dry, but I never went down and after a while my heart rate didn't even change when it happened. When those wheels are spinning, and generating that gyroscopic force, the bike really tries to stay upright--and as long as you have traction it's really hard to lose control of it. If you really want to make sure you've eliminated the carbs as a source of any future issues you may have, such as your lovely idle, the only way to do that is to pull them and very thoroughly clean them out with B-12, compressed air, and maybe real thin wire like welding tip cleaners. Pilot jets like to clog and I tried running Seafoam, etc. through mine but in the end I had to do the job the right way. It's not difficult. Just smelly and sort of tedious, but it's a good feeling knowing your carbs are totally squeaky clean when you're done. You might end up fixing a vacuum leak when you put it all back together too.
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Jul 3, 2014 05:00
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I'm back in town. I might know a guy with a colortune and a synch set up. Anything entertaining going on this weekend?
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Jul 3, 2014 05:35
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I want to ride! I've missed the last 3 or 4 and I need to get some miles on my machine.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:55
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So, I do know a guy with a colortune and a carb synch tool. Anyone with carbs that doesn't mind taking a trip to the metroplex area, let me know and I'll see if i can get some use time out of the tools. Any rides this weekend? Worst case, I am free and will probably wander off somewhere.
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Jul 4, 2014 07:14
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I'd be interested if this B-12 doesn't do the trick. I've read a little bit about colortune and carb syncing and it seems pretty heavy, so I probably need to do more reading before I'd be comfortable doing something like that. One of my coworkers is going up to Oklahoma to pick up his dad's Harley on Saturday, he said he'd give me a call if he ended up going for a ride on Sunday. Other than that I didn't have anything planned. If you guys end up doing any kind of ride post it here and I'll see if I can join you.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:53
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