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Another success story to add! My brakes are back together and aren't dragging anymore! New pads, seals and cleaned up.
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Jun 7, 2022 04:24
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Hell yeah. Flexible, maneuverable gear puller became my favourite gadget in the shop when it extricated the clutch basket that had become immobile after chunks of metal got between the gears connecting it to the crank gear. That reminds me that I should check my own sprocket to make sure torque hadn't wandered and the folded retaining nut wasn't flapping. Meant to check after 500km and, whoops forgot.
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Jun 7, 2022 11:46
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Saw this on imgur today motorbike people: confirm/deny? it sounds plausible to me. I've come to understand that Harleys are poorly made crap made mostly to sell to boomers who still cling to the Easy Rider fantasy
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Jun 7, 2022 14:27
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Scratch Monkey posted:Saw this on imgur today There's been rumors about their finances for years with the literal dying of their target market, but my understanding is they are sitting on a pile of cash and assets and can probably weather this storm. They still have the name and that is powerful. As for their bikes being junk, not really. Their outsourced stuff like the Street aren't very good, but in house Harley stuff has always been very well built....it's just generally designed around older tech and fundamentals. I can fault them for some of their dumber bike designs and for not having a good small sportbike/standard but I can't fault them for their QC and fit and finish. There's a stigma around Harley ownership; "heritage" and the "lifestyle" and the sooner that gets washed away the better.
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Jun 7, 2022 15:04
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I wouldnt put some of that past them. Harley, if nothing else, really excels at making incredibly boneheaded decisions. Step 1: Oh, everyone loves the Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!!
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Jun 7, 2022 15:12
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Yeah it’s actually very well made crap, for the most part.
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Jun 7, 2022 17:17
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Let’s talk about that “their entire demographic is boomers” catchphrase. Young people want Harleys they just can’t afford them. In places where a blue collar job still earns you a comfortable living, people buy the poo poo out of Harleys:  This is one of four motorcycle parking lots where I work, and by July there will be 50% more bikes packed in here on any given day. This end of the facility has more office buildings, and consequently more variety in the bike mix. The percentage of Harleys is much higher in the other lots that serve mostly production workers. Guys and gals that I work with who ride or dream of riding talk about wanting street bobs and fat bobs and road glides and poo poo. It’s what their dad and grandpa had, it’s American goddangit, and they want one too. They’re good bikes and a lot of young Americans who ride or want to ride want a Harley, they just can’t afford them because of the long decline in US manufacturing jobs and organized labor. That’s not really Harley’s fault I don’t think.
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Jun 7, 2022 19:44
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Scratch Monkey posted:Saw this on imgur today Yeah nah, Harleys are generally tasteless but good, most of their revenue comes from merch, they are developing and releasing more new models than they have in decades. Otoh America is the empire of grift. The local Harley dealer seems to think things are going great because the sorts of people who can afford Harleys aren't really affected by financial downturns.
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Jun 7, 2022 19:50
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I've said it forever now and I'll say it again. Harley is a clothing and accessory company (a lifestyle brand, if you will) that also makes bikes. Not the other way around
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Jun 7, 2022 19:58
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Hey what's the deal with fork braces and how can they possibly be necessary if the OEM didn't put them there.
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Jun 7, 2022 21:05
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Two or three totally different questions. What they're for is reducing fork twist under loads. Why they aren't there from factory isn't really a coherent question. It's like asking why your bike didn't come with frame sliders or heated grips or a top box. Whether something is on the bike or not from the factory is determined by a huge spectrum of things, most of which have little or nothing to do with the bike's mechanical properties. Whether something is necessary is a different question again. Some people on this forum think it's necessary for every bike to be drop resistant because they don't trust themselves not to drop it in their driveway. Are crash bars necessary? Some people can't swing a leg over a bike without abs. Is abs necessary? How do you define necessary? Slavvy fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 21:12
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Ok, fair points, I should have mentioned that I’ve read a few times on a few forums about a few different types of bikes that a fork brace is a “good upgrade” and even “necessary”, which always struck me as odd because something related to mechanical stability (as opposed to e.g. heated grips or crash bars) I’d expect to be part of the OEM package. Let me rephrase: Why do fork braces exist and who needs ‘em anyways?
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Jun 7, 2022 22:28
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People love buying a bunch of mildly/questionably useful poo poo for their motorcycles instead of just riding them.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:47
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I own a 4 carb motorcycle where only the caps on the outermost (most visible) two carbs are plated (shiny). Motorcycle companies are cheapskates and will absolutely skip out on $3 of steel bracing.
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Jun 8, 2022 00:32
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I own two bikes with factory fork braces. The factories do put them on, just not all the time.
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Jun 8, 2022 01:19
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epswing posted:Ok, fair points, I should have mentioned that I’ve read a few times on a few forums about a few different types of bikes that a fork brace is a “good upgrade” and even “necessary”, which always struck me as odd because something related to mechanical stability (as opposed to e.g. heated grips or crash bars) I’d expect to be part of the OEM package. When you push on the bars to steer, you're exerting force opposed to the tire's desire to keep going straight. The fork tubes themselves aren't perfectly rigid, even on a GP bike, and they basically twist up like a spring under load. This happens normally, all the time, for a variety of reasons. If you have a relatively humble bike with skinny forks, you can even try clamping your front wheel between your knees and twisting the bars back and forth to see how much the forks twist just from that, bonus points if you have a spoked wheel which will also flex. The amount of flex you get depends on the forces you put in, the size and weight of the bike, and the fork construction. Generally speaking this flex is 'bad' in the sense that the bike's geometry fluctuating while you brake or turn is bad. What people usually stumble on is the magnitude of any given problem and the corresponding magnitude of the solution. They often mistake small issues for large limitations, and small improvements for life altering changes. Too much fork flex on your race bike is bad, it'll make it wobble and weave and rob you of feel and thus lap time, this is why it's important to purchase top flight Ohlins(tm) or WP(tm) forks with strong, precision machined 48mm alloy or even carbon fiber tubes which deflect very little. USD's with rock solid forged lowers are a must. How much is too much? More than a few millimeters of movement at the bars with the wheel clamped solid would be alarming. What's too much fork flex on a sportster? If you never break the speed limit and just putter around, the skinny factory forks don't flex enough to be detectable. If you go fast enough to provoke the bike, you start to find that it tends to get a jolly little wobble on, in the right circumstances. The 'right' solution to this is Harley's own solution: the big fat USD's found on the xr1200 (the actual right solution is to consider the bike as a complete package built for a purpose and proceed accordingly but that would make a long post). This will 'fix' the 'problem' by drastically broadening the bike's performance envelope, at the cost of completely altering how it rides and looks and changing the overall balance severely enough that you then automatically have to change other stuff. It is the kind of thing that would make sense in a comprehensive overhaul but not as an isolated upgrade. A fork brace is an incremental, inexpensive solution that lets you -slightly- improve the bike at basically no drawback. The fork flex is reduced, this lets you trail brake a bit deeper, makes the bike wiggle and shake it's head a little less going over crests or mid corner bumps, that kind of thing. Whether it's necessary or not for you is up to you, it's a tool to solve a problem. Tools of a similar magnitude and purpose would be things like aftermarket triple clamps, fork parts from an S model, a stiffer front wheel, stiffer bars and so on. People telling you that you must acquire one immediately probably have below-average genitals and/or grey matter. Slavvy fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 02:43
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Slavvy posted:Whether it's necessary or not for you is up to you, it's a tool to solve a problem. It’s a problem I don’t really have, the Sportster is my take-it-easy bike after doing the whole wife/kids/mortgage/career thing, I’m not riding it the way I rode my supermoto (i.e. like an rear end in a top hat in my 20s).
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Jun 8, 2022 16:18
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One of my DRZ mirrors is infuriatingly floppy and I haven't been able to crank it down so I think the internal friction hold mechanism is messed up or something. I'm thinking about replacing both with one of those RAM mount mirror sets. All my other RAM mount stuff seems to be very good at clamping down, is my only real thought here. Any collective positive or negative thoughts on those? Only thing I can think is that they're just smaller than the stock mirrors, which are themselves luxuriously large IMO. And possibly that they're overkill since I don't go offroad so other than adjusting them I don't think the RAM flexibility really buys me anything over just buying a set of new OEM replacement mirrors. I'm pretty fixed on having a good set of above-bar mirrors. It's a DRZ so I don't really care how goofy they look on my big street dirtbike.
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Jun 10, 2022 12:02
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some kinda jackal posted:One of my DRZ mirrors is infuriatingly floppy and I haven't been able to crank it down so I think the internal friction hold mechanism is messed up or something. I'm thinking about replacing both with one of those RAM mount mirror sets. All my other RAM mount stuff seems to be very good at clamping down, is my only real thought here. Double Take mirrors, buy once cry once. They're so loving good. Best mirrors I've ever had both for function and durability. How do they look? Best mirrors I've ever had both for function and durability.
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Jun 10, 2022 12:22
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I have these on my DRZ: https://moto-science.com/collections/ktm-folding-mirrors-perch-mount/products/ktm-oem-folding-mirror-243mm-perch-mount-10mmx125mm-0097p-each I know you don't care about the folding aspect, but it might be slightly less overkill than the RAM mount ones. Also I hosed up and ordered the wrong part number when I got them, so double check my link is the one with the right threads for a DRZ.
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Jun 10, 2022 13:16
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some kinda jackal posted:infuriatingly floppy and I haven't been able to crank it Stop. Stop giving us gold for thread titles
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Jun 10, 2022 13:30
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I will never apologize for being a walking joke  The adv doubletakes were the ones I was eyeballing, I just couldn’t remember the name for some reason. They are pricey but my experience with RAM is that won’t need to worry about them vibrating out of position on me, and in some weird situation where I drop the bike they should fold in a little. Not that the mirror is in an impact path on a small drop, but.. yeah. The KTM units are an option too. I’m having trouble comparing the actual sizes but that could just be because I’m sleepy as hell. I’ll mull this over, but thanks for the feedback gang.
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Jun 11, 2022 05:19
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some kinda jackal posted:I will never apologize for being a walking joke Double takes are good. But if you really crank down on them they squish the ball and then you have to take them off for a day to let it rest and return to its original shape.
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Jun 11, 2022 14:34
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builds character posted:But if you really crank down on them they squish the ball and then you have to take them off for a day to let it rest and return to its original shape. Hell, same
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Jun 11, 2022 16:47
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builds character posted:Double takes are good. But if you really crank down on them they squish the ball and then you have to take them off for a day to let it rest and return to its original shape. I also noticed that the stalks seem to be directional. One side is definitely for the base and the other is definitely for the mirror. I kept dealing with wandering mirrors until I reversed the stalk and now they hold tight.
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Jun 11, 2022 17:53
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The doubletake mirrors are literally the only mirror I've ever had on a bike that worked worth a drat, outside of the ex250 stock mirrors. They actually show you what's behind and didn't vibrate enough to make things blurry on my paint shaker DR. Worth every penny and then some. Now that I have a nice nonADV helmet that has less peripheral vision, I should probably buy some for the hawk.
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Jun 11, 2022 17:55
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After finding oil in my air cleaner (but only on the rear cylinder...), which led me to find substantial amounts of air/oil/vapor/? puffing out my breather bolts, I'm going to open up the rocker covers and replace the breather valves, which, although not mentioned as a consumable item in the service manual, I'm told do eventually go bad. Here are some slow-motion videos for science  This was taken with a new oil cap, so I'm confident I don't have an air leak into my oil tank: https://i.imgur.com/Nzg8WzT.mp4 And here's the oil tank: https://i.imgur.com/RB22juv.mp4 Bike appears to be running fine. I'm not losing oil (i.e. the level on the dipstick is steady). Seems like a lot of vapor (?) in the oil tank and at the breather bolts. Above videos were taken on a hot bike, which I assume rules out condensation? If symptoms persist after replacing the breather valves, how worried should I be? Edit: It's an '05 Sportster. epswing fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jun 11, 2022 |
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Jun 11, 2022 21:55
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Nothing I see there is concerning, abnormal or even slightly noteworthy. The little breather valves do eventually go bad but by that point the bike usually has several oil leaks, runs like poo poo and you replace them out of denial more than anything.
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Jun 11, 2022 22:25
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So, uh, what's a paint-safe way to remove a tank pad you wasted $40 on by applying before fully acknowledging the long-term consequences? I should've just held onto it for after the tank gets scratched up, if that actually happens. It's time to wax the tank now and I hate the idea of neglecting that beautiful frost paint under the pad. Dental floss/fishing line sounds like one part of the equation. I see people mention WD40 or goo-gone but I'm gun-shy about remover agetns as I just removed an "I Voted" sticker from my otherwise beautiful top box using a Mr. Clean magic eraser and it left the black plastic chalky.
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Jun 12, 2022 19:05
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A heat gun
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Jun 12, 2022 19:55
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Dental floss, heat gun, brake cleaner. Should be in any household.
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Jun 12, 2022 20:16
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Remy Marathe posted:So, uh, what's a paint-safe way to remove a tank pad you wasted $40 on by applying before fully acknowledging the long-term consequences? I should've just held onto it for after the tank gets scratched up, if that actually happens. It's time to wax the tank now and I hate the idea of neglecting that beautiful frost paint under the pad. Magic erasers are abrasive, basically really really fine foam sandpaper.
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Jun 12, 2022 20:29
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Ola posted:Dental floss, heat gun, brake cleaner. Should be in any household. Wouldn't brake cleaner strip the paint on the tank, though?
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Jun 12, 2022 22:33
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Probably not that catastrophic, it usually clouds the poo poo out of the paint and forces you to polish it so I'd avoid it anyway. Source: doing it by accident hundreds of times.
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Jun 13, 2022 00:35
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Slavvy posted:Nothing I see there is concerning, abnormal or even slightly noteworthy. The little breather valves do eventually go bad but by that point the bike usually has several oil leaks, runs like poo poo and you replace them out of denial more than anything. Replaced the breather valves. Thought the rear rocker cover would be the hard one, but turns out the coils and stabilizer links needed to be moved to get the front one off. Separately dropped a small bolt into each rocker box, magnets to the rescue. Everything else came off without a hitch. Barely anything coming out of the breather bolts now. The old breather valves looked gunky.   Something curious, in the parts fiche, regarding the front breather valve, it says "Superseded part number is substituted", and the part number ends in "07" (this is the year Sportsters all went EFI), and came with a small red seal. The old front breather valve came out with no seal, and there didn't seem to be any reasonable way that this seal would fit into the rocker cover gasket, and went in snug without it. So I ditched the seal.  For reference, the rear breather valve part number ends in "04" (this is the year Sportsters all went rubbermount) and did not come with a seal. The old rear breather valve also came out without a seal.  So I guess (i.e. I'm hoping...) in 2007+ Sportsters the rocker cover gasket is different and requires this seal? Edit Actually yeah, to answer my own question, here's '05 and '07 assemblies, and the '07 does have that little seal (#15). All good!  
epswing fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 03:19
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Slavvy posted:It sounds like it's a tiny bit lean on the pilot yeah, if the exhaust isn't stock but the carb is, this is to be expected. I had my carb off to replace a broken choke cable, and took the opportunity to adjust the pilot screw. I drilled out the aluminum cap, and first wanted to turn it all the way in to see how many turns out it came from the factory, but it didn't budge. I figured it was just stuck. But after trying as hard as I dared (heeding lots of "don't break/strip/gently caress up your soft brass carb bits" advice), I started turning it out, and it appears that it was already seated??  Like 0 turns out from the factory. How's that even possible? It was the screw on the bottom of the carb, at the back, and blocked by a cap, so I'm reasonably sure it was the right screw. I turned it out and back in to soft seat a few times to make sure. I left it at 1 turn out, just to see where that left me, buttoned everything back up, and although I couldn't take it for a ride tonight, it idled just fine, before and after the adjustment. epswing fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 04:21
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Idk how that's possible. I've never dealt with a Harley with a blocked off pilot screw but I know nothing can run properly with a shut pilot screw
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Jun 13, 2022 04:36
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When I drilled the cap, it was with a 1/16" bit, and it did go all the way through the cap. I then sunk a self tapping screw into the cap, and pulled it out with pliers. I did these things as a limp-wristed software engineer, gently and cautiously. However... could the bit, or the self tapping screw, have gone too far, hit the pilot screw, and screwed it all the way in? The pilot screw's flat head looked fine/untouched, but maybe I missed a big gouge? Edit: Or could the PO have rejetted without adjusting the pilot screw? epswing fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 04:49
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Nah I've done that before and even if it's a brief touch you'd know about it I would've thought. Only way to know the jetting is to take the bowl off and look but it might just have the idle screwed really high?
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Jun 13, 2022 05:01
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Hm, yeah, I'm seeing some threads (1, 2) claiming if the idle was turned up high enough, it'd probably run even with the pilot screw all the way in. At least I have access to the pilot screw now, I'll turn down the idle and experiment. Thanks.
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Jun 13, 2022 05:06
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