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Eventually you realize you're the biggest farkle.
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Feb 23, 2023 00:48
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| # ? May 15, 2024 01:12 |
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Dog Case posted:Is my top box a farkle if I chose the one I did specifically because it has more flat smooth surface for stickers than some of the other options I considered Oh yeah. If you chose the rectangular aluminum one that somehow inexplicably weighs more than double its own rated capacity, that alone is farkle enough, but choosing it because you were thinking about all the National Park stickers or euro letters in ovals you can stick on it, you bet your rear end that's a farkle.
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Feb 23, 2023 01:17
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Finally got the new tires mounted to my FZR600. It was a very gentle ride home because it loving SNOWED in the morning. It melted away by the time i picked up the bike, but everything was still nasty, salty and wet.
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Feb 28, 2023 13:54
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Rode through some salt because the bastards at work salted the parking lot! It didn’t even get that cold overnight! 
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Mar 1, 2023 16:58
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I mounted a top box rack on the new-to-me sv650. The rack doesn't play entirely nice with the aftermarket licence plate holder from the P.O. but it's good enough for now even though the blinkers are forced to a bit of a droop. I'll have to fix it later maybe I guess, possibly go back to stock or fabricate something or get aftermarket blinkers. Or just live with the droop, maybe it's fine. Anyways then I FINALLY RODE THE BIKE WOOHOO. It was dusty and partly damp and the tires were cold and I'm used to flogging the 300cc learner bike so I got some unplanned wheelspin at a red light after giving it too many beans but man what a nice bike, I'm super happy it's mine. This weather window should last through friday so I'll gingerly feel my way around the gravel and dust whenever I can and maybe do some ergo tweaks and look forward to spring proper which could be a month or more away 
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Mar 1, 2023 18:28
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I put some air in the Scrambler's tyres and went to the shops to get some climbing kit. I also thought about putting on the rack and top box but didn't manage to convert intention into action. Nice but cold day, still really enjoying the Scrambler.
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Mar 1, 2023 21:56
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Got it plated this morning and did my first ride tonight   Nothing fancy, just a quick jog up the highway and back after work. Who knew 80mph in 50 degree weather could be so comfortable...
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Mar 2, 2023 01:05
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FBS posted:. Who knew 80mph in 50 degree weather could be so comfortable... That was the most surprising thing for me when I started riding my VStrom. So comfy and warm!
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Mar 2, 2023 01:25
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FBS posted:Who knew 80mph in 50 degree weather could be so comfortable... I used to have a Cee Bailey barn door for a windscreen on my FJR for winter, could ride down into the 30s with just that + the heated grips if I layered up appropriately. People over on FJRForum have figured out how to modify VStrom handguards to fit the FJR for winter use, too
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Mar 2, 2023 17:14
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FBS posted:Got it plated this morning and did my first ride tonight *raises hand above the extended windshield of my Goldwing*
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Mar 2, 2023 17:28
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Today I started the engine and drove it a few meters in front of my garage. Can't wait for the freezing temps to finally stop. Guessing it's gonna be march.
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Mar 2, 2023 17:34
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The blinkers on the FZR quit working. Replaced the LED lamps with standard incandescents. Cause:  LED lamps with sturdy aluminium heatsink. The heatsink with board was mounted to the bayonet base with just a tiny droplet of glue, causing both of the lamps to just fall out of the base when the weather got cold and the glue let go. Weird kind of lamp to put in there. But they were hella bright, much brighter than the 21w incandescents it now has.
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Mar 2, 2023 18:08
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LimaBiker posted:hella bright heyooooooooo
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Mar 2, 2023 19:25
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Another fail at putting the rack on the Scrambler. The holes in the rack components don't line up with the ones in the frame, and 2 of the bigass bolts are either a hosed up size or just badly made, and I can't do em up even if the holes were the right distance apart. 6.5mm hex??? :ducati:
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Mar 4, 2023 14:38
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knox_harrington posted:Another fail at putting the rack on the Scrambler. The holes in the rack components don't line up with the ones in the frame, and 2 of the bigass bolts are either a hosed up size or just badly made, and I can't do em up even if the holes were the right distance apart. 6.5mm hex??? :ducati: Quarter inch. :aircraft grade:
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Mar 4, 2023 15:34
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After spending months trying to work out what the gently caress is going on with my clutch [1], I just gave up and replaced the clutch pack entirely. Turns out the clutch springs were a few mm or two shorter than spec. Hopefully, that's all that it was. Also dropped a tooth on the front sprocket on the advice of my motogymkhana club mates. At lower speeds when not slipping the clutch the engine would lug, creating head shakes and upsetting the bike going round corners. [1] The clutch-lever would 'self-adjust' roughly proportionately with engine temperature. With the lever properly adjusted at cold temperatures, the lever would become slacker and slacker as the engine gets warm. I also suspect the clutch was self-slipping at high RPMs too. knox_harrington posted:Another fail at putting the rack on the Scrambler. The holes in the rack components don't line up with the ones in the frame, and 2 of the bigass bolts are either a hosed up size or just badly made, and I can't do em up even if the holes were the right distance apart. 6.5mm hex??? :ducati: 6.5mm is the size of drive 'bit' afaik. You might be able to put a 5mm hex-bit in a 5mm socket and use the other end.
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Mar 6, 2023 10:02
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The Versys X 300 is in the shop getting stiffer front springs and a gold value. Very curious how different it is going to feel.
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Mar 8, 2023 18:55
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Price of gold is high atm so you'll do well
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Mar 8, 2023 20:19
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 Got my 2004 fz6n out of winter storage early since that shed is getting reorganized to be a proper small workshop. Its's still icy and below freezing so for now it's parked. Plan with it is to clean it up properly, remove bits that I don't get extra for and can reuse(cyclops bulb, bark busters, double take mirrors) and sell it. It has rolled 115000 km /71500 miles now. It works for now, did the latest valve check at 62k miles, but value of it is approaching the same as a major engine repair. I may get low 3000-4000 USD for it. If I wanted the same model again bikes that has only rolled 25k miles and less can be had for around 4500 usd. Mainly I want to try another naked bike, and something with better damping by default or upgrade that asap. And I'll go for a shad 58x top box setup, my brother is happy with his. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ZiGZY6Lvs
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Mar 9, 2023 10:39
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So finding parts for old bikes is a pain in the rear end. Especially electrics, magic black boxes and the like. There is a guy who builds replacement CDI boxes for V4 powered Hondas, but he stopped making them in the middle of last year. Anyway, I just happened to check out his website and found that as of the first of March, he had enough parts to make about a dozen sets, so I bought a set almost immediately. They came yesterday, so I went out and put them on my bike. The difference is absolutely amazing. It idles smoother, responds to throttle inmediately and vigorously. I can't wait for warmer weather. I still need to purchase new handlebars, one more throttle cable, a new choke cable and a new helmet to replace mine that took a hit in my crash in October. Then change the fluids, the forks seals..new rear shocks..crap, I can't wait!
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Mar 9, 2023 14:55
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What I did to my ride: checked tyre pressure on the Fireblade (still at 2.5 since November) and rode it to work. 2.5°C and I couldn't find a buff so my neck got pretty cold. Such a good bike though, I took the lake road near work and had a bit of a blast. It's so precise and absurd amount of power.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:37
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Swapped out the bearings on my front wheel (or rather, tried to pull the bearings for two days without success, then gave Fay Myers a hundred bucks to do it). Aaaaaand the head shake is still there. Next up is to try the steering bearings, at least it’ll be an upgrade to change the loose balls to needle bearings.
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Mar 10, 2023 00:20
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Is there noticeable play in the head bearings?
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Mar 10, 2023 00:28
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What circumstances does it happen under?
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Mar 10, 2023 00:31
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The symptom is a bar shake when riding hands free. Goes away completely when I have hands on the bars. Bike is a Nighthawk 750. No noticeable notching when I suspend the front and steer it left to right. No play that I can feel when I load the brakes and shift the bike back and forth. There was a tiny bit of play in the wheel bearing, and I hoped it was the cause. But I still feel a tiny shimmy. The tires are new (changed it while the wheel was off for the bearing). The problem usually gets worse as the front tire wears down (along with a noticeable cupped wave in the tire wear pattern). I also don’t think it’s wheel balance or a thrown weight (it’s been happening the last 20,000 miles, plenty of tire balances in that time). I haven’t tried anything with the triple tree either, could be a tweak in there maybe? Most people say bearings when they describe this problem and what fixed it for them, so I figured $30 of bearings and an afternoon might be a good use of time to see if it goes away.
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Mar 10, 2023 01:42
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Check your swingarm bearings, make sure both the swingarm and forks are straight (do not trust the marks) and the rear wheel is adjusted straight. I'm assuming you're not like loading up the rear heavily with the preload backed right off or something like that causing the front wheel to be super light? Have you tried increasing rear preload and seeing if it gets worse or better? Are the wheel spacers all in the right order?
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Mar 10, 2023 01:51
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Will do. Thanks for the list of things to work through! Wheel spacers are in the same order as when I got the bike four years ago but I’ll confirm against a parts diagram that they’re supposed to be there.
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Mar 10, 2023 02:25
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Slavvy posted:I'm assuming you're not like loading up the rear heavily with the preload backed right off or something like that causing the front wheel to be super light? Have you tried increasing rear preload and seeing if it gets worse or better? My Strom definitely used to do the hands-off shake when I unweighted the front with a lot of heavy crap in my sidecases. I stressed about it for a while, then decided to quit stressing because the behavior was predictable, controllable, and not worsening, and I didn't really have a whole lot of business sitting on top of 7+ KJ of kinetic energy without a hand on the bars anyway Probably could have done something about it if I'd resprung the shock, but iirc the stocker was meant to be non-rebuildable so I never got around to it.
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Mar 10, 2023 04:12
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Advice to anyone reading this: if you ever get a chance to ride any kind of 50cc scooter, you owe it to yourself to take your hands off the bars and see how long you can stop yourself from grabbing them again.
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Mar 10, 2023 04:15
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Weird how bicycle geometry makes it almost effortless
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Mar 10, 2023 05:02
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Slavvy posted:Advice to anyone reading this: if you ever get a chance to ride any kind of 50cc scooter, you owe it to yourself to take your hands off the bars and see how long you can stop yourself from grabbing them again. I posted this before but,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4LMFZ1HU9w
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Mar 10, 2023 06:01
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Slavvy posted:Advice to anyone reading this: if you ever get a chance to ride any kind of 50cc scooter, you owe it to yourself to take your hands off the bars and see how long you can stop yourself from grabbing them again. can confirm
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Mar 10, 2023 06:49
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Toe Rag posted:I posted this before but, I could trigger that behavior on my bicycle if i'd go over 30km/h and conciously bumped the handle bars. But there was very little energy behind the wobble, the slightest touch of the handle bars made it stop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3OQTU-kE2s This seems like the best time to post the 'Wobble and weave' movie from Dunlop Tires. Old bikes really seemed like they were wet noodles with an engine baked into them. quote:The slow motion camera enables us to study the action of the front forks. A frame by frame analysis shows us that both sides are telescoping independently of each other LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 12:16
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That is a damning statement about the forks and axle more than anything. Yikes
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Mar 10, 2023 16:06
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Yeah there were a couple of things going on there Firstly the horsepower revolution started happening and everyone likes a bigger number so marketing departments seized on that, all the money went towards more power so they just kept building bikes from the 60's with bigger and bigger motors. The second thing is tires were garbage so the returns on making a good handling bike were very, very small compared to just more power. It took until the 80's for tires to make a big leap, at that point chassis tech started making huge leaps to the point where bikes ten years apart would look like they were from different planets. Very different to the preceding ~60 years of incremental change.
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Mar 10, 2023 19:29
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Every time this discussion comes along I'm reminded of this: "Handling: featherlight" are not the words I'd use to describe a Suzuki 1100, different times indeed.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:11
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Imagine thinking the braking on one of those is excellent
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Mar 10, 2023 22:14
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130 section rear with 112hp. Why are tires so wide now? Seems like anything north of 100hp is gonna have 180 section. Or is that part of why the braking on one those is not actually excellent?
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Mar 10, 2023 22:49
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Wide tires look cool
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Mar 10, 2023 23:05
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| # ? May 15, 2024 01:12 |
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Yeah it all starts with the tires. They were perfectly capable of making powerful brakes back then, and if pressed probably a decent chassis as well. But that stuff costs money and if the tyres are garbage there is no return on it, you just lock earlier or fall over faster. The big change was radial tires. Prior to this every tyre had a circular cross section like bicycles still do today. So there was a limit on tyre width because the diameter would get comically huge. This is why a lot of really powerful bikes from back in the day had tiny rear wheels - you can have a big fat grippy contact patch within reasonable diameter proportions. The downside is the tyre can take very little lateral load because the sidewall is so tall and flexible. So you basically had to trade corner speed (skinny tyres on big hoops) for straight line grip (fat tyres on small rims) as the bike got bigger and faster. Sub-250cc bikes from that era handle still pretty well. Once you've got radials you can make tyres that are very wide but have short, stiff sidewalls and a cross section that isn't just a circle, so you get the best of both worlds and the overall performance envelope increases hugely. Suddenly you can have a really powerful bike that also corners really well, so you have to start thinking about keeping weave to a minimum. Previously this was done by making the bike ridiculously long, which was fine because it can't corner for poo poo anyway so who cares. But if you want to corner well you need a short wheelbase and steep fork geometry, so you need to make the bike stiffer so it doesn't death wobble at the speeds a big engine makes possible. You've also got a front tire that can sustain a shitload of force in a straight line and some amount of trail braking so you make the brakes bigger, then immediately find the forks are now terribly noodly and inadequate and twist up if you try to brake and turn at the same time, so you make them much larger diameter so as to give them lateral stiffness. And so on throughout the bike with things like axle diameter, swingarm pivot design, anti squat geometry, triple clamp stiffness, rider position etc. The tires are the only thing that makes it possible. If you sent me back to the seventies and told me to build the best race bike I could, I'd probably end up with something pretty much the same as what they already had (though probably more reliable thanks to modern knowledge), because they had already evolved their way to the best solution possible with the tires available. Imo a lot of modern bikes are over-tyred for looks though. There is no way an mt07 needs a 180 section with the compounds available today for example.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:21
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