Recovery.

So Sunday my dad and I drove up to Urbana to fix and retrieve my bike. We rolled in at 9:00am sharp and after coffee and chatting, we got to work on the bike at 9:30. Rolled the bike into Tom's air conditioned part of the garage and took off the tank, seat and grip and loosened up the carbs so we could get at the cable connections. There's really no room in there, so it took awhile. Finished the job at around 12, and I was shocked at the results. The throttle response was really quick and not loose and slow like it used to be. There was way too much slack in the cable, and by the looks of it, it was going to snap on the road anyway.

So we put back on the tank and seat and put it all together and took it out into the driveway for a test ride. It took longer than usual to warm up with the choke on, and when I turned off the choke...so did the bike. The bike would not run without the choke on, which is unusual and just not good for the engine. I took it out on the gravel road about half a mile to go through the gears, and it worked fine until I noticed that the bumpy terrain was making the choke work its way down to the bottom, eventually shutting it off. We took it back to the garage and after tinkering with it for about an hour, decided that the rubber intake ports were cracked through and were leaking air. We sealed them up the best we could with electrical tape, and as long as we kept the engine going and giving it throttle, it would run. If I come to a stop sign and let go of the throttle, it'll turn the bike off at the stop sign. I decided the job of riding the bike home should be left to the elder rider with over 35 years of riding experience, and he was cool with it.


We only got 4 miles before the battery died at a stop sign.
Battery!? We didn't even TOUCH it!
So I got out of the car and pushed my dad for about 1/5th of a mile on gravel so he could bump start it. We got back to the garage, diagnosed the problem, and realized that the battery connections were really loose. A quick fix with a screwdriver and we were back on the road. This time we made it home with no problems.

Grant Wood's "American Gothic" painted on a barn Along Rt. 30 near Mt. Vernon, IA

The next day, we took a look at the carbs for leaks, and found bad O-rings and replaced them. Took off the electrical tape from the boots and replaced it with a sealant, adjusted the idle and it works great now! We found like 5 problems we had to fix in one week, which I guess is pretty good.

I decided I was sick of my foam grips, so I ordered a set of rubber grips from JC Whitney, which will hopefully come tomorrow along with a Vista Cruise cruise control unit. That will be really nice. Took the bikes to the car wash for a quick pre-ride rinse.

Also, my dad introduced me to a bench grinder on Monday so I could polish some parts. I started with my fuse box cover, and it turned out great! The beginning product looked exactly like the cover on the left, and the finished cover is polished up nice :)



I still have a lot to do before my trip Saturday!

Shakedown Breakdown 2010

Yesterday my Dad and I went up to UNI's campus in Cedar Falls just to bum around campus and get some lunch. All was well until we left Cedar Falls and made a stop in Urbana (About halfway between Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids) for some gas. We're quite familiar to the area, because we have some friends of the family that live there. My dad grew up with his friend Tom in Wisconsin, who eventually moved to Urbana about 30 years ago. Tom is an engineer with a knack for inventing anything out of anything, and is like MacGyver on acid (No, still cooler than MacGruber).

Before the ride, I put on the ThrottleRockers I recieved a few weeks ago to give them another shot. I rode from my house from the gas station and decided I wasn't going to use them, but on the ride up to UNI, I experienced extreme vibration (AKA "Honda Hand"), so I decided to stop and put them on in Urbana for the ride home. It's hard to gauge where to place the device on the grip,(The device needs to be placed where the throttle will be turned during highway speeds and cannot be adjusted while riding- try figuring that out at a gas station) so I asked my dad for his opinion. He fussed with it for about five seconds, then we heard a "cllliick" and then we both let out a "shiiitttttttttt". We figured that the throttle cable under the grip had broken, so we wheeled the bike over to a set of abandoned diesel pumps and busted out the tool kit and took a look at it. Sure enough, it snapped and there was no way for us to come up with an improvised fix.

Luckily, we were ten minutes from my dad's friend's place, which was well-equipped with a giant garage, bike trailer with tiedowns, a car, welding machines, any tool imaginable and a pair of helping hands. I decided to stay at the gas station with my immobile machine while my dad went down the road to his house, thinking he'd be back for me in about half an hour. Unfortunately, we found out that he was out of town and in Wisconsin for the weekend. It took us an hour to get ahold of him, but the garage was unlocked so my dad made his way in, and made a bunch of calls. Thankfully we eventually got ahold of his son Mike, who lives in Cedar Rapids and was willing to come up and help us get everything together to haul the bike back to their place.


While my dad was at their house away from the heat, I was stuck at the Urbana Casey's for three hours, with not much to do. I went in and bought a few drinks to keep hydrated in the 93-degree weather, and sat under a canopy with a nice breeze. Eventually, Mike came and picked me up and we went back to Tom's place to hook up the trailer and brought it back to the gas station to pick up the bike. Everything went smoothly; we strapped the bike to the trailer six different ways, and it survived a bumpy 3 mile gravel road. So, the bike is sitting up in Urbana somewhere right now, and will sit there for a week until we can get over to it with a new cable so I can ride it home.
The whole point of this ride was to find problems and get them fixed before we take our big trip. We had a few issues like intermittent turn signals and brake adjustments, but we certainly didn't expect this to happen. My dad carries spare cables with him all the time, but I didn't have any spares on me. He stopped into Brenny's (Our local MC dealer) this morning and ordered a new cable, which will hopefully be delivered by Saturday. While we're fortunate that we found this problem this weekend and this soon, we didn't count on arriving home at 9pm instead of 3pm.

And the worst part wasn't even the cable breaking-It was having to ride bitch on the back of my dad's bike for 75 miles to get home. "I have no shame", I kept telling myself...

O, Canada...II

eBay.

I hate eBay. I rarely ever have success on that site, but it's like a necessary evil. It's one of the best places to find parts I need for my Honda. Last year I did have some success with a lucky find- A KG luggage rack that I think we picked up for $40. A little cleaning and modding and it worked out just fine!

I'm currently looking for a set of crash bars/safety bars/highway bars/engine guards for my CX, that will protect both the bike and myself in the event of a crash or if it just got knocked over. I've lost a few bids on them so far, but they keep popping up on eBay, but are getting more expensive each time. I guess I'll just have to break down and buy them from the bidder for way more than they're worth. I need them in a month!!

Review: Throttle Rocker II.

I love my CX, and my CX loves me...well, up to 55mph. Any faster than that, and she shakes way too much. The handlebar vibration really gets to me, and I do have the liberty of letting my left hand let go of the handlebars, but not my right because I need it to control the throttle. Some days I get up and ride and my right hand extremely numb because I didn't have it positioned right or something. I eventually got over that, but sometimes it creeps up on me and ruins a large portion of my ride.

I started looking for alternatives to make the ride more comfortable (and bearable) at highway speeds, and I found the "Throttle Rocker". ($9.99 at jcwhitney.com) It's one of those "wow, why didn't I think of that?!" kind of inventions. It's a simple piece of contoured plastic that wraps around your grip and is positioned so that you can control the throttle with your wrist or pretty much any part of your hand, letting your hand raise up and stretch and get some airflow without slowing down or letting go of the throttle. I tried it out for the first time the other day and it worked awesome for about the first 15 minutes until it started slipping. My wrist started cramping up because it was in such an awkward position to keep the throttle at 55.

It came with a big fat rubber band to put over your bar to help prevent the device from slipping. I guess it would have worked nicely for grips that aren't foam like mine. With the foam you really don't need the piece of rubber to keep the Velcro from slipping; the Velcro with the foam just works out better. I'll have to test this sans-rubber trick on my next ride this weekend. I ordered one for the left too, but I don't think I'll use it because I really don't need it; I can let go of the left grip whenever I want.

One con I noticed was that it wasn't as comfortable as I thought it should have been, but that's just because I'm using the stock CX500C handlebars, that have ends that just point past the rider, not like traditional motorcycle handlebars. I think that these would be a lot more comfortable on bikes with straighter bars, like drag or Daytona bars. I could put it on the GT750 and see how that feels.

In other news, I haven't been able to work on the Suzuki lately because of school. My classes are wrapping up soon (less than a month!), so I'll be able to tinker with it fairly soon. The CX is getting a new tire mounted in the next two weeks (Just need to remove the front wheel), so I'm pretty excited about that. The Canada trip is still on for June, and I'm looking for a set of crash bars...

O, Canada...

Here's a chart of my progress, in my attempt to collect 48 states by the time I'm 35. Let's be real here; I'll probably never get Alaska or Hawaii.


Forgive my sloppy graph; I did it on MS Paint at 1AM.

Yeahhhh that's right, I'm riding into Canada this summer :D

It's about time...

Anyone following my Twitter account knows that I've been pretty excited about something lately. I try my best to keep my motorcycle tweets down to once or twice a week. Really, I do try...

Anyway, riding season has officially started for me!

Yesterday, my Dad took out his GT750 to the car wash to hose it down and spray on some Enginebrite, then took it out for a ride. I couldn't join him because I had work in an hour, so that sucked. But today I was able to do the same with my bike, but under cloudier skies.

Front tire pressure was down, but I expected that. My rear tire didn't lose any air, so that was convenient. I can't wait to get my new front tire on, it'll feel amazing... Took the bike to the new gas station in town, where a guy approached me about my CX. I love it when people walk up to check out my bike and talk to me about it and listen to them remenisce about their Jap bikes in the '70s.

Their comments tend to vary, however. I've gotten :

"Look at the size of that engine!!"
"Don't your knees get warm?"
"Hey, is that a 500? I used to own one of those!"
"Shit, that thing is OLD"
and my favorite...
"What year did Harley make that?"

After talking to the guy for a few minutes, I went to the "Dirt Trap" car wash down the street. Threw on Enginebrite and did an obligatory "muahahha" as it hit the hot header pipes, causing a nice fizzy sound and smoke. It cleaned up pretty well, but brought many different things about the bike to my attention, like new spots of rust (or is it not new?) and tears in the seat. Meh. It's an old bike, you'll have that.

The CX ran very well. A little sluggish at first, but I expected that because it just sat in the garage for 3 or 4 months. Started up in less than 5 minutes with my electric start, which isn't too shabby for a bike that age. No kickstart on the Honda! Took it on a few country roads to dry it off, then eventually took her home, hoping for a whole week of good weather during spring break next week :)