7 posts tagged “motorcycle”
It's flu season, and everyone near me at the office seems to have some sort of ailment. I avoided it for a long time, but last week I woke up with a funny tickle in the back of my throat. It's a feeling I've come to know as a precursor to a full-blown "can't climb out of bed" type of illness. (side note: getting older is cool because you totally pick up on the warning sign of things like this way earlier). Karen's due date is Monday and if I'm sick I wouldn't be allowed in the delivery room and there is no way I can let that happen. So what do I do?
- Run to Walgreens to buy Airborne and Cold-EEZE
- Add echinacea to my morning vitamin dose
- Start doing gentle yoga stretches before bed.
- Make sure I'm getting at least 7 hours of sleep.
- Cancel my regular Sunday surf outing.
Those that know me, know that #5 is a biggie. There's no where I'd rather be then in a wetsuit in 55 degree water, checking out the dolphins, smiling at the seals, and braving the waves.
I call my surf and crazy motorcycle buddy Ian to suggest a change of plans. They weather is great so why not go for a mc ride to Mt. Diablo? I fire up the beast, setting off every car alarm in northern California, and roar over to Ian's. This is where the fun begins.
Ian bought a severely beat to hell Katana for $100, put a little work into it and got it running. Part of that work involved bypassing the ignition and installing a hotwire switch. Not a big deal. I mean it works and is a heck of a lot cheaper then installing a new key set. Anyway, when I arrive he's bummed because the battery in the Katana won't hold a charge. He charges it up to about 11V so we decide to push the bike up a hill, run down with it and kickstart. We try this a couple of time. No dice.
Being the crazy motorcycle guy that he is, Ian's got a pile of bikes and bike parts laying around his back yard, including a bucket of 12 volt batteries. We slap the multimeter on a few old dusties and find one that's almost fully charged. Cool! Of course it's not the right battery for the Katana, but does that stop us? Hell naw. It's 12V right? A little re-routing of the battery leads to reach the contacts and the beast and the battered Katana are off; flying down Geary towards the bridge.
Until... I hit Scott St. and the beast just ..... turns.... off. I push it to the side of the road and wait for Ian to notice and come back for me. A few minutes later we make cell phone contact and I tell him what happened. He's only a few block away and turns around to come get me.
Minutes pass. Longer then it would normally take for a crazy motorcycle guy to travel six blocks.
Then he calls me again.
"Dude, I'm blowing fuses left and right and my bike won't stay on"
As it turns out he wasn't blowing fuses, but his hotwire switch melted. No problem, just bypass the switch and tape the wires together - never mind the smoking and melted plastic smell. A few minutes later, he scoops me up, we grab tools from my house (metric doesn't work on Harleys), and return to the beast. And, of course it fires right up. As near as I can tell, something must have jiggled loose, killing the electrical system.
We cruise back, garage the beast, shelf the Katana for the day and play Halo 2 instead.
It was probably one of the funnest, if not shortest, motorcycle adventures I've had.
They make great Christmas gifts!
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mcy/243156113.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mcy/243163460.html
This morning I took the Harley down to the ocean to snap a few pictures. It's time to get serious about selling it so I wanted some decent pictures to post to Craigslist. Of course, once I got to the ocean I was completely distracted by the waves. I took a couple of quick pictures of the bike and then cruised down to Sloat to check out the action.
It was killer. Double-overhead sets with a slight offshore breeze. The conditions at Sloat were a bit out of my league but I saw some amazing rides and ended up snapping some pictures.
So I've been working on the Harley for the past week or so. I managed to clean all the dirt off, even from the hard to get places. I've also polished up the chrome and painted metal. I replaced the drag bars with a heritage style handlebar. About the only thing left to do is replace the clutch and brake levers and troubleshoot some super annoying electrical issues.
The right blinker won't light, the horn won't blow, and the brake light stays on at all times. So far I've traced out all the wiring. Of course all the pin-outs are different from what the Clymer electrical diagram shows, but c'est la vie. I am almost convinced the problem is with a malfunctioning turn signal module... or bad turn signal switch... or something else. sigh.
While digging around on the internet I ran across a great motorcycle restoration tips site. Enjoy.
Oh, and any under no circumstances should you use Armor All or any other type of wheel treatment on a motorcycle -- EVER. That stuff is way to slippery.
I took the day off today to pick up a new ride. Karen's bank repo'd the bike and I won on a low-ball bid. It's a 1998 Harley Davidson FXD Dyna Superglide.
It's ugly, dirty, impractical, uncomfortable, and L O U D as hell, but it runs really well. It had been sitting for about a month so I wasn't sure if it would start or not. Fortunately it did and when the engine caught it sounded like a rocket igniting. Flames even shot out the tailpipe as it backfired. Karen hates it and said the baby started kicking in her belly when I cranked it up. :)
I plan to clean it up, do a few simple mods to get it closer to a stock config and then sell it on Craigslist. Until then I'll be that jerk on the Harley -- setting off every car alarm between home and the office.
Wednesday after work I shot across the bridge on my VT500 to check out apartments with Karen. We're trying to find a two bedroom with more space now that we have a baby on the way. We checked out a couple of less then satisfying places and decided to call it an evening.
Karen was staying at a friends place in Alameda for the evening so I cruised back to the city by myself. I was a little low on gas but figured I had enough to get home, if not there's always the reserve. Well, right after I cleared the Treasure Island tunnel, my bike began to stutter. No problem, I'll just flip over to the reserve. But nothing happened. Suddenly I began to slow from 60 to 30 mph in the middle of the Bay Bridge! Crap.
I turned on my blinker and made my way to the far right-hand lane. Oh man. If my bike died there I'd be screwed. There's about 12 inches of off-road curb to stand on from where I could potentially watch my bike get creamed by the non-stop flow of traffic. I figured the best thing to do would be ditch the bike as fast as possible, leave the blinker on, and then run 100 yards east to put as much distance between me and the almost certain pileup. Ugh.
Fortunately by revving the throttle I was able to eek out just enough juice to make it over the bridge to the 5th St. exit. I sputtered into a gas station and filled 'er up, grateful I avoided stalling on the Bridge. I jumped back onthe bike and took off home, but the bike kept stuttering... sigh. I could't go over 30 mph no matter how much the engine revved or what gear I was in.
After consulting with a buddy, changing the spark plugs, cleaning the air filter, and replacing several cracked hoses (including a leaky fuel line!) I do believe the problem lies with the carborator. Bikes of my year and model are known for developing holes in the carborator membranes. Lacking the proper tools, time, and garage space I'll probably leave this problem to the good folks over at O'Hanlon.
I'm 38'ing it to work for now, at least until I pick up my new ride.
But that's another post.
Inspired by Nathan's cross-country motorcycle trek, Ian and I decided to take a cross-county trip. The weather was foggy and cruddy in the city, but hot as hades in the East Bay.
After poking around on the inter-nerd looking at maps, we decided to head over the Bay Bridge and explore Mt. Diablo. The headlands can get crowded on the weekends, and we'd already done the Alice's Diner thing on RT. 35, so over the bridge we went.
We stopped briefly in Walnut Creek to check directions but quikly made our way to Norton for lunch.
After lunch, we meandered around Diablo, taking a few exploratory turns down interesting looking roads that never went anywhere, ended up on private property, or were blocked by cows. Eventually we stumbled across Morgan Territory Road which turned out to be a sweet sweet technical ride around the mountain and through the woods. I don't know if it was the heat or something else, but we only came across 3 cars while bouncing through the hairpin turns and single-lane roads. Heck, any other ride would have been chocked full of slow-poke tourists or at least other bikers. Anyway, I count it a good day.
