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I'm co-parenting her along with my kids on weekends, and she's the nicest sweatiest bitch ever! ...if such thing exist LOL She loves car rides, I bet she'd love to go on a trip on my bike. For a while I'm brainstorming a build of a one-wheel pull behind trailer with the box shaped as enlarged V7 tank (the most beautiful motorcycle tank ever), and with its top off it can be an open trailer for her to go for a trip
And by "brainstorming" I mean that I already have a finished product in 3D spinning in my head with all the steps, break-downs, materials, timeline etc. I just need to execute it... I'll have 240v in my shop at the end of this summer, then I'll be able to TIG weld aluminium, I just have to find a cheap motorcycle trailer that is registered so I can "slightly" modify it
P.S. that material in North America is known as alOOOOOminum
My riding season is on! She sparkles in the sun with all that carbon
But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Yet. Make sm popcorn lads, I've stories to tell, a ride report on my mods...
1. Seat. I had few shorter rides, longest ride was an hour'ish in the saddle. It's not as soft as original, no discomfort, but definitely not for full day trips. It was what I thought it would be. Just after few rides I noticed a little crease line in upholstery:
I know my mistake about that line. Not to fight too much with stretching pleather, I spray-glued top part of it. I'll wait and see till later how is it gonna settle. If it gets worse then I'll reupholster it, I have enough material for it.
2. Bar end weights. Can't compare to stock setup but they're definitely better than glued lead bars I had earlier. After 3K rpm handlebars smoothing out and very little vibrations left. On a highway my fingers used to start tingling just after 15min ride, now I'm good for over half an hour before I need to shake them off. I'll take that as win
3. Rear brake upgrade. After Brembo PS11 upgrade rear brakes were tight, but each day I'm finding them on a softer side after bike is sitting for a day. Once I start riding they tighten up, and then next day softer again. When bike is parked and I push the pedal quickly few times, I hear sort of quite squishing noise from ABS unit. None of that noise from front brakes, which were always good and tight. So it appears that I still have an air bubble somewhere at ABS unit. I took time bleeding my rear brakes yet still... I'll get a banjo bolt with bleeder nipple, but that fix will have to wait till my tank is empty because I have my ABS tucked in under the frame as high as possible and don't have an access until I remove my tank to drop it down. So as of now my rear brakes are not better, but the same as they were stock.
4. Rear wheel covers. I picked a day when it was pretty gusty and wind was blowing sideways on a highway near me. With lots of trees and open spaces it's a perfect road to check some people's swear that I'll be "blown off the road as soon as I leave my driveway" LOL At 120kmh I don't feel anything unusual or unsettling, unless I pass a big truck in an open space with wind blowing from the truck side. I could say I feel it more than without the covers but that could be only speculation. At 180kmh I'd probably say that there *is* a difference but as I can't compare with and without them on the same day, it's hard to guess how much of a difference. In other words- I don't understand why some make a big fuss over them
On a vibrations- zero, none. I balanced my wheel with new rubber perfectly and added balancing beads inside to account for cover's imbalance, and that seems to be done done the trick pretty well.
After first ride I noticed that my covers are shifted forward and my hole and valve stem doesn't match anymore:
Covers are sandwitched pretty tight but still managed to shift half an inch'ish under breaking. I know that they won't shift any further because now standoffs are resting on the rim's stars. I'm not taking off my wheel and covers to mess with standoffs so I'll just enlarge the hole to oval shape so I can pump my tire when needed.
So, me zipping around, happy as a pig, and then out of a blue I'm starting to hear a rattling noise under hard deceleration or braking. Sounded like a front rotor loose or something. I'm accelerating and breaking for quite a while and checking the bike while I ride to figure it out where that noise is coming from... Then I saw that my belly pan was flopping... When I was mounting it back on after oil change, I only finger tightened top bolts so I don't have to fight with bottom rubber mounts. And then I forgot to properly tighten top bolts. Since I don't have a girlfriend my fingers are not muscly so they were loose and fell out. And belly pan was swinging on bottom rubber mounts with it's top hitting front tire and bottom scraping tarmac. I got barely visible tire rash on the top, ...
... and an extra ventilation hole at the bottom:
If I wouldn't tell you this then no one would notice anything because from outside it looks like that nothing happened LOL
Ima gonna leave it as it is, I kinda don't feel the need to repair it as it doesn't look bad from the outside. I mean, I won't leave it as it is, I'm gonna bolt the top now...
Too bad about the front cowling !
If there was air in the ABS unit, you would need to *exercise* it to get fluid moving through the mechanism.
Overall it sound pretty positive.
Looking Good
PS: you can’t rotate the disks to line up the valve when you need to…
Too bad about the front cowling !
If there was air in the ABS unit, you would need to *exercise* it to get fluid moving through the mechanism.
Overall it sound pretty positive.
Looking Good
PS: you can’t rotate the disks to line up the valve when you need to…
*exercise* how? By trying to trigger it? It feels like there's air somewhere in rear system, it stiffens up only after I pump it with my foot few times, then it softens again...
I tried to rotate my covers back and it was a no go, too tight for my none muscly fingers... LOL
*exercise* how? By trying to trigger it? It feels like there's air somewhere in rear system, it stiffens up only after I pump it with my foot few times, then it softens again...
I tried to rotate my covers back and it was a no go, too tight for my none muscly fingers... LOL
My radar detector is pretty much useless without warning lights as I won't hear it beeping. I while ago I figured it out how to hack it's headphone port for LED lights to work so it was just a walk in the park. Three 3mm LEDs were glued into pre-drilled 5mm polycarbonate glass piece. I made 2 of them. Then I boxed them and encased soldered wires in to resin.
Soldered headphone jack and I got a pair of 20x25mm cubes. To my American friends, that's the size of a wee tiny fraction of a hand-egg game (football in the rest of the world) field square area, or half a size of Taylor Swift thumb's fingernail, or a size of..... oh, yas all have metric bikes, doh....
They look invisible
When I was brainstorming my headlight bucket I accounted the space for LEDs for my radar detector, that's why it extends right up to my clip-ons. Before I drilled in to polycarbonate, I measured the angle between headlight bucket and my eyes when I'm at riding position. It was drilled at 20deg angle for LED beams to point upwards, straight in to my eyes. When riding in the dark I can disconnect LEDs and I'll see radar detector's screen flashing, but in the daylight, and especially in a sun in front of me, I need it to be as bright as possible. I haven't tested it yet and if it's gonna too much "in my face" then I can always "dim" it with dark nail varnish, making them brighter would be way more work than that
Well, yas aint gonna win this one, even I didn't win as much as thought I did LOL I went out for a rip today, and those LEDs are not as bright as I hoped in a sunlight. It was the opposite of what I thought- they're OK'ish when the sun is in front of me, but when the sun is behind me and shines on the speedo, they're barely visible when flashing. The idea was that they would flash bright because their beam is pointing to my eyes, so I could see them in the background while looking at the road. So they kinda work that way, not as much as I hoped, but they still do, except when the sun is right behind me and shines on them...
I've more stuff to do atm so I'll revisit this later, maybe I'll just have to move them inwards a bit so they live in the shadows. Dunno, I'll think of smth
Make a rubber grommet out of fuel line about 3/8" deep. JB weld over the speaker port. Run a 90 degree "L"double barbed nylon fitting into it and a piece of surgical hose. Then run it up into the helmet. Cost about $2. You can hear it on a bike with loud pipes at 100 MPH+. Think, stethoscope.
Make a rubber grommet out of fuel line about 3/8" deep. JB weld over the speaker port. Run a 90 degree "L"double barbed nylon fitting into it and a piece of surgical hose. Then run it up into the helmet. Cost about $2. You can hear it on a bike with loud pipes at 100 MPH+. Think, stethoscope.
I believe that would work, but I really don't like anything attached to me. I don't even like wires from earbuds to my phone, so I got BT speakers in my helmet...
Hey, I could glue a plastic cup on my radar, attach a string, and on the other end there's another cup glued to my helmet's 3in hole at my ear! From my childhood I remember that this sound transferring device works the charm
Some useless bling bling, cut 2 circles from carbon fiber plate to cover fork's shiny bolts.
I couldn't look at my scabby rebar stand anymore so I made a proper rear wheel stand.
Top part of half cut pipe looked a wee bit too weak so I added a bar:
Got red tractor paint on and now I won't be ashamed when my bike will be hibernating through winter in my kitchen
Another thing I'll have to redo- rear brake reservoir bracket. After one good ride I noticed that my reservoir is touching the engine. And it was warm, that means brake fluid was warm as well... When I checked my carbon fiber bracket, it was warm and soft'ish. Resin I use is not high temp and at the same time I made my bracket a bit too thin and too close to the engine. Brake line that goes through the bracket is trying to twist the bracket as well, and with some heat it flexed and here I am. Next bracket will be metal, and I'll keep my brake fluid reservoir further away from the engine.
I don't do much touring but when I do, backpack on my back gets a bit annoying. I got these saddlebags a while ago, they were attached with a strap to toss over the seat. After cutting off the strap I noticed that they're not symmetrical but 2 exactly the same, I suppose Amazon specials never disappoint LOL
I don't want to ride with racks attached, nor I want to be attaching them before a longer trip, so my idea is making my "touring pack" quick and easy removable. One morning, after a dose of caffeine with nicotine, I was producing a snickers bar on my throne along with few sun-melt mars minibars and brainstormed a contraption:
Front part slides in to shock towers and rear part sits flat where seat on top locks it in place.
Saddlebags are soft but have a zipper pockets for inserts to make them hold their shape. I cut fiberglass plates for them pockets that I could bolt to the rack:
When welding shock tower mounts I screwed up a bit with angles so I had to make angled washers for fiberglass plates to stay further away from shock springs:
I tried to wrap shock tower mounts nicely but kept on failing. Initial plan to do it with rubber hose failed as well, so I just gave up and wrapped it with electrical tape. Screw this, that'll do, it's not to be looking good but to be practical only...
So there I have it! It takes to slap it on in seconds. I take out my custom seat, put saddlebags on, put stock seat on, and I'm good to go
It didn't take long to test them... My work van crapped the engine so I'm commuting with my bike to work atm. One bag fits bike rain cover, rain pants and jacket, and the other bag fits coffee thermos and my lunchbag. I've never been a fan of riding in a rain and it's been pissing for a past week when I have to go to work... the irony... LOL
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