Teh Interwebs of Joe

Canceling my motorcycle trip this weekend… the weather was first supposed to be cool and rainy.  I can dig those conditions.   But it’s evolved into snow at night in the mountains (primarily where I’ll be riding) and then strong scattered thunder storms… all directly over where I will be riding for 3 days.

Riding is fun… when you aren’t being threatened with black ice/high wind gusts/lightning on the ride.   So I am going to push this back a week or so to when the weather will be no so hellish. 

One weekend of nasty weather is OK to give up in exchange for a summer of epic rides.

This post is primarily for the Triumph forums.

One mod I have been waiting on just due to time was fabricating a 3/8” spacer on the rear rack that would let me move the rear top case forward a few inches.   The stock setup with the SW-Motec rear bracket was that the rear grab rail was up 3/8” from the rack.  This made it so I had to have the top case far back on the bike… too far. 

The further up and back a load is on the bike the less stable the bike is.  This bit of HDPE I picked up through Amazon Supply, and cut up on my porch, makes it so I can move the case 4+ inches forward, which for weight on the bike is a big change and takes cantilever stress off the rear frame a bit by squaring up the load onto the grab rail better.  

In a perfect world I would fab a bracket to let me position the rear case ~ 8inches further ahead and over the passenger seat to keep the weight closely centered.   But that’s probably not happening due to the lack of fabrication facilities in my apartment :)

So … didnt think I would every say I bought a set of chaps… but I did, electric ones at that.

These aren’t the typical leather items that are used by Harley riders, or various adult films…   These are heated chap style liners by Tourmaster (Synergy 2.0).   Since it looks like my ride next week will be done in some cool mornings and with the potential of rain most of the days, I wanted to get one more bit of heated gear to keep my lower bits a tad warmer.   Via Motorcyclegear.com I got a good deal on the liner+ wiring, and control box.  

The reason for chaps over full pant liners is they were considerably cheaper, and I don’t need something covering my entire leg, just the front of the legs where the cold hits.

Now I need to start doing power budget calcs for the bike to ensure I am not going to overwhelm my alternator, and drain the battery.   I think I am good to go so far, but I need to add up all the other bits on the bike.   The HID’s I installed 2 years ago gave me 30 Watts of power back to use for more gear.

Next week I am planning to hit the road Fri - Monday on a nice little 4 day trip down to Nathrop, Telluride, Cortez, Durango, Silverton, and back through Glenwood Springs home.   Staying over night in Nathrop, Telluride, somewhere around Montrose. 

So far the weather prediction looks fairly wet for that weekend, but I am actually OK with that.   Riding in the rain pending you can keep warm can be a lot of fun.   The bike has tires which are supposed to be some of the best around for sporty rain riding.   And I am not camping this trip, so no dreading setting up camp in a rain storm.

I got my first bit of heated riding gear - the Aerostitch heated bib, which while much cheaper than full heated liners, should do just about the same thing.   I also got some fun Aerostitch 3 finger (two fingers per digit) rain over gloves that should solve my wet wrist thing I had going on last fall in the rain.  This stiff coupled with my new heated grips should net quite a comfortable ride regardless of the rain/cold.

I need to book my hotels still, and confirm my route (I may not do either and just head out and see where I end up), but should be a fun weekend.  With it being the dull time between ski season, and summer vacation, the roads should be rather clear of people too.

I need to do some quick water proofing on some wires and such that I didn’t get around to yet on the bike, but overall the machine should be more prepared for this trip than it was for the longer ride last fall.

Now time to get all my gear laid out and ready to pack up to see what I am missing.  Get a solid play list together and loaded on the iPhone.  This should be a much lighter load than camping! like 1/3 the gear.

Installed the new LiFe based motorcycle battery.  Weighs 2lbs, is 1/2 the size of the old one, and has 150% more energy capacity.   This is a Ballistic Evo 2 12 Cell battery.  The battery is made in Plymouth, Wisconsin, the cells are made in Waltham, Massachusetts (A123 cells).  Slick setup.  Note the foam I put in to take up the now free space in the battery area.  

In addition to being light and energy dense, they are light years ahead of standard lead acid batteries: These don’t self discharge, they are not sensitive to heat, vibration, the individual cells can be balanced with a $19 charger, and they wont leak since they are dry cells.  These are the same battery cells powering the Tesla Sports car, and the Zero motor sports motorcycles. 

I may store things in that space like spare fuses, tire repair kit, etc… down the road. 

New exhaust installed on the bike today - a Triumph Off-Road “TOR” ”exhaust.  more open, no cat, lighter, and a bit more open of a power band.

The bigger part was recoding the ECU for the new exhaust backpressure and profile.   Installed a Speed 3 performance tune from Arrows that was remapped into a Sprint ST file.   So far it sounds mean. Not overly loud at all, but much less muted and stealth.

A little noise inst too bad on a bike :)

Indeed!

Took some damn fun roads today around the foothills up Golden Gate Canyon road, 119, 72, then down Lefthand Canyon Road.  Golden Gate and Lefthand were awesome rides.  Left hand had almost 0 traffic, but lots of bikes.  Very fun ride today.

Does seem like I am hurting a bit more on the bike this year or these rides than on my last ride last winter… think I means I need to work out more. (or at all ;) )

So while the bike is awesome in its rebuilt form, there is some pending tweaks to be done to alleviate some longer term issues with the bike that I want to just address.

• Ride height - going to lower the bike ~ 1”.   The process to do it is pretty simple, and probably 3 hrs of work in total to just flip the rear eccentric and lower the front forks.    But I do need to get a side stand and the center stand cut to properly handle the bike in its lowered state (it would fall over too easy to the right if they aren’t cut).   So I am going to be picking up some Ebay used items off similar model years and take them to a shop to get them cut and welded.
• Move the rear case mount forward 3 or 4 inches.  Currently its sitting back quite far and I would like to move its weight closer to me when I don’t have a gear bag on the back of the bike.   I need to buy some 1/4” sheet plastic  or something to space up the mount so I can move it forward a bit.    Overall this is to change the cantilever effect on the rear grab bar a bit.
• Replace the stock saddle bags.  I am watching for a good price on some Hepco & Becker bags to come up in ebay, or some givi’s, but I am not a real big fan of the looks of the Givi’s.
• Triumph Off-road Exhaust.   This is a lighter, cooler running, Cat-less pipe for under the seat.  it also gives a real nice growl on power.   I already have a bit on Ebay for one of these… we’ll see how that turns out.

None of these things are required and I could go the entire riding season not doing them and be OK with it. 

First two pics show that in ~ 3 weeks, what has transformed from a chassis with an engine to a bike that is better than its ever been before.

Also some other pics that I didn’t post earlier.  I had a conference call to be on so I pulled over today in the plains of the front range near Hwy 93 and 128 and chatted in the warm sun and breeze for a half hour before setting off for Nederland.   I should do calls out there more often.

Last bolts and screws were put in tonight,  last body work was put on,  all the control screws were thread locked and torqued, the grips were glued on.   The bike was fired up and ridden around a little bit in the garage to check out everything.  Brought up to temp and rev’d to ensure there wasn’t any misfire or various maladies.   The bike idles smooth, revs even smoother, and wants to go!

Planning to take the bike on its maiden trip from its rebuild to Broomfield tomorrow for a customer visit, with a bit of a detour on the way home to get some legs under the new setup.

So happy everything went together so well on this!  In the end from labor quotes I got from other places, and parts deals I got… I saved almost $2000 in labor and parts by doing most of this myself and finding a small rock star shop to do the suspension vs a big company.

I have a whole list of stuff to do here and there over the next few months here and there, but as of now she’s ready to go!

These are pics for a Triumph forum for some folks interested in the mirror swap I am doing.

THe mirrors are from a 2000 Honda Interceptor VFR800, with some delrin spacers under.  They are lighter, more solid, and have better view than the stock OE Triumph mirrors.

Because the triumph mirrors have built in indicators, I had to relocate them to small LED ones on the fairing.

I also removed some rubber cushions under the body against the frame that caused a good deal of mirror movement.  I replaced them with some washers (wrapped in scotch tape to help me maneuver them into place).  I also had to buy some longer screws - M6x50mm to bolt the mirrors to the bike.

As I am closing in on the work I planned to do on the bike I am building another list of stuff to do…  Mainly based off of stuff I discovered yesterday and stuff pending on parts that are still coming in.

One of the main things I am going to be doing is lowering the bike ~ 1”  This is done by rotating the rear eccentric adjuster 180deg, and then lowering the front forks equally.   This should let me flat foot the bike a bit better.   But as with everything, one small change results in a big amount of work.

The rear hugger on the bike sits VERY close to the wheel normally… so it needs to be shimmed up equally.  Which will require some fabrication, washers, etc…   Quite interested to see how this all turns out. 

99% done, and done for the night.  Cracked open a New Glarus Moon Man Pale Ale to relax.

Only things I have left to do are some minor things on the bars ( new riser coming in next week, different bar ends, and my new GPS mount).   And some longer bolts so I can properly secure the VFR mirrors.  I also have some grinding to do on the mirror stalks to let them fold in more in the case of a fall.

I am digging the VFR mirrors, more view than the stock, and without the terrible vibrations the stock ones are prone to by design.

Went from a chassis with an engine to a full motorcycle in essentially 10hrs of work this weekend.

The bike went from no wheels, suspension, bodywork and really most of the accy wires all over… to something looking ready to go.   

Today I got a shitload done on the bike after work.

•  Installed the new suspension
•  lubed the bushings and bearings on the rear suspension
• installed the wheels
• Installed the brakes, flushed and bled them
• Installed new spark plugs
• Installed the controls
• Installed the tank and tested the engine, throttle, clutch, and brakes
• Checked torque on any critical bits of hardware I’ve worked on in the last couple weeks.

The problems though…  

• The new bars set as I want them hit the fairing, something easily fixed by a different set of risers, already ordered.
• Clutch cable seems a bit too long, but that may not be an issue with the new risers
• I broke a mounting tab off the inside of the front fairing… some Q-Bond to the rescue on that tomorrow.

All I have left now is:

• Change the oil (you can see the jug of Motul 300V Double Synthetic and Wix high cap filter in the pic)
• Mount the GPS (waiting on a new bar mount for it)
• put the rest of the body work on
• Figure out if I am going to do the VFR mirror upgrade now or wait… I am thinking I may wait… I am ready to be done working on the bike and start riding it.
• getting some 7/8th alloy inserts for the bars to see if I can get the throttle meisters to go back on.

New tires all mounted up, and I think I found a dealer/service dept that will be getting all my business.   Co Powersports in Thornton is really great.  Some of the best people I’ve met in a dealership yet.  And their service dept was great to chat with.   They don’t do Triumphs, but said if I have a shop manual (which I do) they’ll see about doing any work I need in the future.  May have to have them do some valve adjustments and rear hub work for me.

Some pretty damn impressive prices on some new bikes as well…