Tag: motorcycle

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The big five-oh is coming up so I got myself a present.  I’ve always wanted a custom saddle and after seeing buddy Jeff’s new Sargent seat, I started looking into what’s available for the Tiger.  Sargent doesn’t do anything for Tigers as old as mine, but Corbin does.  Their site lets you customize your seat with material and stitching.  The Tiger isn’t a shy and retiring sort of motorbike, so I wasn’t very conservative in my seat design.

Corbin lets you play with variations on their online customizing tool.  I started off with basic black but quickly moved on from there.  You can go full disco oligarch if you want, but I looked at the Tiger and worked out a design that pulls the colours already on the bike together on the seat.  I took the most shocking part of the Tiger, the Lucifer Orange paint, and did the stitching in orange.  Most of the mechanical bits are black, so I stayed with a black set but went with a gripper material rather than leather.  The side panels I matched in navy blue with the blue on the swing arm.  The goal was to design a seat that looks like it belongs on the bike, and I think it does that while not being dull.

It’s a pretty thing.

The customization options offered by Corbin are exceptional.  Less so was communication.  I sent in the request online and got an email asking me to confirm the order.  When I questioned the $120US delivery fee added on, I got no reply.  The initial email also promised a follow up when the seat was going into production, but that didn’t happen either.  What did happen was one day I got a bill for $94CAD on my front door when I got home from work.  After driving over to the post office I got told there was a bill for taxes on the shipment, so that puts getting my Corbin to me at two hundred and fifty-five bucks (I could fly back from San Francisco where Corbin’s factory is for about the same price)… and I had to go pick it up.

The seat itself is very nice on top.  The underside looks a bit rough with loose bits and rough holes , but I guess no one will ever see it but me.  It’s heavy duty leather so it’ll take a while to break in and will look better and better as it does.

Comfort wise, it feels very different from the curved stock saddle.  The Corbin is much wider, making the ground further away.  I can flat foot the Tiger on the stock saddle even when it’s in its highest position.  The Corbin doesn’t adjust for height, but its width makes it feel much taller.  The width was such a concern that I tried standing on the pegs to see if the seat interfered with my legs.  I can feel the seat (not so with the curved and narrower stock seat), but it’s not pushing my knees away, so I can still stand on the pegs if necessary.

The seat’s back is so steep that it feels like a small backrest, which does wonders for support and comfort.  My son is too big now to pillion with me (we exceed the bike’s carrying capacity), but if my wife ever comes for a ride, I think she’ll have a better view from a higher back seat.

The seat feels firm, but Corbin mention that as it breaks in it will conform to your butt specifically and soften.  The width of it handles weight so well that I really don’t notice the hardness, and it’s supposed to fade away over time anyway.  They suggest a 2000 mile break in period, which seems like a long one, but it is what it is.

It isn’t cheap, but the lifetime warranty takes care of any quality worries, and it seems a well put together thing, once I got it to attach to the bike.

Installation wasn’t as easy as I’d have hoped.  The Corbin is a single seat unit replacing a separate rider and passenger stock seat set.  The stock rider seat has a couple of hoops on the frame that locate the front and a pin locking mechanism in the rear.  The passenger seat has hooks on the front another pin locking mechanism at the back.  The all-in-one Corbin seat doesn’t use the middle pin at all and wouldn’t locate and lock in the rear pin.  Putting it on and off the big over and over trying to figure out why it wouldn’t lock ended up scratching the triangular side panels under the seat a bit, which was annoying.

I ended up removing the fuse box and taking out the middle locking pin as I was afraid it was preventing the seat from sitting down on the frame properly, but it ended up being the front metal bars that hook on the frame loops.  They weren’t bent down enough to allow the seat to sit flat.  After a bit of bending, I was finally able to get the seat to click into place.

I’m sitting higher on this new, firm Corbin seat, but it’s supposed to soften over time, so I think the height will ease a bit too.  The ‘gripper’ fabric feels quality and tough and isn’t particularly grippy.  I’m able to move around on it quite easily and I’m hoping it breathes a bit better than leather would.  Hot seat in the summer is one of the things I’m hoping this solves.

I’d be happier with Corbin communicating (at all) and I’d have been a lot happier with the stratospheric shipping charge if it took care of border costs too.  Paying the equivalent of airfare from San Francisco seems a bit excessive, especially when I get to deliver it to myself anyway.  If you’re ever on holiday in northern California, pre-order your seat and then pick it up from the factory near San Jose and save yourself a pile of cash.

Overall?  I’m happy with the seat.  The upside is a quality seat that you can make uniquely yours for what I consider a reasonable amount of money for a bespoke item like this.  When people are dropping twice this on slip on exhausts and helmets, the Corbin starts to look like good farkling value.  It certainly makes a statement and as one of the key connection pieces between rider and motorbike, it’s a customization option that does a lot to make a bike feel special.

I just got back from a 232km romp across the Niagara Escarpment.  Never once did I have to stop for numb bum.  That’s never happened before, and it’s only supposed to get better?

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900 kms in a day and a half led me to some consideration of the kit involved in this trip:

THE BIKE

First up would be the bike, in this case a Connie I picked up in a field late last summer for eight hundred bucks.

After a winter of repairs, it safetied in April and I’ve since put on almost two thousand miles with nary a complaint.  It starts at the touch of a button and feels much more substantial than the 650 Ninja I had before.  It also continues to surprise me with its athleticism.


As a long distance bike its comfortable seat and upright riding position (greatly aided by risers on the handle bars installed by the previous owner) make long rides very doable.  It’ll manage about 40mpg in regular use and gets up into the mid-forties on the highway at a brisk pace, giving you well over 200 miles to a tank.

I miss the lightness of the Ninja (the Conours weighs over two hundred pounds more than the Ninja did), especially when I do something stupid like ride the Concours into deep sand, but it handles two up riding with ease and still wants to play on winding roads.  As a compromise it’s a great piece of engineering that still has soul.  

RIDING GEAR

The Helmet

I picked up a Bell Revolver Evo Warp (!) helmet during the winter.  I tried it on my first trip of the year and it was AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL!  Since then I’ve had at the inside of it, removing the snap buttons from the padding around the temples.  Without the hard buttons pressing through the padding into the sides of my head like a torture device this helmet has suddenly become very wearable for long trips.  It managed the Georgian Bay run with no pain, though it is heavy and noisy wind-wise.  It looks a treat though.

The perfect helmet? Full face when you need it, open when you don’t.

I’m still looking for the perfect lid.  I enjoy the view and lack of claustrophobia in an open faced helmet, and the better ones seem to offer good wind protection too.  Weather-wise, a full face lid is usually quieter and keeps you warmer when needed.  What would be ideal is a helmet that converts from one to the other.

Jo Sinnott wears just such a helmet in Wild Camping, but those Roof Helmets are impossible to find on this side of the world.

The Jacket

I picked up a Teknic Motorcycle jacket at the North American Motorcycle Show in January from Two Wheel Motorsport.  My first jacket was a discount deal, the first thing that looked like it would do the job.

This Teknic jacket is next level in every way.  It breaths well in warm weather and keeps me remarkably warm when it isn’t.  It was able to handle the twenty degree swing in temperatures on this trip with ease.  It’s a bit disco, but I like it, and with my initials on it, I couldn’t say no.

Too bad Teknic seems to have gone under.

The Gloves

I brought a long a pair of colder weather gloves but never used them.  Between the Concours’ wind protection and the multiple talents of the gloves I brought, I never used them.

These leather mits from Leatherup.ca have far exceded any expectations.  They breath well, are warm in the cold and feel both sturdy and protective.  Other than some tired velcro on the wrists that still work, these gloves have been flawless.  I need a red pair to go with the new colour scheme.

The Boots

Another second generation purchase, these Alpinestars MX-1 boots were a second season buy to replace the discount boots I purchased to attend riding school.  Like the gloves, they manage a wide range of temperatures, especially on the well equipped Concours.

Unlike the cheap boots, I sometimes forget to change out of these when I get to work, they’re that comfortable.  They did the whole Georgian Bay trip flawlessly.  The only time I’d worry about them is in rain, which I didn’t face – they are vented.

The Pants

I brought along a pair of motorbike-specific jeans, but never used them (I intend to pack much lighter next time around).  The Macna pants I got last year but got too fat to fit into fit much better now, and I never took them off.

They look a bit spacey, but I like that.  They breath like shorts and still manage to provide excellent wind protection and remarkable warmth behind the Concours’ fairing.  Best pants ever?  Maybe!  The armoured jeans stayed in the panier all weekend wasting space.  These Macna pants are one of the few pieces of kit I can offer no improvements on, they are ace!

The Luggage

The Concours comes equipped with a pair of panniers from the factory which I used for tools and tech on one side and rain gear and clothes on the other.  I generally never had to go into either.

When I first got the bike I got a Givi Blade B47 tail box.  In general use it stays on the back and is used to hold helmets and bits and pieces when I commute to work.  Like my previous Givi it has performed flawlessly.

New for this trip I picked up an Oxford X30 magnetic tank bag for less than half price thanks to Royal Distributing’s tent sale in the spring.  What a fine piece of luggage this bag is!  On the ferry to Manitoulin I consolidated the book and camera bags I brought along into it and put them away in the panniers never to appear again (I plan to pack much more lightly next time around).

The Oxford worked as a backpack, camera bag and laptop case.  Fully expanded it carried all of those things and more with room to spare.  It was also nice to lay on when bombing down the highway when I wanted to get a couple of minutes out of the wind.  I’d highly recommend it.

***

Good kit can make all the difference, and what I had for this trip did the job so well I didn’t need any of the backup I’d brought along.  After you’ve done a few trips I imagine you refine the kit until you’ve narrowed it down to just what you need and nothing more.

I’m still looking for the helmet I fall in love with.  I must have an oddly shaped head, but I live in hope.  I’m going to have to commit to a top tier helmet, but not until I’m sure it fits, and it can do everything I need it to.

I’m enjoying the new format of Motorcyclist magazine.  It’s one of the few US bike magazines I make a point of getting.  They write smart and with a Californian perspective that is very positive and engaging.  Their new graphics format is like nothing else out there.  They also take risks with their stories.  In many other magazines you feel like you’re reading the same reviews and comparisons over and over again.  Motorcyclist is like Bike UK and what Cycle Canada used to be in that you know you’re reading something unique.  I think that has a lot to do with them focusing on getting the best writers rather than the most industry connected people they can find.

In the last issue they had a bit on towing a dirt bike into the desert using another motorcycle.  It was a bit silly, kind of like a bridge to no where, but I could appreciate it from a more bikes is good perspective.  Having said that, I have to question the logic of trying to go car-less this way.  Towing a trailer means you’ve lost all the benefits of splitting lanes (try to imagine you’re somewhere sensible like California) and, you know, riding a motorcycle.  They said at the end of the article that chucking the dirt bikes in the back of a truck instead of trailering them and towing them with two touring bikes would have been easier, but I think there is an even better way to make that all motorcycle ride into the desert.

Things you don’t see anywhere else. It’s a story of excess, exhaustion and a lot of motorcycles.

The KTM 690 Enduro weighs only a couple of dozen kilos more than the 250 dirt bikes used in the story.  You get great wind on it while on the highway, unlike the hot and sweaty touring bikes used, and best of all the KTM costs about $27,000 Canadian less than a CRF-250X and a Goldwing.  I bet it would take you across the sand and up the mountain they went to in the article as well.

It’ll take your camping gear and you don’t need to slavishly fulfill two motorcycle style requirements, so you can leave your ever so fashionable heavy leather touring gear behind.

If the point of the exercise is to get out there and back on two wheels, something like the KTM would have done the business, though it might have been a bit less dramatic doing it.  The highways would have been full of wind blast and the nimbleness of two wheels rather than two towing two more.  The off road riding would have been mighty close to what the 250 dirt bikes could do, and you’d be doing it all cheaper and more enjoyably.


Having said all that, what a great thing it is to see an article so uniquely silly and full of excess.  I’m glad the editor let it happen.

The Swiss Army Knife KTM 690 Enduro.
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… and the new ones are in! http://ift.tt/2qq5oP5  If I had fifteen grand free I’d pop up to Ottawa and ride one back.

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Setting up a 360 camera on your wing mirror using a gorilla pod and setting it to automatically take a photo every few seconds seems like the best way to catch some interesting self portraits while you ride.  It’s a set up and forget system so you can just enjoy the ride.

Afterwards you download what the camera caught and then frame the photos as you wish (the 360 picture lets you move the point of view around until you’ve framed something interesting).

I’ve been trying to replicate the tiny planet view that the Ricoh Theta could do in its software on the Samsung Gear360.  GoPro makes a little planet capable app that they give away for free, so I’ve been using that.  Here is an example of a time lapse video tiny-planeted in the GoPro software:

The photos are screen grabs of time lapse scenes on the Samsung 360gear. They’ve all been worked over in Photoshop to give them a more abstract look.  I’ve included the original photo to show variations:

Here’s the original photo.

Here is a posterized, simplified version.

Here it is with an oil paint filter and a lot of post processing.

Here is a tiny-world ‘wrapped’ image taken with the 360 degree camera.  Below are some variations on it…

 Below are some other 360 grabs – they’ll give you an idea of how you can select certain angles and moments and then crop a photo out of them pretty easily.

One of the few things the Samsung does well is make time lapse video fairly straightforward (I miss my Ricoh Theta).  The software Samsung bundles with the gear360 only works with Samsung phones (which I don’t have).  The desktop software won’t render 4k video at all (it ends up so blocked and pixelated from artifacts as to be almost useless).  And when you’re first importing video it takes ages for the software to open a video for the first time.  By comparison the Ricoh renders video almost instantly, has never had artifact problems when it renders and has never crashed on me (the Samsung software has crashed multiple times). If you’re patient and are ok with crappy results, go for the Samsung.  Meanwhile, here’s what I could get out of the damned thing:

This is a 360 fly video sped up, the weekend after the April ice storm:

Software used:  Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Lightroom CC, Paper Artist, Windows movie maker, Go-Pro VR Viewing software

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It hasn’t been easy, but then that was kind of the point.  The leaking engine on the field-found ’94 Kawasaki Concours seemed like it would never stop dripping, but it finally has.  I’ve learned a lot in the process and become familiar with the layout of the bike.

The previous owner rode around with the fairing off.  The abuse to the bottom end of the engine from road debris cost me an oil cooler.  I tried to get it repaired through the metal shop at our school, but it turned out not to be an easy fix.  I eventually gave ebay a try purchasing a replacement oil cooler through Pinwall Cycle Parts.  I’d highly recommend them.  The cooler I got off a ’97 was in fantastic shape, got to me very quickly and cost 1/8th what a new one does.

With the bottom end sorted out it’s time to look to the fairings.  The bike has been dropped on one side, and the fairings need some TLC.  With the fairings sorted the bike should be ready to go come the end of the snows.

That’s a new-to-me oil cooler that works like a charm

The rest of the bottom end has been cleaned up… no drips now.

January 13th, 2019.  High of -21°C, low of -29.  I’m months away from riding with months to go until I do again.  This is as close as I can get to the saddle, some motorcycle digital art…

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Now that the CBR900RR Fireblade project is sorted and on the road, I’m finding myself doing what the original intent was in getting it:  learning from a different type of motorcycle.  Unlike the heavy industry Kawasaki Concours, or the SUV of motorcycling Triumph Tiger, the ‘Blade was built to a different design brief. The other bikes were over engineered heavy to last, but the the Honda is a feather.


That philosophy is at odds with the heavy handed git who owned it before me and managed to maintain it into such a state of disrepair that it kept it off the road for years.

From the rear brake cylinder that was assembled backwards and over tightened, to the over tight wheels and the slipping clutch I’ve just adjusted to actually be at spec rather than over-tightened, I’m finding the Honda was a victim of a heavy hand and unsympathetic mechanical inclination.


When I was a teen my dad was talking me through a head gasket repair on one of my first cars.  We weren’t minted, so the only way I was driving was if I could keep an old car on the road; mechanical training was an implicit part of vehicle ownership for me growing up.  As we were tightening the head back on he made a point of talking me through the bolt pattern – always tightening opposite bolts so it would seat evenly, and then said something that I’ve never forgotten as we started tightening down the head:  “always one tight, not too tight.”  I guess the guy who abused this lovely piece of Honda engineering into years in a garage never got such good advice.


Mechanical sympathy is an important part of maintaining any machine, but especially a motorcycle, where if you are cack-handed you can end up seriously hurting yourself when it breaks.  In that way, motorcycle mechanics are a lot like aircraft mechanics, it’s a do it right or it can go very wrong kind of situation.


Part of that sympathy is taking the time to understand what the engineers who designed the machine want you to do in terms of looking after it.  In the case of the CBR900RR, Honda would like you to leave 10-20mm of play at the end of the clutch lever – this one was set so you could strum it like a guitar string.  This play is to ensure that the clutch fully disengages when you let go of it.  An over tightened clutch cable means it’s always set to be slightly pulling and engaging the clutch.  Making it too tight isn’t just a failure of the hands, it’s a failure in thinking that wounds the machine.  In this case, the over-tightened clutch cable explains why the ‘Blade was slipping RPMs when I opened it up.  A sympathetically tuned motorbike will give you a purity of interaction that allows you to more fully understand the machine.  This is one of the reasons why I value technical fluency so much, it puts your ability to operate technology into focus in a way that the technically ignorant will never realize.


***


Meanwhile, in the land of Tim where he’s trying to keep a 17 year old European and a 23 year old Japanese bike rolling during the perilously short Canadian riding season, the Tiger’s stalling when hot continues.  I’ve ordered a replacement air idle control valve from Inglis Cycles, who have once again exceeded expectations during a pandemic by sourcing the part from Triumph in the UK and getting it to me in about a week.


One of the nice things about the Tiger is that it’s fuel injected, so all that carburetor management is taken care of, but the evil end of computerized fuel injection is that after seventy six thousand kilometres it’s finally gone wrong, and an electronic system like that can go wrong in a lot of different ways. 

I’d never gotten into the Tuneboy Software that came with the Tiger (the original owner installed it along with a Power Commander), because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  But now that it’s broke, I got going on it the other evening.  Getting into the bike via a computer was pretty cool.  The software is Y2K retro-hip and the connection was straightforward.  The 20+ pages of instructions weren’t really needed (I’m handy with computers).  Windows 10 automatically recognizes what you’re plugging in (back in the day, WinXP would have needed drivers installed), and the software is responsive and quick to connect.  It occasionally drops connection, but unplugging it and plugging it in again resolved that each time.



The compact disk (told ya, Y2K hip!) had all of the stock maps for my year of Triumph Tiger 955i engine on it, so I saved what was on there in case it was some kind of cool specialty map the previous owner had worked out (dude worked at a nuclear power plant, so don’t underestimate his tech skillz), and then I flashed it with the stock numbers, which took about 20 seconds and returned a confirmed result.  There is a slight lag, but otherwise this is easy to use stuff.

I then played with the diagnostics tool for a bit, hoping for some data that will help me isolate the hot idle stalling fault.  The software says there are no errors (promising that this is that mechanical failure then), and the only thing that looks out of place is a strange return on the engine temperature.  It seems to read accurately and then show -40, even when the fan is coming on, but if the fan is coming on and the temperature gauge on the dash is reading normally, I suspect this is something to do with how the software syncs with the on board computer rather than an actual fault, but I’m going to keep it in mind.


The problem with an idle fault on a fuel injected bike is that the engine management system is taking in data from a number of sensors and using it to balance engine activity, like idling, based on that information.  I’ve got the mechanical component that regulates idle on the bike incoming, and I hope that resolves the issue, but what I fear is that it’s something else, and with these complex electronics systems could mean that anything from a dozen different sensors or relays to a loose or broken wire.  With any luck, it’s that idle air control valve and I’m back on the Tiger… and the Honda, just not at the same time.

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