I’ve been told that one of the best parts of owning a Concours is the Concours Owners Group. I just signed up for a year’s membership and I’m already overwhelmed by all the information in the forum. Looking at the calendar, there is a local meeting tomorrow only a 45 minute ride away. For a group that covers a huge geographical area, they offer a chance to meet face to face around the corner; very cool. Between COG and the huge aftermarket available, it looks like the Concours is the canvas I’ve been looking for.
Searching the internet for parts and technical details for a 1971 T120 Triumph Bonneville 650cc air cooled twin. Here’s what I’ve found – hope it helps if you’re looking for similarly vintage parts and details.
Single digit temperatures make for a brisk ride. This one was down to Guelph Line before coming back home and warming up again. All photos taken with a Ricoh Theta 360 camera set to fire automatically every 6 seconds, attached to the rear view mirror using a flexible tripod. Here’s a walkthrough if you want to try it yourself.
Royan Lee’s Spicy Learning Blog(it’s in my list of favourites on the side of Dusty World), asks some hard questions as digital technology matures and reaches mass appeal…
“How are we going to do this, folks? How will we foster critical mindsets of what it means to check that I Agree button, especially in regards to students that are in our charge but not our own children?”
My response… There is something about mass adoption that shifts a market from focusing on literate early adopters to the willfully ignorant masses. When the herd finally adopts a technology it becomes a race to reach the widest range of people (including the lowest denominator). When they started manufacturing automobiles in the early 1900s each one was hand crafted, almost unique and required either your own personal mechanic or you were the mechanic. As automobiles became more popular, the landscape changed, systems became synchronized, the car became a cookie cuttered piece of mass assembly designed in more complicated ways to ask less of the driver – the only sense of individuality was found in the frantic marketing. The technology itself matured into operator simplicity in order to get even the most incompetent people behind the wheel.
Sound familiar Microsoft? Google? Apple? Fanboy/girlism is one of the clearest signs that we’ve moved past the early adopter stance on digital technology and are now catering to the main stream (I say that in the most derogatory way possible) where marketing dictates sales because the majority of people have no idea how the technology works. It’s in this environment that giant legal documents creep in to user agreements and business finds more insidious ways to make use of the ignorant consumer.
If you look at owner’s manuals from long ago they were full of technological information on how the product worked (so you could fix it). Nowadays you get legalese and idiot diagrams designed to hide the inner workings. The machines themselves are even put together intentionally to prevent you from repairing them.
Most mechanical sub cultures survive and thrive on a hands-on ethos. Shed Built motorbikes in the current custom scene are a badge of pride.
The only real way to save yourself from the vapid consumerism and accompanying ignorance that drives mass adoption is through the hacking ethos of maker culture; this has never died. Cars are being stamped out for the unwashed masses by multi-nationals but there has always been a thriving underground of maker/hackers who ignore the rules designed for the ignorant and come to relate to the technology in a direct, more complete way. If you want to save yourself and your students from this ignorant, consumerist relationship with technology then find their inner hacker! Get into the nuts and bolts and bend technology to your will. Using your hands and your head to get inside the machines sold to us frees you from the consumerist trap. Freedom is only a hack away!
Some reading to save your mind: http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/a brilliant, modern attack on consumerist thinking and the power of your hands to save you
… and the follow up:http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/new-page-1-1/ I used to have links to the maker manifesto here but evidently it’s been turned into a book and isn’t available online any more. That says something about the current state of the maker movement… Don’t give up! Just don’t follow the road more travelled, even if it’s paved for you by people determined to monetize you…
1997 Honda CBR900RR parts, but I’m buying too many online when I’d rather buy them locally. For someone who would rather support local business, I’m frustrated at the lack of competent parts people. Canadian Tire needs to do better.
The oil filter for the CBR is a fairly common filter – but the big Canadian Tire in Guelph didn’t have one… or anything else I needed. It’s things like this that force me online to purchase when I’d rather just purchase locally.
Strangely, the Walmart across the street, the only place I can find the Mobil 1 oil Triumph calls on for the Tiger, had an oil filter for the Honda. Not a great weekend for Canadian Tire. You can’t really brag on having 200,000 parts if your sales rep can’t find any of them.
The only place I can find the Mobil 1 is at Walmart – it’s the only time I usually go there. Since I’m already there for the Tiger, I’ll go for 7 litres and do the Tiger and CBR with the same super-oil. Running the Mobil 1 in the Tiger has stopped any oil burning in it. It’s good stuff.
K&N Filters for CBR900: https://www.knfilters.ca/honda/cbr900rr/900/1997 The HA-9092-A air filter is a strange thing – I thought the filter element would pop out of the plastic, but it’s a single (expensive) manufactured piece. Finding these is tricky. You can find cheap, paper filters for about $40 a go, but I found the K&N on Amazon for $120CAD, so that’s going in and getting cleaned regularly. That should pay for itself within three changes.
I’m not in a place where I’m going to put the front end back together again and pop in the replacement LED when it comes in this week. With the replacement carb from NCK Salvage in hand, I’m going to try and rebuild as much of the Honda as I can over the long weekend (it’s Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada).
The Strange World of Dash Bulbs:
12v 1.7W wedge dash light is the warning light bulb needed for a ’97 Honda CBR900RR. These are hard to find – Canadian Tire was no help and the girl at the parts desk in Guelph couldn’t remember the numbers for parts, so I gave up on trying to find them. I want to buy locally, but with that kind of floor help, it just isn’t happening.
I found LED replacement lights that should last better and use less electricity in the process on Amazon.
This light search led to a crash course in bulb sizing. The dash lights on the CBR900RR are T-5 Wedge 12v 1.7W bulbs. T5 means it has a 5mm base. In this case they’re 1.7cms long on that 5mm base. The LED should be cooler, use less electricity and be brighter.
Baseline photography for this 1971 Triumph Bonneville restoration project:
According to Low Brow Customs, this means I’ve got an A (January) E (October 1970 – July 1971) and was the 9125th 650 twin made that year (00100 is the starting number for each grouping so this was the 9225-100th motor made in the 1970-71 batch).
The frame was tricky to pick out – one of those sites mentions that the stampings are sometime very thin and this one’s barely there – our best guess is AE07050, which would put it in the same month/year as the motor, which seems promising.
Having never had on-bike storage before, or a bike designed to cover big distances, I’m thinking about what I could leave in the bottom of the panniers to keep us on the road. Here’s the short list so far:
Puncture Repair Kit. Many moons ago I used to do this at Canadian Tire, so plugging a tire is nothing new, and if I’ve got the bits I need on the road I’ll be able to get us going again in short order. $~20 from Canadian Tire 200g
Yukon Steel Multitool. I use a generic one at work all the time. They work well and I don’t need a fancy brand to somehow validate my handiness. $30from Canadian Tire 325g I’m also going to grab a lightweight nylon tarp. You can get tough, camping ready ones that only weigh about 500 grams and fold up into the size of an envelope. Along with a little roll of duct tape, small hand pump, some nylon string and a mini wd40 can, I’d have a very light and small collection of handy bits and pieces that would keep us moving if we ran into a problem.
Algonquin Park in the rain at the height of autumn colours. The Theta 360 camera held up but I eventually pocketed it when the deluge become too heavy. The camera is mounted on a ball mount on the handlebars and set to fire automatically every 10 seconds. Photos captured in the Theta camera app and then modified/enhanced in Photoshop.
This is the raw photo out of the camera. The fixed lense doesn’t collect a lot of light, so on a dim, rainy day like this the image is quite muddy. I brought up the shadows in Photoshop and the result (with a bit of cropping) is the same photo above.
If you’re curious about how to put together on-bike photos, check this how-to out. It’s also available on Adventure Bike Rider Magazine’s site here. You can pick up a simple 360 camera for a couple of hundred bucks. Fully waterproof ones (which I obviously need) start a bit higher.
I got into this with Ricoh’s Theta way back in 2013, but Ricoh has been stingy about support and won’t even offer me at-cost options for educational use. Looking around recently, the Insta360 offers some interesting combinations with next generation 360 imaging, though it’s very video focused and I prefer still shooting. Gopro also has the 360 Max, though it isn’t as aerodynamic and therefore might not be the thing to put on a bike in the wind, though I’m willing to give it a go.
Gopro goes out of its way to support users and especially ones who advertise for them on social media. I wish Ricoh were so forward thinking, but they aren’t. I’d suggest the Gopro if you want to get into 360 photography. It’s remarkably easy to set up and the results look fantastic. You should give it a try.
If you’re up in the Muskokas, this is a nice ride. It’s about 60kms through Canadian Shield/lake of the woods on some very non-southwestern Ontario windy roads. It started off overcast but then the sub broke through and painted the already incredible October Ontario fall-colours with a nuclear paintbrush.
The Concours and I managed it in about 90 minutes from Huntsville to just outside of Port Carling. The road is in reasonable condition (for Ontario) and it’s never dull. The initial bit on Muskoka Road 3 is a nice warmup, but it’s the 632/7 from Rosseau to Highway 118 that really pops!
More notes from Phoenix, along with some editorializing: Education is an analogue, non-linear, complex, biological process because we are non-linear, complex, biological organisms. Data and the technology that produces it are none of those things. Data might point to a vanishingly small piece of this complex puzzle, but it will never explain, justify or encompass education, no matter what vested interests might tell you.
We are such chameleons. The dominant thinking of our time actually changes how we see ourselves. When the social norm was religiously defined we saw ourselves as angels and demons. When industrialization occurred we described ourselves in terms of the machines we were creating. In the information age we define ourselves in terms of digital data. It’s important to remember that we are none of these things, but rather the creator of all of them, and therefor greater than them all.
Digital technology is turning our thinking binary. How do you feel today? A) good B) bad By participating in this data gathering process you have reduced your complex mental state to an absurdity. Every question is reductive, every piece of data a feathery abstraction of a deeper, more complex meaning. Every time education acts on this reductive logic it becomes less a form of human expression and more an act of compliance with digitally limited technology. There is a branch of thinking that suggests that this is simply because technology hasn’t become fast and vast enough to manage the data, but even at its best digital technology will always be limited to how it works. Even at near infinite speeds with infinite amounts of data you’re still reducing reality to ones and zeroes, which it isn’t.
If digital technology forces reductive binary thinking then any cost savings realized from it will come at the cost of our ability to express ourselves in all the ways that we can.
This is a transitional thought, it led to this line of thinking:
Rigour doesn’t exist in data or the statistics derived from it, rigour exists at the limits of human expression. It is never dictated by the limits of hardware or software.
What do I mean by rigour? Thorough and careful – digital data is neither. It is accurate, but only in a very specific sense. We take that fine accuracy and direct it at a far larger array of cause and effect than it could possibly represent, mainly because recognizing the limits of data doesn’t suit the people peddling it. Statistics never encompass the truths they claim to.
Mastery is the result of genuine experience. No one ever gained mastery from taking a test.
If genuine experience is what drives leaning, why do we keep inventing abstractions like testing to drive it?
The answer to that one is obvious: it’s cheaper and easier to manage if we grossly simplify learning to the point of abstraction. Of course, that kind of hypocrisy and self-serving nonsense provokes awkward questions:
If learning is for the learner, why do we do most of what we do in education for everyone else involved? Is education motivated by politics or pedagogy?
The easiest most self-serving way for ‘educators’ to dehumanize students is by reducing them to data. This becomes more self-evident when you realize that most data collected from education is focused on the system rather than improving student learning.
