motorcycle – Page 48 – Mechanical Sympathy

IIHTM: The Digital Workshop

If I had the money, what would the dream workshop look like?

I’m a computer tech teacher by day, and the 3d printer revolution is astonishing to behold. The dream workshop would have the usual suspects (awesome tools etc), but it would also have some truly alien looking tech.

Ever seen a resin based 3d printer? It’s like something out of Terminator:

3d printing is about to get even wilder, with larger scale prints becoming an option. Imagine a 3d printer that could handle motorcycle fairings… except you could do anything you want. Want a fairing made out of dragon scales? No problem! Want customized etching across the entire fairing? No problem! Want to design a radical fairing using the stock mounting points?

Some time in Blender and you’ll be ready to print radically customized fairings and other parts.

The BigRep1 goes for almost $40,000, but imagine what you could print in over a cubic meter of build space – motorcycle fairings would be not problem. I think I’d rent one first to see what I could get away with before buying.

Using resin based printing instead of additive 3d printing means you can produce parts that have the same structural nature as cast pieces (they aren’t made of bonded parts). These pieces would be incredibly strong – they could also be made much more quickly. Instead of hours long build times, we’d be looking at minutes…

If you’re looking for futuristic workshop inspiration the Big Hero 6 garage would be a good place to start – in there he’s 3d printing carbon fibre! The holographic display is pretty dope too…

Iron Man is another film that gives you a good idea of what a 21st Century garage might look like. Tony Stark’s workshop is a holographic wonderland with built-in fabrication capabilities.

It was once thought that with fuel injection, onboard computers and digitization we would be losing the ability to modify and customize our motorbikes. It turns out that digitization is actually handing the ability to manufacture back to individuals from the factories that took it from them. Industrialization meant standardization and centralization in the 19th and 20th Centuries. In the 21st Century manufacturing will return to the craftsmen it started with; localized micro-manufacturing is going to be the way of things to come.

If you’re making shop space for yourself, having a computer in it gives you access to a world of information (I frequently use my to watch how-to videos and view schematics), but that workshop based computer is soon going to be providing a lot more than just information. Do yourself a favour, get a handle on 3d modelling, it’ll come in handy in the near future.

Ways to get started:

Get handy with Blender – it’s free, and it’s powerful! There are also a lot of tutorials available for it online
Structure Sensor: a 3d scanner that snaps onto your ipad. It makes making 3d copies a breeze!
Basic 3d printers start at about $1000.
If you want to give printing a try, many people in the maker movement offer 3d print services. It’s a nice way to see what a 3d printer can do for you without the overhead… 3D Hubs is one such option, and they’ll introduce you to makerspaces in your area.
Sketchfab is handy for sharing and doing light editing on 3d models.

XS1100 Yamaha 3d model by timking17 on Sketchfab

Snow’s A Fallin’

It’s accumulating outside. While that’s happening, I’m in the garage busy stripping the Concours down to its underskirts.

Once that’s done I’ll give it a final cleanup before getting into the brakes and bearings. While the wheels are off I’m going to look into getting them refinished. Fireball Performance in Erin does wheels, so I’ll see if I can drop off the rims while they’re off the bike. I’m curious to see just how magical a transformation that can be, and what it costs.

The partially stripped Concours. It made me wonder what a stipped Connie would look like… pretty fantastic as it happens:

Strange that I’ve been through the Yamaha’s carbs in detail, but never the Connies…

With her skirts off, the Concours still looks good for a 21 year old motorbike that spent too much time outside. A drop of coolant on the back of the block has me in full suspicion mode – I’m hoping it’s a bit of overflow splash, but mechanic’s skepticism tells me it’ll be a leaking water jacked and a lot of gasket work – the coolant reservoir isn’t low…

Sense of Satisfaction!

After all the Maker talk this week at a conference I attended, I was keen to spend some quality time in the garage working on the 35 year old XS1100 basket case. It’s easier to walk the walk than talk the talk when it comes to Making. Unlike the education approach infused with collaboration for your own good, I did it the way I always do: alone in a garage. It’s wonderfully cathartic to get something broken working again, and meditative when I don’t have to explain everything I’m doing.

How do you get a 35 year old motorcycle left outside for several years unattended working again? Very carefully!

The front brakes were seized, the throttle body was seized, the rear brake is still seized, as are other things I haven’t found yet. Motorcycles aren’t like cars, when they’re left in the world they don’t have a shell protecting the mechanicals from the weather. Restoring a car tends to be more mechanically salvageable as a result.

Yamaha XS1100 Mikuni Carburetor by timking17 on Sketchfab

I ended up having to take the end carburetor off the rack of four Mikunis that line the back of the Yamaha engine. It was the most carboned up and filthy one, and the grit had seized the throttle body rod. A complete dismantle, cleaning and reinstall has the carb working again (before this you couldn’t move the throttle body without great effort and a nasty creaking sound…

It took a couple of hours to break it down, find the problem and rebuild it.

It was pretty before, but the Mikunis are even prettier now that they work!

Miles per Day

A couple of experiences this season have given me some idea of possible mileage numbers in a day of riding.

We did 300 hot, sticky miles, mostly on freeways, coming back from Indianapolis this summer. This involved getting lost for about half an hour before we finally stopped for the day near Detroit.

Without the getting lost part, 300 miles would be easily doable with gas and snack breaks if you’re making highway miles. We were on the road from about 9am to 5pm. 400 wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, and would be an 9am to 6pm with stops kind of day.

That run to Detroit was in hot, humid weather and had me saddle sore with a bad case of baboon butt. Less extreme conditions would make those miles easier to manage, but bike miles tend to be fairly extreme even at the best of times.

On that same day our riding partner headed straight home, doing Indianapolis to Alma, just shy of five hundred miles in a single day in about 10 hours of riding. Had I not been two up with my son I’d have done it with him. A five hundred mile day is certainly doable on freeways. It’s a full day, but you’d sleep well afterwards.

On the way down to Indy we did two stints, from Elora to Coldwater and Coldwater to Indianapolis. In both cases we minimized highway riding and spent most of our time on back roads (and sometimes dirt roads and trailer parks when we got turned around). Coldwater to Indy was just over two hundred miles and took us a good day of riding. We left about 9am and were feet up in the hotel in Indianapolis by 4pm. Elora to Coldwater was a long day of riding, leaving about 8:30am and finally stopping just before 6pm. Even that long day had us up and ready to go the next morning, so it was a sustainable distance.

Based on those experiences I’d say a three hundred mile day if you’re minimizing freeway use is a reasonable number to aim for, knowing that you could push a bit beyond that and still not be riding into dusk.

All of those experiences were on a fully loaded bike with my ten year old son as pillion, so we weren’t exactly ascetic in our riding, looking to pound down the miles relentlessly. I stopped more frequently than I otherwise might and for longer.

What got me thinking about this was the 178 mile ride the other day that got me over the 30k mark. In cold weather and over twisty, slow roads with no highway at all, I left about 9:30am and was home again just past 3pm, stopping for a coffee and lunch. The cold weather made this feel longer than it was, which reminded me just how much being comfortable in the saddle makes the miles go by.

Around the world, it’s a long slog!

Your typical around the world trip is about 15,000 miles, so is north to south in the Americas. If you’re managing 300 miles a day, that’d be 50 days on the road. If you’re doing 300 mile days that means you’re averaging 50 miles per hour for at least six hours a day. Not as easy as it sounds when you factor in borders, extreme weather, navigation, bad roads and other potential slow downs. All things to consider when trying to schedule a long trip.

Rossi & Marquez: A MotoGP editorial

WTF are you doing? Falling over is what…

I’ve been watching replays and reading reviews over the MotoGP incident that rocked the world last weekend. I think I’ve resolved it in my mind.

Here is what I saw: Marquez was making a point of staying close to Rossi. They stayed within inches of each other lap after lap on two completely different machines, one of which was a quarter second quicker per lap and 7km/hr faster in qualifying. Marc says he was managing tires, but Dani Pedrosa, on an identical bike with identical tires was half a mile up the road riding away to the race win. Marc’s demonic Bridgestones that suddenly go off when he’s in front of Rossi and come back to him when he’s behind seem like what they are: an excuse. Pedrosa’s identical tires on an identical bike weren’t so cursed.

Data is where the answer to this would be found. These bikes are wired to the nines with sensors and record everything. A detailed analysis of Marquez’s laps will show whether he was delaying inputs to stay with Rossi, but I don’t imagine Honda will be forthcoming with that information.

When Rossi ran wide after sitting up and coming off the gas (he was 4 seconds slower on the lap the incident happened), Marquez stayed right next to him, coming off the gas at the same time. On the slow motion video below you can see him angle in to be right next to Rossi even though he’d obviously missed the corner. Provoking an incident is what Marquez was trying to do. At any point when Rossi sat up and slowed down Marquez could have ridden around the outside of him or slowed down and cut under him, but passing wasn’t what he was looking for.

I’m in a difficult situation with this. I haven’t been watching MotoGP for very long. My first full season was Marc’s near perfect one, and I’m a fan, but this kind of riding isn’t worthy of him. I’m not paying to see him playing mind games with people. If I wanted to see that I’d watch politicians. I’m paying to see him ride the fucking motorbike like no one else can.

At 0.25 seconds a lap, Marquez should have been seconds ahead of Rossi by lap 7.
His 7 km/hr straight line speed should have had them no where near each other in the last part of the track.

Marquez is playing a game that goes well beyond Rossi. There is no one in MotoGP who would be angrier with the idea that Marquez handed him the title than Jorge Lorenzo. Rossi only has a season or two left in him, but Lorenzo could be racing well into Marquez’ career, Lorenzo is an ongoing threat to Marquez. Conspiracy theory makes this look like Rossi is the target, but he’s a bit player in a longer game. Marquez is playing on nationalism (both he and Lorenzo are Spanish) while diminishing Jorge’s championship. Jorge Lorenzo, 2015 world champion (thanks to Marquez) is going to piss off Jorge to no end. Lorenzo doesn’t just not know of any ‘Spanish plan‘ to derail the legendary Italian’s chance at a tenth world title, he’d be actively against it.

If you’ve got a kid antagonizing another kid in the playground, and the kid being antagonized suddenly lashes out, you don’t just penalize the retaliator. The kid doing the antagonizing is playing silly buggers and getting a smack in the face is what he can expect. The antagonized kid should have just walked away, but sometimes that isn’t possible, especially when emotions are heightened. Running to race direction the moment he went down after dogging Rossi for lap after lap makes Marquez look like whiner. I’d have had much more respect if he’d taken it on the chin and then laughed instead of seeking legal advice.

Actually, I’d have liked to have seen Rossi wave Marquez by and let him get a couple of seconds ahead. I imagine Marquez would suddenly have had brake/tire problems again and they would have been side by side once more a few laps later, only making the whole thing look even more obvious; Marquez was committed to an entanglement with Rossi. That Rossi got played is bothersome. That Marquez, after playing silly buggers, then rushes into the pit to lodge a formal complaint is worthy of a thick ear. If you’re going to antagonize someone expect some beats… or, you know, just ride the damn bike!

30k

When I first got the Concours last year, I wanted to get it on track for the kind of mileage that these long distance bashers are capable of. I picked it up with 25072 miles on the odometer, though it had a seized speedo cable so that might not have been accurate.

This summer has seen me do trips well beyond the scale of anything previously. As soon as the snow lifted (almost), Max and I made a run up to Collingwood. I then did a circumnavigation of Georgian Bay, and then outdid both with the ride to Indianapolis. With all of that I was closing in on my goal of breaking the thirty thousand mile mark on the $800 Connie’s odometer.

With the weather turning I was still a couple of hundred miles away from finishing my season on target, but a sunny, cold October day lay before me offering the chance at putting the Connie to bed with a milestone on it.

I’d originally wanted to crush 30k with a ride around Lake Huron, but time constraints meant it couldn’t happen. Fortunately I was close enough to hit my goal locally. To do it I cobbled together my favourite local rides, going from the Forks of the Credit to Hockley Valley to Horning’s Mills and then up to Creemore before coming back via Noisy River and Grand Valley.

178 miles and 30k is reached!

Icy Swiss chard…

With the temperature dropping and frost glinting in the early morning sun, the roads are much quieter than they were during the summer.

It was a cold haul over to hot coffee at Higher Ground in Belfountain, where I warmed my hands on the mug while surrounded by Caledon’s fashionable trophy wives, drinking coffee at their leisure on a weekday morning. My bike was the only non-Mercedes SUV in the parking lot.

Once warmed up I went back out and did the Forks without another car in sight:

It was so much fun that I thought I’d come back the other way, but quickly found myself behind a Lexus who had trouble keeping it moving let alone staying on their side of the road:

After getting out from behind this mobile-Lexus-chicane, I cut north on Mississauga Road and enjoyed a long, empty loop up Hockley Valley Road and back through Mono Cliffs.

North on Highway 10 to Shelburne I stopped in to the same Home Hardware we got chemical hand warmers in our April cold-ride and got some chemical hand warmers for my October cold-ride.

With warm hands I then tackled River Road out of Horning’s Mills, once again without another vehicle in sight. A magic moment happened when I rounded a corner to find myself riding next to two deer running across the meadow next to me. The lead deer looked across at me, then back at its running partner and then bounded off into the tree line. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect moment – just the kind of thing you’d want to catch on your action camera, except I hadn’t turned it on.

…a 179 mile day and 30k is put to bed for the season.

A short rip up Airport Road had me in Creemore for lunch at the Old Millhouse. After some hot beef poutine I was back out into the ever-warming day for a twisty ride up Noisy River’s County Rd 9 before heading back through Grand River and home again.

Over the winter the Concours is getting new brake pads, the lines on the rear brakes and clutch are finally getting braided lines and both wheels are getting new bearings. New tires are also in the plan. The Bridgestone on the front has been fantastic while the Dunlop on the back has sometimes been squirelly, so a full round of Bridgestones are the goal.

While the rims are off and naked I’m going to look into doing a professional clean up and powder coat with them (not too expensive, maybe a hundred bucks a rim?). I’ll also look over all the rubbers and plastics to make sure it’s ready for another busy summer next year. I think 40k is a good target. Time is the issue, I think the bike will have no trouble managing the miles.

GoPro Alternates: The Contour

The Contour Roam2. If you’re looking for a motorbike
friendly, less expensive alternative to the GoPro, this is it.

No doubt, GoPro rules the action camera world, but I’m always on the lookout for alternatives to the very expensive king of the hill. I’m waiting (seemingly forever) until the 360Fly becomes available in Canada, but in the meantime, the Contour Roam2 came across my desk, so I gave it a go.

I’d previously tried the Foscam AC1080, another cheap, GoPro alternative, but it was fairly disastrous. The camera took nice enough video, and seemed sturdy in its shell, but the incredibly cheap accessories will let you down. In the short time I had it the fastening mechanism never held up to wind (it wasn’t geared and would just flop flat) and then the entire camera was gone after the cheap plastic mount let go while riding. Unless you can source better quality mounts, I would not recommend the Foscam for motorcycles at all.

The basic Contour Roam2 is about the same price as the Foscam (about $150 Canadian, or 1/3 the price of the cheapest GoPro), but doesn’t mimic the GoPro form factor. Instead, the Contour is a brushed aluminum tube (in a variety of colours) with a very small frontal area making it an ideal motorcycling camera. Unlike the GoPro or other cameras that copy its format, the Contour is a slim, low profile design that doesn’t produce a lot of drag or wind noise.

The two suction mount options compared – you’re paying
US exchange and 1/3 more in shipping for what, at first,
looks like a cheaper GoPro option.

The Contour also comes with much more robust mounting than that terrible Foscam. While riding in a variety of conditions including some quality Canadian roads and a downpour (the Contour is waterproof without a case), the Contour never wavered, offering steady video and secure mounting at all times.

Mounts for action cameras appear much like printer refills – it’s where the real money is. Fortunately Contour offers a wide range of accessories and mounts and, unlike GoPro, ships from a Canadian distributor so you aren’t surprised by a lot of extra costs. The pricing for the mounts is also comparable to other action cameras, so you aren’t getting extra hosed on the back end.

The Contour offers a wide range of accessories including motorcycle focused low profile, helmet and goggle mounts. I’ve found the 360° stick-on mount to be robust and offer a variety of angles from a single location on the fairing. You can rotate the Contour’s lens to keep videos upright regardless of how you mount it, so you don’t need to muck around with a lot of video editing.

Operation of the Roam2 is as simple as it gets. The default setting is 60 frames per second 720p video, which looks sharp on youtube and keeps up nicely with a motorcycle’s motion:

To change settings in the camera you need to have it hooked up to a PC with USB and be running Contour Storyteller (a free download). This app lets you edit and share video and change camera settings. The camera can be set to 1080p or a variety of lower settings. It also has a photo every so many seconds setting. It takes standard micro-SD cards which are cheap and easy to find. Swapping cards takes only a moment, and they’re tiny, so keeping them in a micro-SD card carrier (don’t leave them loose, you’ll lose them, they are tiny!) in your pocket means you can easily carry as much footage as you like. The battery has yet to run out, even on all-day rides with lots of filming.

To turn on the camera you simply push the slider on top forward and a light comes on to let you know it’s filming. This is easy to do even with gloves on and I found I could do it even while riding, so catching just the good roads is an easy and obvious process. The camera records to mp4 which is then easily uploadable to YouTube or other video sharing sites. It doesn’t work well with Windows Movie Maker, but does with everything else.

If you want live footage and camera control, the Contour+2
does the business, and at $430, it’s over $100 less than a GoPro

If you’ve never made riding footage before the Contour Roam is an inexpensive way to get into it. It’s a basic, tough camera with solid mounts that suit the rough nature of video on a motorbike. It isn’t chock full of options but it does the business well.

Contour also offers the Contour +2 which is a much more complex camera in a similar form factor that offers wireless connection to your smartphone, GPS and super high frame per second options, all for a hundred bucks less than the typical GoPro. If you dig the format, it makes a compelling alternative to the standard GoPro.

Yamaha XS1100: The Midnight Saga

Buddy Jeff gave me a hand getting the XS1100 home the other day; he’s an enabler.

Getting it on the trailer was a bit tricky as the front calipers were seized. A couple of whacks with a rubber hammer loosened them up enough to get the wheel rolling. It took three of us to get it up onto the trailer – it’s heavy (600lbs), had mostly flat tires and was still grabbing the brakes, but we finally got the job done. We ended up settling on $400 as is, which gives me a working budget of about $1500 to get the bike back on the road. It think it’s doable. The only other one like it for sale at the moment is asking $3300. After looking at the bike again critically before agreeing to buy it, it’s in surprisingly good shape for what it has been through.

Once home we had a victory beer after wrestling it off the trailer. A bit later I had a go at it with a garden hose and some S100 cleaner. The ride over had blown away most of the cobwebs, but the rest of the bike is quite astonishingly clean considering it has been sitting outside. The S100 also has a corrosion inhibitor, but I also soaked the bike in wd40 in preparation of trying to remove any fastener on the thing.

Trying to muscle the 600+ pound bike into the garage earned my my first Yama-scar, but I eventually got it nestled in there.

In other news, here’s something to know about bike ownership in Ontario (and probably elsewhere): if you’re buying a bike off someone who bought it and never transferred ownership to themselves, you need to make sure you’ve still got chain of ownership intact. This means either a piece of writing from the legal owner saying that the bike was sold to the intermediary or a signed ownership. The kid I bought the bike off had neither (can’t find them). He’s looking. More updates to follow.

It’s getting crowded in there – once the season ends
the garage will only need to hold the Concours &
the Yamaha, everything else will winter in the shed.

In the meantime, the history of this old bike is long and storied. I’m the fourteenth (!) owner (almost). It’s a 1980, not a ’78 as the kid selling it thought it was. In the early ’80s it went through three owners before finding itself at Norwich Collision Service in South West Ontario in the spring of ’82. The crash owner had owned it since Christmas and had probably been on the road for a few weeks in the spring before spilling it. Idiots buying bikes too powerful for their experience level isn’t a new thing then. He got the bike back from repair and immediately sold it.

After the n00b crash and the repairs it got picked up by a guy who owned it for six years. He then sold it on to a series of owners through the ’90s and zeroes, the longest being eight years by a guy in Halton. The last legal owner was a guy from Stoney Creek in 2009.

Whoever said the Ontario vehicle history was boring or a waste of money? This one reads like a Jane Austen novel!

I’ll update the ownership situation as I hear more, hopefully it’ll be resolved by the end of this weekend. I’ll hold off on working on the bike until I know I can own it, that seems prudent.

Why Do You Like Bikes So Much?

Part of the pleasure is in the simplicity of the experience.
It’s analogue, immediate and visceral, yet still mentally
stimulating, meditative even! Mark Webber knows.

Asked by a grade 9 this week upon seeing my wall of motorbike photos ranging from Coventry Eagles to Kawasaki H2s. My answer:

“Bikes are faster than cars in every way that matters. They cost a fraction as much, insurance is less, they barely use any gasoline and when you go around a corner you feel like you’re flying.” The kid nodded and then said, “I’m gonna get a bike.”

Beyond all of those excellent reasons there is also the involvement. Cars have you sitting in a box, watching the world go by from behind a screen. On a bike you’re out in the world. You see more, smell more, hear more, feel more, and you’re expected to do more. When you ride you’re using both hands, both feet and your entire body to interact with the machine.

In a car you spin a wheel and it goes around a corner. On a bike you counter-steer out of the turn to drop the bike toward the corner and then lean into it. Once you get the hang of it, it feels like dancing. The first time they had us weaving through cones at the introduction motorcycle course I said to the instructor, “I could do this all day!” Bike acceleration is astonishing, but the cornering is magical. If you want proof, find any twisty road on a sunny summer day and see how many bikes you see.

Bike cornering is magical.

In the hands of a genius it’s ballet.

I’ve driven some pretty involving cars. The best get you about 40% of the way to what a bike feels like, and I’m comparing sports cars that cost as much as a house to regular road bikes – I’ve never ridden a supersport or track bike.

There are lots of other reasons why you should ride a bike (the camaraderie and sense of belonging to a group that recognizes their own, the exercise it provides, the ability to go places a car couldn’t, the rich history, the technological know-how), and only one reason why you shouldn’t. Yes, riding a motorcycle is dangerous (mainly because of all the people in boxes), and it demands attention and skill, but the benefits are epic.

Rivers to Roads

Yesterday I took the KLX out for a stretch, today the Concours. I’m trying to get her up over thirty thousand miles this season. Thanks to today’s run I’m a hundred miles closer.

I first aimed at Marsville to have another look at the XS1100, this time in daylight. It’s $500, the motor isn’t seized (!), and it’s seen better days. I left a message on the number attached to it, we’ll see what comes back.

That it’s covered in cobwebs and has spent the last who knows how long in the back of a barn somewhere only makes me want to take it home and take it apart more. It’s a good candidate for a tear down – especially if I can get the price down.

After looking at ye old Yamaha, I struck north, aiming for Horning’s Mills and River Road. Nothing works out the kinks like bending the big Kawi down some winding roads. It was busy up there, with lots of bikes looking for the twisties. The weather was hot (in the thirties Celsius) and sunny.

River Road gives you some very un-Southern Ontario like bends, it was nice to give the edges of my tires some work. With all the traffic on the road I had to keep timing my corners so I wouldn’t run into nice old couple in minivans out for a lovely drive. A guy coming the other way on an R1 showed how it’s done, executing a smooth, quick pass to get around the moving chicanes.

Just when you get past the twistier bits you come across the Terra Nova Public House, a tavern in the old style, with raftered ceilings and great local beers on tap. After a break in the shade and a cool drink, I took the Concours back down River Road the other way and headed back via Grand Valley and Belwood, to Elora.

Three hours in the baking sun had me a little sun-stunned by the end of it, but what a lovely day for a ride. The memory will keep me warm in the coming darkness!