#1 Son and I fixed the motorcycle together

He had decided that he wanted to ride it again, but it hadn't been started for a year.  And so I invited him to join me for the following:

1. Take the battery cover off (hello, philips head screwdriver!) and charge up the battery.

2. Siphon the gas out of the gas tank.

3. Fill the tank with new gas with carburettor cleaning additive.  Explain how a carburettor works.  Show the parts, where it enters the cylinders, etc.

4. Replace the spark plugs.  Explain gapping and fouling.

5. Work the choke to start it right up.  Explain what a choke does.  Explain why a choke does what it does.

And it started right up, the first time.  Joke about how, come the nuclear (pronounced NUK-ular) apocalypse all that will still be there are cockroaches and Honda engines.

But it was really nice spinning wrenches with him, and nice seeing him look at me with That Expression when the engine turned over - an expression not unlike  one he had when he was little, before he'd learned that his Dad was, well, mortal.  Pretty nice, that.

The hush before the roar

Of the engines, that is.

Not too much more that I want to add to this thing now.  That may change after 300 miles each way, but 7 months and almost 2,000 miles have let me make this bike to be much closer to what I want.  Go team me!

Crash likes my luggage rack

The luggage rack for the motorcycle showed up yesterday, and Crash the Wundercat couldn't be more thrilled.  He actually doesn't care about the rack, but the box it came in is his new most favoritist place every.

Ohai!

Shopping at Kroger

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The Motorcycle project continues

Das Bike before:

Das Bike after a long lunch hour in the hot sun and with a skinned knuckle or two:

Sissy bar and saddle bags.

Because everyone needs to be safe when I'm popping wheelies ...

 

Because I'm all about safety.  So after about $800, I'm about where the other bike I had wanted was, only this only has 6,000  miles instead of 30,000.

Saddle bags for the motorcycle are here

And a sissy bar.  Pics when I get the time to put them on the bike.  It's sort of like Christmas morning - some assembly required.

Admittedly, it's not the world's fastest motorcycle

But you have to admit that it would cut down on the number of stops.

I has an annoyed

Did the company that made my "install it yourself" windscreen use lock tight on the bolts they knew I would be removing?  WTF is that red goop?

 

Whatever it was, it sure didn't make it easy to take the damn bolt off ... 

If TJIC rides a motorcycle in New Hampshire ...

... his floorboards might look like this.

Want.

Via The Big Guy himself, Uncle Jay.  Who if he was ever in the same room with TJIC might personally cause a rift in the Space-Time contimuum, from all the awesome trying to be compressed into a single temporal place.

Review: uClear HBC100 Bluetooth helmet communicator system

I got out on the Bike after installing one of these:

My HJC helmet came pre-set up for the HJC bluetooth system, but I went with the uClear one.  uClear sold a ton of tactical comms systems to the military, and the noise suppression technology developed for this has found its way into their commercial offer.  Another attractive option is that this is (as far as I can tell) the only one that doesn't have a boom microphone; rather, the mics are integrated into the speaker units.  As a result, it took all of 5 minutes to install in my helmet.

I haven't tested the phone or intercom capabilities, just the music which works as advertised.  Bluetooth pairs the HBC to my soon to be replaced iPhone 3GS, and firing up the music player gets music in the helmet.

The elongated, teardrop shaped main unit is attached to the left hand side of the helmet, so I can reach up and hit the button to skip to the next song (or go back to listen to a favorite again.  You mount this on the left hand side of the helmet so that you can keep your right hand on the throttle, duh.  I found that I had to lean down to get the helmet close to the pouch where the phone was.  I'm not sure if this was because the iPhone's battery was low, or a limitation of the headset.  I'll update this when I've tested with my new phone.

Works great.  I'd been thinking about getting speakers to mount on the handlebars, but for $200 I got my music right in the helmet.  I also have hands free phone (will test this when I get my new phone which will have better support for this - not to mention a battery that doesn't get drained so fast by bluetooth and music playing).

It also allows you to pair with another HBC headset - say, for someone riding two up.  This gives an intercom capability which also sounds nice (although not tested).  HBC claims that this also works with riders on other bikes up to (IIRC) 500 yards away.  Again, I haven't tested this but will do an update if I get the chance.

Bottom line: even using it just for music on the bike, this is simple and works fine.

Well that was different

Beautiful day here.  I had installed bluetooth speakers/comms gear in my helmet, and was going to try out music on the motorcycle.  But I wasn't feeling so well, and lay down for a quick rest.  That was 4:00 or so.

I just woke up.  Wow.  Not feeling at all well.  Test ride will have to wait.

Oh, foo

I have custom (faaaancy) forks, and the windscreen mounting hardware doesn't fit.  Looks like I'll have to take the bike to the dealer.

Bah.

Wh00t!

The windscreen I ordered for the bike is in. Pictures anon.


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No bike trip tomorrow

Duty calls. But I do have a windscreen on order. Probably should order a crash bar too.

THEN it's road trip time.

Bike project #1

I'm starting to call this my "Project" bike - there's so much I want to do with it that I have a series of, well, projects ahead of me.  I just completed the first one yesterday.

While I have a tank bag, I don't have a compartment for sunglasses, sunscreen, garage door opener, etc.  I picked one up at Cycle World, but it was held onto the handle bars by nylon straps.  While they kept them on the handle bars, they couldn't keep it from sagging under the weight of gravity.  The bag would hang down and cover up the speedometer.

And so off to Home Depot for stainless steel hose clamps and some rubber gasket.  The gasket is to keep the clamps from scratching the chrome.

Then it was a simple task to screw the clamps onto the handlebars so that the excess was pointing upwards.

The bag has a new and happy home, held in place above the handle bars.

I'll probably tweak the placement, but I think we can scratch one off the list.  Go team me!

Motorcycle windscreen bleg

Damn, Uncle Jay sure is pushy.  After dawdling and agonizing for months over which bike to get, he has the audacity to say "Meet you next weekend in Athens".  The nerve of some folks ...

The issue is that the top priority for my new-to-me bike is a windscreen to reduce the wind buffeting on the 2 and a half hour ride.  I imagine that they're not hard to install, but there's not a lot of time between now and Friday.

So what do riders think?  How big is too big?  How small is too small?  Which manufacturers do you like?  Which do you hate?

Das Bike

This is my Honda Shadow 750.  I'd decided on a cruiser style, and there was a selection of these for small money.  Since Honda has been making variations of this model for over 40 years, there's a huge after market for customization options.

It weighs about twice what the Rebel does, but has three times the horsepower.  This makes it both peppier off the line as well as having a higher top end.  I rather doubt that I'll ever test what that is - I was doing 60 in third gear yesterday.  The Honda wouldn't top out there, but would be getting close.  I haven't gassed it up, and so don't know the mileage it gets.  I'm sort of expecting 50 MPG or so, compared to the 70+ I get from the Rebel.  The engine sounds much more like a "real" motorcycle (throatier) without being obnoxious.

It was an almost effortless step from the Rebel - controls are essentially identical, so it was just size and weight difference.  The bike is very well balanced and easy to control even at very low speed (as opposed to the V-Strom I tried some time back).  The seller was quite some distance away - almost to Alabama - but this gave me a ~ 80 mile ride to get used to things.  This is going to work out just fine.

One difference between this and the Rebel is that the Shadow has a shaft drive (just like your car) rather than a chain.  This will reduce the maintenance (nice), likely at the cost of a lower top speed (additional weight and more power loss between engine and wheel).  Since the Shadow has more power than I'm likely to need - at least until I get it loaded with luggage - this isn't really a concern.

It also has a rear drum brake instead of the typical disk break.  I'm not sure that this will make any difference.  Feel free to chime in with a comment on this.

Another difference (and this is a big one) is that the engine is liquid cooled, with a radiator.  This will add some maintenance (flush the cooling system) but hopefully will help the engine run cooler than an air cooled V Twin.  We'll see when things warm up later this year.

This bike had essentially no customizations.  I  picked it over others that were kitted out pretty nicely because it had very low mileage, and was the newest of the bikes I was looking at.  While I'm pretty confident in Honda's reliability, newer and ridden less seem to be an investment that's worth while.

The ride home convinced me that my upgrade priority list needs to look something like this:

1. Windscreen or fairing.  This easily cruises at highway speed, but the wind blast at 70 MPH is pretty bad.  If I want to take this on trips, this needs to be reduced.

2. Saddle bags.  The Rebel doesn't have them, and while I sometimes take a backpack to the store, bags will be a lot more convenient.

3. Sissy bar.  I have the original rear seat, but a back rest for anyone riding 2 up is a nice addition.  I'm not sure how frequently this will happen, which is why it's down the list.

4. Luggage rack.  A weekend trip probably will take more luggage than will fit into the bags.

5. Bluetooth speakers for my helmet.  Long rides, tunes.  'Nuff said.

So there you have it.  Trip reports as I take them.