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cptchaos

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  6. What did you do to your bike today?

    in Daily Ride

    Posted

    8 hours ago, Qman said:

    Curious how you find the lean angle on that unit.  I guess we'll find out Saturday!   My demo ride didnt end well back in the day..    they weren't happy about the radiator grille and foot pegs being ground down!

    I don't think the lean angle is terribly shallow but the front suspension is weak so consequently the radiator and frame grind a bit in sharper turns. Long sweepers are no problem since the suspension doesn't load up as much. I'm going to replace the front springs this year. 

  7. What did you do to your bike today?

    in Daily Ride

    Posted

    Oil change, long version.

    I like to believe that for those of us that wrench on our own bikes, we have a spirit rider watching over us, guiding us during repairs. I recently picked up a Harley V-rod and at first I thought my spirit rider would be some kind of awesome German engineer named Hans or something. Turned out I was only half right. Tonight was the first oil change since I bought the bike last fall, initial eyeball testing told me then that the oil could wait until spring and as we have the ride this weekend, it was time. I assembled all my tools, oil, and filter, got a new box of rubber gloves, and set out to get it done. I should have known better that it would be "Git er dun!"

    Hans wasn't alone since this is a Harley. This particular bike is American with German development. My other spirit rider I'll call Dusty. Hans speaks softly over the tree frogs croaking after tonight's rain, "Ya, you can do zis no problem. You wrench ok so jus get to eet." Dusty laughs in the corner, opening a beer I imagine, "You ain't seen nuttin yet fellas, that there is American iron don't you forget it."

    First up, drain the oil. Well for the love of Willie G., the bolt is a bit rounded and I have to swing the radiator away from the frame but it's not so bad. "Yet," calls Dusty. I look at him confused. "Naw, it's ok, you're doing fine monkey boy, go on now. You might consider gittin' that paint tray for the oil there professor. No, the big wide one." Dusty is right, my regular drain bucket is too tall for the V-rod. The paint tray is for a wide roller so it will hold about 6 quarts or so. "Ya but vat is eet in liters?" says Hans as he's looking through my tools. "And vats vit all dis no-name tools?"

    I put the tray under the plug and unscrew it, half the battle is done! "Heh, I like ur optimism home skillet," dusty says. The oil drains out, I clean the plug up and put it back in. I have a vacuum pump that I used to use on my car so I start sucking the oil out of the tray so I don't make a huge mess trying to pour the old oil back into the recycle jug. "Well hell genius, you could have just sucked it out with that now couldn't you?" Thanks Dusty, where were you 15 minutes ago?

    Old oil in the jug, now it's time for the filter. On my old Yamaha, the filter is in front, pointing forward so I could grip it easily to spin it on and off. "Not so on this here iron, Willie G. didn want no pointy bits moving the radiator out of the airflow so ya git what ya got." Shit, he's right, it points to the left and it's inside the frame tubes and has no socket head. Dusty laughs, "Ha ha yep, that's some cheap shit there boy." Hans is suspiciously quiet and then says, "Ya that wasn't mine idea."

    "Boy, you know what you need to do now don't you." Uh, hammer and screwdriver? "You damn right now do it and let's get the hell on with this show." I wound up having to punch the screwdriver through twice to turn it enough that I could move it by hand since the PO put it on too tight. Luckily, the replacement has a socket adapter on it so this won't be a repeat performance.

    Dusty gave me the nod as I wrapped up and said, "I knew you could do it, I just wanted to see you beat it up a bit." Hans patted my shoulder and said, "I make it wit lots of power, oil filter eez not mine idea." Thanks fellas, I think.

    Any similarities to any persons real or imagined is purely coincidental. The moral of this story is that I salute all the wrenchers out there from all nations and am happy to be a part of the motorcycling brother and sisterhood! See you this weekend.

    • Upvote 2

  12. What did you do to your bike today?

    in Daily Ride

    Posted

    Flushed the clutch and brake fluid on the V-Rod - a nasty maintenance deferral courtesy of the previous owner. What came out of the rear brake looked a lot like chocolate milk with more milk than chocolate. Downside was that I realized the brake pads are ready for replacement too. I also disassembled the instrument cluster and polished off the faded, weathered coating on the glass and now it looks like new!

  17. Gauging interest - Pittsburgh tunnel blast

    in Events

    Posted

    Greetings OR, I'm moving to Columbus in a few weeks and wanted to see if anyone would be interested in a trip to Pittsburgh, PA for the sole purpose of being noisy in some of their tunnels sometime this summer? It's a fair amount of slab there and back but I was thinking an early departure, a couple of tunnels, lunch there and then back in the afternoon.

    Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

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