Dream Racer

Triumph included a link to this on their email newsletter, so I gave it a whirl on Vimeo.  At nearly $9 it's an expensive (48 hour) video rental compounded by some stuttering even with fibre at home internet.  Looking at the code it looks like Vimeo segments the video to prevent copying.  Those segments kept stalling on transition, which is pretty frustrating, especially when you just paid a premium price to see it.

I like Charley, but he
wasn't the guy to see
this through

Technicalities aside, the film itself is very engaging.  It isn't just about a run at Dakar (like Charlie's was).  The man making the film, Simon Lee, is in his thirties and feels like his dreams of making a film are ebbing away under the pressures of middle aged life.  The man trying to go to the Dakar, Christophe, is a former North African motor-cross champion who failed to complete the Dakar the year before.  He is a skilled rider, but spends all his time in a suit and tie doing business and trying to drum up the money to get himself to the race.  The expectations of middle-aged life are barriers in both men's struggles.

When desire conquerors
circumstance you get a
better story

You'd expect a fully financed, technically supported, off-road experienced forty year old rider coupled with a Dakar veteran mentor and a spare rider to hand you his bike when your's breaks to finish the race (he didn't).  You'd not expect a single thirty-something experienced racer who has to turn his own wrenches and barely managed to find a bike and get enough money to attend the race to finish (he does).  What matters more, financial support or the will to succeed?  This film sheds light on that question.

Along the way you get to see the Dakar without the money lenses of sponsorship.  This purer Dakar hearkens back to the beginnings of the race (a good documentary to watch about this is BBC's Madness in the Desert).  But you don't have to suffer through poor footage from amateurs to see this raw Dakar.  What you get is video shot by a guy who knows how to shoot video and edited by an expert.  The whole thing is then wrapped in an original soundtrack that supports and nurtures the narrative.  If you're used to watching half-assed video of motorcycle based adventure, this isn't that.

A teary conclusion is well earned, and stirs up deeper
philosophical questions around media dilettantes & the
committed racer...  

When you get to the end and everyone is in tears you'd have to be a robot not to share that feeling with them, and it's not all just about Christophe's race either, it's also about Simon's journey as a documentary film maker.  Both men defy expectations and pursue a dream at great personal expense (emotional, physical and financial).  It's the kind of story most of us who live in a world that doesn't give a damn about what we dream of doing can relate to.

If you enjoy a quality, motorcycle themed film, this will do it for you.  It's well shot and brilliantly edited and musically scored.  The filming is such that you get to know Simon and Christophe who are both painfully honest in front of the camera.  The narrative (aided by that brilliant editing) takes you from introductions, to desperate attempts to source the money and prepare for the race and then tosses you into the Dakar without the antiseptic third person corporate perspective you usually see it from.  By this point you're emotionally invested in both men's journey.

I recommend this film.  I only wish I could have ordered the DVD for a few dollars more and been able to watch it without the interruptions and technical headaches.

When a film leverages the Dakar to raise questions around commitment to challenge through skill and determination,
and does it well, you've got a winner.

Christophe riding injured.  As long as he is conscious, he isn't going to stop - remarkably sympathetic to his machine as well.

A naked Dakar bike, personally paid for, no corporate spin; not what the modern Dakar is about.  It would be nice
to see the money around the Dakar put a bit aside to ease the entry of privateers into the race - they make for better
stories than the stone faced, well paid professionals.

An Adventurous, Versatile, Always-on Versys

Two bikes not being used...

With the ongoing frustrations with trying to run a 22 year old bike as my daily rider I'm thinking of rearranging things so that I have a more functional motorbike stable.  At the moment I've got a KLX250 that I don't throw a leg over very much and isn't a popular choice with my pillion.  I've also got the big old Yamaha project bike that isn't getting any attention because I'm spending all my garage time working on the Concours.  Rejigging things to have a more functional stable is on my mind.

I miss having I.T. on at least one bike - having an onboard computer means the bike will self regulate and run more consistently.  Being a computer teacher means I'm not really scared of digital tech either, so I'd welcome it back.

The process might look like this:  sell the KLX, get the XS1100 operational and sell it too, and sell  the little Yamaha my son has never ridden.  In a perfect world I'd bring in about $4000 with those bikes.

What I'd be looking for is a second bike that could do basic commuting duties including two-up, would run all the time, and could ride a wider range of roads than the Concours is comfortable on.  As a road tool the Concours takes some beating (when it works).  It'll tour two up comfortably with lots of room for luggage, cover highway miles with ease and makes for a surprisingly agile back road weapon when riding alone.  What it needs is a break from the demands of being an always on motorcycle (it's twenty-two years old!).

That always on motorcycle should be light with a fuel injected/modern engine.  Of course the Ninja was those things, though it was a very road focused machine as well.  Kawasaki makes the Versys, based on the same ER6 chassis as the Ninja but with an enduro riding position.  With a few tweaks that bike could become the light-weight all-rounder I'm looking for.  At only 180kg, the Versys 650 is a mighty light, very dependable bike.

Where would I find a Versys?  They're about.  There is a well cared for '07, albeit with pretty high kilometres, for under three thousand over in Kitchener.Starting there I could build out an adventure Versys.  There are a lot of people doing something similar...

A great thread to follow on an adventurous Versys

high/scrambler pipe inspiration

LINKS

http://www.topspeed.com/motorcycles/motorcycle-news/studio-motor-gives-us-the-kawasaki-versys-650-scrambler-ar169995/picture634237.html

http://bikebrewers.com/kawasaki-versys-650-scrambler-studio-motor/

http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/one-more-versys-adventure.1078100/#post-27148119

Pulling the Carbs

The Concours' carburetor has become cursed by demons.  These carbs tend to not come back from sitting very well, though last year they didn't have this problem.  When I put them away they were running well, but no longer.

Yesterday I pulled the tank again and went over the vacuum tubes in detail - no breaks, no problems.  After putting it all back together again I took it out and had the same hesitation on throttle and back firing.  The bike feels seriously down on power too.

I was hoping to send the carbs down to Shoodaben Engineering in Florida for a spa session with Steve.  His prices are more than fair, but after having an economist (whatever the hell that is) as a Prime Minister for eight years, Canada's dollar is in the toilet and my $500US carb repair would cost north of $800 with shipping, customs and the exchange rate.  I paid $800Cdn for the bike in the first place.

So I'm rebuilding carbs!

In spite the many terrifying stories of carb removal on a Concours, I found the process pretty straight forward (thanks to Steve's video).  Warm up the rubber on the airbox to carb, they get nice and soft, and you wiggle the whole thing free.  With the carb on the bench, parts are ordered ($200Cdn for 4 kits - 1 for each carb) and I'm beginning to break it down to rebuild each.

There is always one more thing...

The open road awaits, and it's still waiting...

Recent frustrations with the twenty two year old Concours had me saying yesterday, "I like doing mechanical work, but sometimes I just want to go ride a fucking motorcycle."  It was a day in the mid teens Celsius (almost 60 Fahrenheit), and the sound of motorcycle engines could be heard on distant roads.  After spending the winter redoing the brakes, wheels and bearings, I got the Concours back on its feet only to find the carburetor has gone off.  The bike is running lean, not fueling nicely and back-fires when coming off throttle.  Instead of going out for a ride on one of the first nice days of the year, I was popping and swearing my way up and down the road by my house trying to get the carb to play nice.

Some vacuum diagrams on there, but not where they go.  Another
suggestion for lean burning/back firing conditions (which I have) are
the air cut valve (highlighted).

Some research into Concours carbs produced a baffling array of opinion and vitriol.  It appears that no one who works at a dealership has the experience or time to do carbs properly any more, and the carbs on the Concours are fantastically complicated.

I've done carbs before on cars, and labyrinthine vacuum tubes aren't a problem when you have a diagram to follow, but Clymers doesn't include one in their manual (unless it's for California bikes), and the Kawasaki diagrams show bits of vacuum diagram spread across the valve head blowup, the carb blow up, the fuel tank blowup, air box blow up and others.  Needless to say, trying to chase vacuum connections across half a dozen diagrams isn't easy.

Today I'm taking the fairing I just put on back off, removing the gas tank (again) and trying to make sense of the vacuum tubes.  If nothing obvious presents itself it'll be time to remove the carbs and go deeper.  I just did something similar on the XS1100 in the fall.  I haven't had time to work on it since because I'm spending all my garage time on the Concours.

I'm starting to think one project bike is enough.  The other one needs to be modern, dependable and there when I need it so I can, sometimes, you know, just go ride a damned bike.

Sources for Concours carburetor and vacuum information:

As usual, CoG is the place to go first:
http://forum.cog-online.org/index.php?topic=27077.0
http://forum.cog-online.org/index.php?topic=38095.0
http://forum.cog-online.org/index.php/topic,11914.0.html

CoG wisdom on Concours carbs:
Normally it is caused by dirty carbs and and not being sync'd properly. The dirty part can be from just a few days of sitting due to the ethanol evaporating....

it's very likely during the "cleaning" they did not dissassemble the air-cut valves from the 2 carb bodies prior to spraying with volatile carb cleaner. internal to each of those housings is a very delicate diphragm, not unlike the ones that lift the slides....during this process they damaged them, and at the least, never cleaned the rod attached to those diphragms that during decell, when the diphragm moves, opens a port to add fuel to the intake tract to preclude/prevent a "lean burn popping" upon decell. That is the sole purpose of those 2 valves, when they don't function, you get this result.

Check the vacumn stuff like you already mentioned. I had a back fire for a while, peeked under the tank, found the rubber cap on the #3 carb was split. Just for the fun of it, replaced all the hoses while there, good to go now.

You Cannot do away with the reed valves entirely unless you tap the ports in the actual valve cover and thread in some set screws. The easier way here is to leave the reed valves and metal covers on the valve cover, and remove all the vacuum hosing associated with the pair valve. Go to your local auto parts store, and pick up three 5/8" "heater core block off caps". They look like big vacuum caps, and also some 3/16" regular vacuum caps. Using the 5/8" Cap off the 2 ports left on the valve cover, and insert one backwards into the airbox hole. Use the 3/16" to block the intake ports.

http://www.zggtr.org/index.php?topic=15181.0
http://www.justanswer.com/motorcycle/21eu0-1897-kawasaki-concours-looking-fuel.html

Reassembly

The old bike is coming back together again.  I've learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process:

a $30 toolbox should prevent
$50 in lost parts, every time

1) Don't take your parts to high school to get them worked on, they lose parts, don't do the work anyway and it causes confusion and headaches when you're trying to reassemble the thing.

2) I tried taking photos as I took the bike apart, which works well when you're putting it back together, but with so many small fasteners and other odds and ends it pays to have a parts tray set up and labelled.  

I've since purchased a cheap sectioned toolbox that will serve as a parts holder.  I'll use an erasable marker to label the parts as they go into each section of the toolbox.  That should resolve future finding-the-right-fastener headaches.

In the meantime, after multiple trips to dealer to pick up bits and pieces, I think I'm putting this all down as lessons learned and moving on.

The geometry of the bike is coming back together, but I've still got some work to do.  The rear brake went back on well, bled well and works perfectly.  It even has good pedal feel.  A concern in the rear is that the rotor suddenly seems out of round (it was fine before).  I'm going to get it back on the road and see if it needs reseating - it's a 20+ year old bike, so maybe I put the rotor back on the hub in a different way and it's not happy.

The front end all went back together without problems, but the front brakes don't seem to want to bleed to a tight lever.  Fortunately CoG has a solution.  After leaving the lever tied closed for the night the brakes are starting to come back.  Another round of bleeding and I should have some sharp feeling front brakes again.

The bike is running rough, and I can't tell if this is because it's been sitting over the winter or it needs the carbs tickled.  I'm going to have to look into it in more detail.  A short run yesterday in double digit temperatures showed that the back end is back together perfectly.  The beads are doing a wonderful job of keeping the wheels balanced and the new bearings and tires make for very smooth and quiet operation.

If I can get the front brakes finished up and the fueling sorted, I should be ready to go just in time for the roads to get rained clear of the sand and salt of winter.

Carbon KLX

Never a fan of the sticker covered MX look, I don't care for
big, white, fridge-like panels designed to take numbers.

I can't seem to own a bike without re-imagining it.  The Ninja went from flat black to blue and orange.  The Concours is continuing a transformation into gold and crimson.  Now it's the KLX's turn.

The white plastics on the KLX look cheap, appliance-like and nasty.  To rectify that I started looking for carbon pieces but they tend to be focused on sports bikes and I couldn't find any KLX sets.  

I then looked for replacement plastics I could experiment with, but they aren't cheap.  My next stop was sticker sets, which tend to be even more juvenile than the original graphics set-up (though the black metal one looked alright).  Why is everyone fixated on death imagery (skulls, bones, flaming effigies, etc.) on motorcycles?

A short term fix is to just focus on the offending pieces
(the headlight surround, fork protectors and rear side panels).
Amazing how five panels makes the bike look so different.

Longer term I'd like to learn how to form carbon fibre panels, but short term I've found a number of cheaper fixes to my aesthetics problem.

Canadian Tire sells the Dupli-Colour carbon fibre kit for about forty bucks.  It comes with two colours and a patterning cloth.  I should be able to sort out the natty white panels (two front fork guards, the headlight surround and the rear side panels) with that kit.  It's a cheap, short term fix.

I was reading about a vinyl wrap project Performance Bike UK was doing last night.  They did the whole bike in vinyl, but you can pick up carbon fibre look vinyl for next to nothing.  Maybe I should try that instead of the paint.  After some looking up on Amazon.ca I found some carbon fiber look vinyl wrap that will let me try out what PB did with their Suzuki on a smaller scale.  I also found some mirrors on hand that are much less derpy than the stock KLX mirror, and the

$45 for shipping on a $27 part?  Really Amazon?

price seemed reasonable until I got to checkout - this Amazon 'retailer' is charging $45 in shipping for a $27 part.  They can't be selling too many of those.  Fortunately I found a similar mirror with reasonable shipping costs and ended up getting a body colour mirror, 4 rolls of carbon look vinyl and a vinyl applicator for the same price as that over inflated shipping price, taxes and delivery included.  Amazon is no longer Amazon, it's a whole bunch of sometimes shady online sellers.  It's more like ebay than Amazon of old.

With more cash on hand I'd like to swap out knobblies for something more road focused and dualsport/scramblery.  Having the knobblies around for intentionally deep off-roading will be good, but I think I'd use the bike a lot more if I could get places without the tires slapping the pavement like wet squid suckers.

Canada's Motorcycle has Shinko 705s in the right sizes for under one hundred bucks each.  Two hundred and fifty bucks in and my carbon fibre KLX will be a step closer to the more road friendly scrambler I've been dreaming of.







Further research unearthed some pretty cool options.  This twin light headlamp seems pretty Airwolf cool.

Acerbis does a variety of front ends for enduro/dual sport bikes, like this Cyclops one.  

Nano-Tires

I installed Counteract balancing beads on the slowly-being-rebuilt Concours today.  If you're impatient you'll find the installation process a bit tedious, but the technology sure is cool.

Some have complained of liquid based self-balancing processes damage the tire, but the Counteract beads are micro-sized, synthetic beads that migrate to the out of balance side of the tire through static and centrifugal force.  Since they're internal it means there are no unsightly weights stuck to my lovely new tires.  The claim is that these beads work better than weights as they adapt to the changing conditions throughout the life of the tire.  I'm hoping that they work as well as advertised.

On a cold, windy Saturday in February, I put the beads in through the valve stem using the provided small, plastic bottle, you keep gently squeezing air into the tube which pushes the beads into the tire...

The kit comes with valve stems and fancy caps as well.  Once I've had the new tires out on the road I'll update this with an assessment of how well they work.

Update:  it's late March and I've had a couple of chances to take the bike out.  I'm surprised at how well the beads work.  The wheels start off smooth and only seem to get smoother the faster you go.  Once I've gotten the carbs sorted I'll be able to give a more accurate description, but early indicators are good.