Tim's Motorcycle Diaries

Tuesday 31 May 2022

May Motorcycle Photography

Motorcycle photography over the past couple of weeks.

Two-up sunset ride on the Tiger with a Ricoh Theta SC mounted to the rear view mirror with a flexible tripod:

Testing a new Theta SC 360 camera mounted on the windshield with a flexible tripod:

If you're curious about how to do this, click HERE!

Kawasaki Concours 14 on a sunset ride (no 360 camera this time, just the phone):

Sunday 15 May 2022

As a family we attended a blacksmithing day at Happy Knife Forge last weekend. Highly recommended, it's money well spent. Jason will not only show you the basics, but is keen to get you up and running as a blacksmith. My granddad was a coal merchant back in the old country and the smell of coke burning on the forge prompted a sense memory from the crib; it smelled like home.

I've ruminated on fabrication and micro-manufacturing on TMD before from a digital perspective using the latest techniques. Given the space and tools I'd quite happily spend my time designing and creating using everything from medieval blacksmithing through 20th Century metal working and on into 21st Century digital manufacturing techniques. Connecting these processes separated by time but with the same intent would produce some genuinely interesting and bespoke combinations.

I've had the itch to get back into welding for some time, but a lack of space and gear means I'm not while I'm where I'm at. The blacksmithing experience has me wanting to expand my metal working beyond just welding, which means even more space and kit getting added to the wish list. You can do a lot in a tight space, and I am, but when it comes to storing the chemicals and managing the heat in some of these processes, there is no substitute for space.

A property with an old industrial building on
it would make for a fantastic restoration
leading to a multi-millenial foundry covering
everything from blacksmithing to digital design!

Given the time and resources I'd hit an intensive welding program, then set up my multi-millenial forge/shop/maker space with everything from blacksmithing tools through metal working and mechanical to 21st Century 3d scanning, digital modelling and printing. The forge would be in the corner of a repurposed, old brick building that also includes space for metalwork, all very fireproof. Across the floor in the same open concept.would be space for a paint booth/shot blasting station and plenty of mechanical workspace. Upstairs (open concept, with just a railing) would be digital design and manufacturing in a cleaner workspace. If I could walk out to that every morning to create, restore and repair, I'd hardly care if there were pandemics or anything else. Put it near some good riding roads (ie: not in Southern Ontario), and it'd be just about perfect.

I've been thinking about a digital workshop for a while now, but the blacksmithing experience has me thinking old school as well.

The future-garage scene in Big Hero 6 gets the digital side of it right.

Used Options:

Metal Working Tool Links

https://www.amazon.ca/Solary-Magnetic-Induction-Flameless-Automotive/dp/B08XTHTMZP

https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/products/metabo-5-variable-speed-rat-tail-angle-grinder

Digital Manufacturing Links

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/car-sos-tv-show-uses-3d-printing-and-scanning-to-restore-classic-car-195222/

https://www.javelin-tech.com/3d/artec-3d-scanner-price/

https://all3dp.com/1/best-professional-3d-scanners-industrial/

https://all3dp.com/1/best-professional-3d-printer-small-business/

Riding Through an Oil Painting

After a long day at work I found myself watching the sky change colours and jumped on the Tiger for a ride down the river. It felt like riding through a Van Gogh...

All photos taken with a Ricoh 360 camera mounted on the windshield, autofiring every 8 seconds.

West Montrose Covered Bridge: one of these times I'm going to ride through and find myself in 1881!

Photos are in reverse chronological order. Sunset was at 8:30pm - I was on the road from about 8:10 to 8:50pm.

If you want a breakdown of how to get on-bike 360 photos like this, check THIS out! If you really want to digitally flex, you can create a 360 'tiny planet' stop motion film out of this kind of photography:

Monday 2 May 2022

My First Motorcycling Accident: ATGATT Saves The Day!

... and it wasn't so bad thanks to all the (quality) gear, all the time. This weekend we had family friends coming over so I took their son and mine up to S.M.A.R.T. Adventures for an afternoon dirt biking. My boy did a day on bikes last year so he was stepping up to intermediate level, the other boy had never ridden before.

It was a glorious day. We had snow last week but it was 15°C and sunny on Saturday, and we weren't gettting on a bike until it had already reached that lofty high.

They kit you up good at SMART!

We got kitted up and out to the bikes. Ethan went with another new rider and did the how-bike-controls-work introductory lesson. Max hadn't been on a bike in 10 months and had only had a day when he last did, but he remembered all the basics so off we went.

We had Joe instructing us who I've had a couple of times before. He has psychic trail reading skills and is a joy to follow in the woods. He's also big on the basics (elbows up, sit at the front of the saddle right above the pegs and most of all, clutch control!). Max had the basics down, but his work on the clutch dramatically improved his ability to ride off road this time around, it was time well spent!

We did the ride-over-a-log thing and after a tentative start Max got a handle on that too! All in all it was a very satisfying afternoon of riding.

To end the day we joined the new riders and did some of the easier trails. Earlier we'd been talking to the instructor who had been looking after the new riders and he said you can never underestimate how tired the newbies are. The physical and mental demands on learning to ride from scratch are heavy. We all lined up as a group and headed out into the woods for one last ride together.

We were coming down a washout with rocks and loose dirt when the instructor eased up at the bottom, perhaps deciding which way to turn. I was up on the pegs behind him and was able to stop, but Max was behind me and couldn't. Ethan was behind him and said Max hit the back brake hard enough to lock up, but with the loose surface and incline he slid right into me, trapping my ankle between his front fork and my bike. When he came off, his bike surged forward as it stalled, driving into my ankle even more.

It was trapped so tight I was thinking it was already broken, but SMART doesn't mess around with the kit. Those SIDI off road boots are the balls. Having been caught between the two bikes (which were now locked together), there was an incredible amount of pressure on my ankle, but the boots were taking the brunt. I couldn't move and was frustrated that I hadn't avoided the situation entirely, but it was a series of events I couldn't see behind me and the accident was no one's fault. Max was feeling terrible about it, but once the tail end instructor had run down the hill and seperated the bikes, I got up and tested the ankle and was stunned to find I could stand on it without any real pain. Even now, a day later, it's only mildly bruised and I'm able to walk on it without any pain. If I hadn't been in good off road boots I'd have dust for an ankle.

We got the bikes sorted out (one of the plastic panels had popped out on my Honda 250cc, but was popped back in - it wasn't even cracked!) and continued the ride. At the end of the day we got back to the SMART office and all was good.

As I told Max, "this was about as ideal an accident as you could have!" He learned about
leaving space, keeping his eyes up and experienced target fixation for the first time (which might one day save his life if he's learned to look where he wants to go). It also underlined my belief in ATGATT. I tell you what, thanks to SMART I'm going to be looking for some SIDI dirt boots when I finally get my own kit. They aren't cheap, but then neither is a broken ankle. Wear the right kit and even if you have an accident, you walk away!

I'm still hoping to get Max and I sorted out with a couple of tidy 250cc bikes to go trail riding together. It's great exercise, a wonderful way to get deep into the woods and sure, it could be dangerous, but with the right kit and a sensible approach to riding it's a manageable risk that can also have minimum environmental impact. A knowledgeable trail rider leaves no trace while exploring wilderness in a way that few other activities allow, often enjoying over 70mpg.

I know a lot of people think of motorcycling as a pointless risk that is destined for injury, but that isn't the point at all. When done well, as we did it yesterday, riding is the best kind of exercise for your mind and body, and something I'm always willing to mitigate risk on in order to enjoy. I've heard of many people who have an accident and never ride again, but that isn't my way.

We're aiming to do a full day SMART later this year. Funds permitting, we'll get ourselves independently riding off road eventually, but in the meantime, SMART provides the kit and the bikes along with some vital mentorship. We'll both be better riders by the time we're soloing on the trails in our own gear on our own bikes.

Sunday 1 May 2022

Making Miles on the Concours

We had a break in the Canadian winter (in April) and I finally got a chance to exercise the Concours. This jaunt took me over 250kms from where I live in the tedious industrial farming desert of South Western Ontario, an hour up to the road to the edge of the Niagara Escarpment where I have a small chance of finding a corner to ride around. It usually gets colder by the lake, but contrary to physics, it went from 12°C when I left up to 27° by the lake. It only dropped down into the low 20s again once I found some altitude on Blue Mountain (a hill anywhere but in Ontario). Even on the straightness I got into moto-zen riding mode.

https://goo.gl/maps/6DWBjfGv1WgbX6Ws5

It's been a long, cold COVID winter #2 and the opportunities to make miles on two wheels have been thin this spring. A warm Sunday to get up to the big water and stare at the blue horizon was much needed.

It is actually nuclear powered! I feel like I really bonded with the Connie on this ride - we sailed for miles and we had many more in us when we stopped for the day. If you're light on the throttle it gets reasonable mileage, but it's a wonderful thing when you wake up that motor. Kawasaki has a special touch with engines.

I had the 360 camera along for the ride and put together a montage using an incredibly complicated process that involves batch processing the 360 panaramas into 'tiny planet' images and then clipping them all together in video editing. It isn't for the faint of heart, but it sure looks unique. This is the how-to if you're feeling brave.

Sunday 10 April 2022

1971 Triumph Bonneville T120 Sensible Bodywork Bolt Replacements

I'm in the process or stripping the last bits of hardware from the frame and bodywork in order to clean up and paint the frame and bodywork on the 51 year old Bonneville project bike. The bolts holding the licence plate holder onto the rear fender were 4 different sizes with the longest ones protruding so far toward the wheel that they'd be a safety hazzard on a big bump (the tire would make contact with them on full suspension compression, especially with me on it).

I was talking to a friend online who made a career out of flying helicopters for the military and he said he's found wrong sized hardware in controls that have actually jeopardized flight safety. One of the rhings I enjoy about motorcycle mechanics is that it feels closer to aviation than four wheel appliance repair where an error like this might cause you inconvenience as you roll to a stop on the side of the road. If you're up in the air or out on a bike and you have a catasrophic mechanical failure, it's a very different consequence.

Another pilot friend (the perils of being an air cadet), when we were going up for a flight in a Cessna, brought it back around and landed when the engine didn't feel right. Everyone was impatient at the delay, but he said something that is simply true that many people don't consider when their flight is delayed: "it's better to be down here wishing you were up there, than being up there wishing you were down here." It's a shame more people who work on bikes don't think the same way. I've seen even professional work that was half assed to save time/money. Incompetence like that puts a rider's life at risk needlessly. It can end up costing you far more than you saved.

Pretty sure that last one isn't a stock Triumph bolt. These'll all get replaced with metric bolts because they're easier to find, but they'll be the right length, matching and be staineless steel.

The 14-0101 bolts used to fasten the fenders on the '71 Bonneville are 1/4" X 1/2" X 28 UNF, which are a bugger to try and find a match for. The longest bolt on the bike was an inch and a half - way too long for where it was. Working with SAE/imperial sizes on this bike makes it a real pain to match hardware out of what I have on hand, but stuffing a bolt that long onto a bike where it can interfere with the wheel isn't sensible.

SAE Wrench Size	Bolt Size (SI)	Metric Wrench Size
5/16″	1/8″	8 mm
3/8″	3/16″	10 mm
7/16″	1/4″	11 mm
1/2″	5/16″	13 mm
9/16″	3/8″	14 mm
5/8″	7/16″	16 mm
3/4″	1/2″	19 mm
13/16″	9/16″	21 mm
7/8″	9/16″	22 mm
15/16″	5/8″	24 mm

1/4" bolts can be replaced with an 11mm metric option and finding stainless steel versions of these are easy. I can also get four matching that are the correct length for the job at hand rather than bunging whatever I have in the toolbox onto the bike. Compared to other costs in this restoration, hardware costs are trivial (for under $40CAD I can get a 900+ piece kit). When I'm dropping $600+ on a new head, spending a bit on properly sized bolts seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, body panel fasteners are a different proposition to what you put into a motor or transimssion - in those cases I'd always use stock pieces to manage the heat and pressures involved as decided by the engineers to designed the thing, but for bodywork there is a bit more latitude, you just don't want to be a pratt about it.

While sorting the
frame I've cleaned
up the oil in frame
drain system.

The Amazon bolt set arrived in less than 24 hours. It is (of course) snowing today in mid-April in Canada, so moving the other bikes out of the garage to paint things isn't likely, and I can't paint outside if it's snowing. You need 10°-30°C temperatures, no direcf sunlight and good ventilation. If I can get the other bikes out of the garage, open the door a foot and run the fan, I might be able to retain enough heat to do it, but Canada's 'spring time' isn't helping things along.

If had a wee outdoor shed I'd use it as a paint booth, heating it to the required temperature and then having a fan to move the overspray out. This DIY paintbooth would be a thing if I had a larger workshop, but a shed outside is a real possibility. It could provide storage, freeing up space in the garage, but with some crafty ventilation it'd also be a paintbooth. If I don't get to painting today, I can at least finish prepping the frame and body panels and hope for warmer temperatures later in the week.

New tires and innertubes are on hand. The frame is being prepped.
I've still got some other body panels to clean and prep for painting.