The Machine As Narrative

Eighteen months ago I found a 1994 Kawasaki ZG1000 sitting in a field.  It was in pretty rough shape, unused with grass growing up through it.  I was immediately drawn to it, though I was worried about transitioning from my relatively modern, fuel injected, first bike (an '07 Ninja) to this twenty year old, carbureted machine that clearly needed TLC to be roadworthy.  

One of the reasons I got into motorcycling was to re-spark my dormant love of mechanics, which had been prompted by Matt Crawford's brilliant little book, Shopclass As Soulcraft.  I briefly battled with worries about my abilities and working on motorcycles (of which I had no previous experience).  When you get a car repair wrong you tend to roll to a stop surrounded by a big cage.  If you get a bike part wrong it can throw you down the road.  I'd been away from mechanics so long that I was afraid I'd lost the touch.

Once I got my hands moving again they quickly remembered what they once knew.  My ability to repair machines hadn't been unused, it had simply been focused elsewhere, on IT.  Those years of rebuilding cars and working in the industry quickly came back to me.

The Concours was stripped down, old gauges were fixed, oil lines repaired and it sailed through safety.  The old dog immediately rewarded me with a ride up to Blue Mountain though a snow storm, and a ride around Georgian Bay.  The only mechanical failure as the bike began to rack up miles was Canadian Tire's fault.

By the end of the summer the old Kawasaki had ridden down the back straight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and clocked up over thirty thousand miles on the odometer.

This winter I've been deeper into the bike than ever before.  Besides maintenance items like spark plugs, I also had a close look at the tires, and elected to retire the mis-matched, old tires.  With the tires off and the wheels naked, I looked into industrial coating options.  Fireball Performance Coatings is only about half an hour away in Erin.  After meeting with the owner Mark, I went with a candy coated gold that'll gel nicely with the red/gold trim look the bike is developing.  The rims are done and are currently at Two Wheel Motorsport getting Michelined up.  Future bike projects are definitely going to make use of Fireball's coatings.

This week things start to go back together in a big way.  With the tires and rims back I'll be popping in the new bearings, putting the balancing beads in (first time trying them), and installing the wheels back on the bike.  With the wheels (and disk brake rotors) back on I'll be able to finally finish the rear brake lines and reinstall the rebuilt calipers.  It's a lot of bits and pieces that need to come back together, fortunately I've been taking photos as I go (a good way to keep track of what goes where).  Between that and the Clymer shop manual, everything should come back together nicely.

A big part of taking things apart is cleaning them up, even if parts don't get replaced.  I've been into many dark places that haven't seen anyone since 1994.

The clean and shiny drive disk in the rear hub - it's what the shaft drive feeds into.

A cleaned up shaft drive housing on the back of the bike.

The rear suspension is cleaned up, but it needs a good greasing.

Owning an older motorcycle can be frustrating, but it's also very rewarding.  The operation of the machine is only one part of your relationship with it.  By laying hands on the mechanicals you become familiar with your motorbike in a new way.  That mechanical relationship integrates with the riding relationship, creating something richer.

It might be nice to have a newer machine that always works, but even if I could afford that, I don't know that I'd sell off the Concours.  It's nice to have a machine I'm this intimate with.

As I finished writing this Triumph emailed me with a link to the new Street Twin configurator.  That'd be a lovely machine to start another story with...

Dragon Eclipses

Do you know where you're going to be on August 21st, 2017?  As it happens, at about 2:30 in the afternoon on that day, a total solar eclipse will be passing over The Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee and North Carolina.  

Total eclipses don't happen very often.  This is complete totality, the moon perfectly covers the sun's disk, the sky goes dark, birds go to sleep, and a couple of minutes later everything comes back and it's another normal sunset in the mountains.  It'll be spectacular.

I got some nice shots of a partial solar eclipse during sunset a couple of years ago, but a chance to see totality is a bucket list item.  If I can time it with another bucket list item (riding the Tail), what a day that'll be!

I've seen a spectacular partial eclipse at sunset, but totality is something else entirely.  If you're able, try and get into the path of the total eclipse and the moon's shadow slides across America at over 1000 miles per hour.

Get between the blue lines (and as close to the red one as you can get) and you'll see a total solar eclipse. On the Portland side you're looking at a 5:15pm start,  As the shadow slips into the Atlantic around Charleston, it'll be a 6:46pm event.

Cabin Fever

I might be getting a bit jumpy waiting for spring...

I tried starting up the KLX on Wednesday when it was 15°C.  I thought I might ride across town to pick up my son from daycare, but I couldn't get it going.

Today I got it going by giving it a blast of quick start with the air cleaner box open.

Pretty Calipers

The brake caliper rebuild moved into the 'nerd-lab' downstairs where my son does his lego and I usually focus more on digital tech.  With Why We Ride playing on the projector I got to enjoy HEAT while I rebuilt the rear caliper.

The only time I had to go out to the garage was to blow out the caliper pistons with compressed air, otherwise it was some light bench work while watching a very pretty film.

I'm still monkeying around with 3d modelling tools.  I'm trying different resolution settings on the Structure Sensor.  I also tried using itseez3d instead of the factory software.  It made for an interesting variation (itseez3d uses the ipad camera to take a lot of texture photos which it mixes into the model).


It only took me a couple of hours to sort out the fronts and have everything looking sharp.  Blowing out the pistons was a bit trickier as there are two on the front and the smaller one (less surface area) didn't come right out with the air.  I'm worried that I scored them too much removing them.  I guess I'll see when I put them all back on the bike.

The front calipers are cleaned up and blown apart, waiting for their rebuilds, probably later this week.

3d model of the rear caliper reassembled.

Compared to the rusty lump it was before, it's night and day.  I can't wait to feel the change.

The rusty, pockmarked disk bolts got dremelled clean and repainted too.

Winter Stable Dreams

It's snowing so thick you can't see the road.  I'm at the end of a semester and in full day-dreaming mode.  If I were out bike shopping this week, this is what I'd be aiming to bring back:

The naked:  I'm still smitten with the Kawasaki Z1000.  An orange one, with a tail tidy to get rid of the only ugly part of this stunning machine (the ugly plastic plate hanger off the back).  Some aero crash protectors and I'd be ready to track day with it as well.

The sporty road bike: the jewel-like Honda VFR800 still plucks a heart string.  It's the descendant of one of my first motorbike crushes and would make for a mighty entertaining, sport focused road bike that could still swallow miles if needed.  It looks spectacular in white, but it also needs a tail tidy!





The all terrain bike is a tricky piece of work.  The temptation is just to go all in on a big adventure bike, but the main purpose for one of those is as a road riding mile-muncher.  My off road able bike needs to work on the road and keep up with traffic (something my current 250cc Kawasaki isn't great at), but its focus should be off tarmac (unlike a big, heavy adventure bike).



A light-weight scrambler would be a the preferred choice aesthetically.  Building out my own custom from an existing, off-road focused bike would offer both the scrambler vibe while using light-weight, off-road ready tech.

The Suzuki DR-Z400S makes for a great base.  At 144 kilos (317lbs) it's almost half the weight of BMW's big queen of adventure bikes, and made by a manufacturer that makes bikes with one quarter the number of manufacturing mistakes.  I don't feel reckless in the decision.

Is a Scrambler DR-Z400S possible?  I wouldn't be the first to try.  The DR-Z400SM is a street version of the off-roader, so Suzuki has already done a less off-road focused version.  It's an adaptable bike.

Too bad no one makes a sub 500cc off road focused, light weight Scrambler (instead they market stylish new ones or sell recycled history).  Anything north of 200kgs (441lbs) might be surprisingly capable off road, but it'll still be a misery to pickup and all that weight means you're going to be breaking suspension all the time.

Suzuki already has the platform on which to build a perfect modern scrambler.  C'mon, you're almost there!

Some people want a $30k bike that can do one thing, I'd happily spend that money on a Kawasaki, Honda and Suzuki that can do just about everything.

Motorcycle 3d Modelling

I'm teaching a class on 3d modelling in Blender next semester, so what better way to practice than on my partially taken apart for maintenance ZG1000?

Naked ZG1000 by timking17 on Sketchfab

The model was made with the Occipital Structure Sensor 3d Scanner.  I'm trying different editing programs.  I used the 3d Builder integrated into Windows 10 to edit out the extra bits captured by the scanner.  It's quite easy to use and has some pretty good editing tools.  If you're trying 3d modelling for the first time it's not a bad place to start (and it's included in Windows 10!).

The file is shared on Sketchfab, which I find to be an easy way to do presentation editing and sharing of a 3d model.  We're using Blender in class, so I'll be cranking out some Blender motorcycle models in the next couple of weeks.  The trick is going to be to get them looking life like rather than digitally modelled.  I wonder how you model patina...

Plugs, Calipers and Frozen Feet

The spark plug (bottom right) is easy to get to once
you remove the distributor caps mounted to the frame.

Yesterday began with a spark plug change on the Concours.  There are two (for lack of a better term) distributor caps (CoG got me sorted, they're coils!) in the shape of cylinders attached to the frame under the fuel tank.  Removing these makes for a fairly straightforward spark plug swap.  Someone had been in here before as one of the distributors wasn't properly attached to the frame (the rear bolt was seized).  With the unit removed it was relatively easy to free everything up in the vice.

I used to be pretty good at gapping plugs by eye, but I hadn't done it in a while.  I got better as I worked through the plugs and the last one only needed a minor adjustment.  The plugs all came out without issue and the new ones went in by hand and then got torqued to spec (14Nm).

The two middle plugs are tucked in behind the radiator and don't collect much road cruft.  The two on the outside
have a tougher life.   Other than being filthy, the plugs didn't show any internal issues.

With the plugs sorted and the under tank electrics cleaned and seated properly, I turned my attention to the rear brake caliper.  I've got a replacement metal brake line, so the old rusty rubber one is going in the spares bin.  The caliper came apart quite easily.  The rear brake on the Concours has always been excellent, but was starting to whine as the pads got thin.  With nothing seized and the main bits just needing a good cleaning, I think this will go back together nicely with new pads and brake lines.  I'd meant to order a caliper rebuild kit from Canada's Motorcycle, but my order got mixed up with a bearing puller I didn't need.  At least now I can tell you how good their return process is.

follow-up:  I requested a return on January 24th and got a shipping label in a reply email a day latter (which I thought was good).  I sent it off that day.  I just got a confirmation email today (Feb 3 - 10 days later) saying it will be another 3-6 days before I see a refund... and I'm charged seven bucks for returning it.  Compared to motorcycle-superstore.com's over the top customer service (immediate, free returns, what can we do to prevent this happening in the future?), I'm left thinking twice about shopping on canadasmotorcycle.ca.


While I'm waiting on the rear caliper rebuild kit I can do the fronts, which is what I'm aiming to get done today.  It's officially frickin cold outside (-20°C overnight, -12°C now), and even with the thick rubber mats I've got down in the garage and the heater going, I still ended up with foot cramps from the cold at the end of three hours in there yesterday.  Winter in Canada can get pretty tedious.  This is one of those days.  If someone called and said they could fly me somewhere warm to ride a bike next weekend, I'd be in heaven.

The two cylindrical distributor caps (COILS! bottom middle &
top right with the spark plug wires coming out of them)
are held down by two bolts.  Once removed from the
frame spark plug access is straight forward.

A longer view of the spark plug.