I finally got the top clamp of the 2003 Triumph Tiger's steering column off yesterday. After undoing everything it did not let go of its own volition and I had to apply some heat to the central spindle and top clamp housing to let loose. Nothing crazy, just grazing it with a propane torch until it warmed up nicely (nothing glowing) and then I was able to spin the top clamp in relation to the centre steering pin (the forks are out).
With the top clamp rotating (if it has been sitting in your Tiger for a while don't expect it to be loose), I was eventually able to persuade it upwards off the centre spindle with a rubber mallet. The top clamp came off and the two nuts that hold the centre rod in place were accessible (they're visible but inaccessible under the handlebars usually). For a 17 year old bike with over 80k kms on it nothing about these difficulties came as a surprise.
Those locking nuts are big'uns, 38mm! The long centre post they're on means you're going to have a tricky time getting a ratchet on them (38mm long socket?). They aren't tight though and I was able to loosen them with an adjustable wrench.
I supported the triple tree (the bottom half of the steering structure) with one hand while undoing the nuts but the bottom end didn't fall out - it's a snug enough fit and what grease was left in there was holding everything together. A gentle tap on the centre spindle and it all came out the bottom smoothly though. I don't know the last time anyone was in there, but I've had the Tiger for almost 4 years and thirty thousand kilometres so it was high time I got in there myself. Judging by the stingy amount of grease in there I'd guess no one has done the steering on the Tiger before (factories are famous for being stingy on grease when manufacturing bikes).
The bearings still had some grease on them (the brown/grey stuff is grease), but not much. No one's been in there recently:
... once I cleaned it up the bearings were in good shape and turned freely:
... even the tube that holds the steering column is nice and rust free. After a good cleanup I reassembled everything with a liberal greasing using the Mobil HP222 stuff Triumph suggests.
Here are some torque settings for a 955i Triumph Tiger's steering system:
Triumph Tiger 955i Steering Torque Settings:
Steering Stem Nut: 65Nm (50 ft/lbs)
Fork clamp bolts (top yoke): 20Nm (14.75 ft/lbs)
Handlebar clamp bolts: 26Nm (19.2 ft/lbs)
note: there is no torque setting on the two nuts that lock together under the handlebar. The directions I'm following say to hand tighten the top nut, then tighten it down a bit more to seat the bearings, then back it off a touch. You then lock the second nut to the first. The idea is to seat the bearings and keep everything a set distance apart so the bearings spin freely. Making them too tight will make for stiff steering and will wear your bearings out sooner.
Some other points of interest are these bolts that hold the horn and front brake lines onto the triple tree. They're a bugger to take off and were another part that needed some heat to get moving.
The other complication that I should probably look at as a benefit is discovering worn wiring and cabling. The back of the clutch cable and the ignition wiring are both wearing through and would have ended up causing annoying problems down the line, but I can resolve them as part of this maintenance pretty easily. I'm going to slip some heat shrink electrical cover over both breaks and heal them up before they become a problem.
Next steps will be to reinstall a shock to line up the triple tree with the top clamp and then do the fork oil. Once the shocks are serviced, I'll put the whole shebang back together again and turn to the back end where I've got to work my way through a swingarm removal and rear suspension service before putting that all back together. I hope that goes as well as this with all the parts still being serviceable. Trying to get parts in during COVID19 isn't always a sure thing.
It's coming up on Xmas here, so if I can have all that done by the end of February I'll be in good shape for the coming riding season.
Other big-spa checklist items on the Tiger are: a coolant change, new brake lines and brake fluid changes and another look at the fuel injection system to see if I can clean the injectors and balance them better. My work in the summer solved the stalling issue, but the bike feels a bit sluggish, though that might be because it's being compared to a Fireblade.
An old bike that I run high mileage on it means lots of work to do while the snow falls outside. In this winter of our Covid-discontent it's good to have a lot of things to do in the garage so I don't go cabin crazy.
Possible needed-things list:
Triumph's 'thin wrench' is a basic thing that seems astonishingly expensive for what it is. DIY is a possible alternative.
A narrow angle adjustable wrench: CT has one that goes up to 3 inches (76mm, so it'll handle the 38mm locking nut). I'm hoping my narrow angle vice grip will hold the bottom nut while I tighten the top one.You'd need the Triumph special thin spanner tool T3880140 for adjusting it with the handlebars installed, but I'm hoping I can sort it out while I'm in there and not need it. Paying $60 odd dollars for a bit of machined steel is a bit rich. I suspect I could get our metal-shop teacher at work to fabricate me a couple of them for nothing (I fix his computers for him so it's a barter exchange).
big enough electrical heat-shrink to cover the clutch cable rub through. I think I have it and I don't want to use tape as it looks half assed.
I just finished Matt Crawford's latest book, Why We Drive. This challenging read unpacks how we've backed ourselves into an intellectual dead end under tech driven surveillance capitalism. Crawford comes at it from the big-tech push to colonize one of the last moments in our lives where human skill is tested and judged by reality rather than marketing expectations, vehicular operations. Advertising companies like Google aren't trotting out self-driving cars for safety or efficiency (though that's the marketing), they're trotting them out so they can take all that consumer attention wasted on driving and advertise to it. Even with this problematic impetus and misleadingly media spin self-driving vehicles are imminent and this leads Crawford to (quite rightly) question the intent of the companies pushing them. The assumption that self-driving cars will somehow be better for us is undressed in many ways in the book.
Seeing where Matt's head is at in 2020 encouraged me to reread his first book, the bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, which came out in 2009 in response to the market crash that everyone seems to have forgotten now as we're increasingly told we need austerity to pay back the predatory organizations who caused the debt in the first place. Running the economy is a good gig if you're one of the 'financial class' who maintain the fiction. You can crash the market and make billions of people poorer and then profit from it indefinitely as you charge interest on the loans you handed out to 'solve' the crisis you caused. It takes a special kind of stupid to buy into this.
Looking at Shop Class now years later it has historical context to it I didn't see in earlier readings where the response to the market collapse wasn't as obvious. Back then it was just timely. One of the themes that follows Matt's thinking through all three of his books is his dislike of automation. In Shop Class he talks about situated knowledge and the importance of having an intimate relationship with reality. Fundamentally, Crawford believes this vital to human beings fully developing their abilities. When we're devalued by monied interests into simplistic consumers we are unable to fully develop our human potential. Surveillance Capitalists intent on monetizing every moment of everyone's existence for their own financial advantage have coupled with safety and efficiency movements in government and society to create a brave new world of atrophied people.
I've come at this digital prejudice from an educational technology point of view on Dusty World, but it bears examining from a motorcycling perspective too. Crawford is a physicist and mechanical and electrical technician, but he seems to have drawn a hard line between digital technology and everything else. It's probably an age related thing. Matt's about five years older than I am. As I was getting into early home computers and figuring them out he was already through high school and working in his trade. I ended up heading towards IT because when I was working as a millwright I was the only one willing to take computer controlled systems on in a department full of older people who couldn't be bothered.
The idea that digital technology is opaque and unknowable is a continual professional frustration for me as a computer technology teacher. Other educators, students and parents all buy in to this opacity even while they embrace information and communication technology in more aspects of their lives. I understand the reluctance to make ourselves literate in this emerging technology, but if we're all going to use it I'd suggest we're all responsible for having at least a basic understanding of how it works or else we're going to all end up illiterate in a digitally powered world.
A bunch of smooth talking sociopaths have taken over the face of digital technologies, but I can assure you that Google, Facebook and the rest are not the limit of what digital technology can do for us. Thinking that is dangerously reductive. There was a time when the internet was newly birthed from academia and the people on it were exploring a new frontier rather than leveraging it in an Orwellian attempt to monetize our attention. I'm a digitally literate person and I have no love for them, but I get the sense that Matt truly despises computing to the point of lumping any digital tech in with the sociopaths. It's a hard distinction to make, though John Naughton does a good job of coaxing it out of author Shoshan Zuboff:
"While it is impossible to imagine surveillance capitalism without the digital, it is easy to imagine the digital without surveillance capitalism. The point cannot be emphasised enough: surveillance capitalism is not technology. Digital technologies can take many forms and have many effects, depending upon the social and economic logics that bring them to life. Surveillance capitalism relies on algorithms and sensors, machine intelligence and platforms, but it is not the same as any of those."
Another motorcycling angle to come at this from might be Neil Spalding's MotoGP Technology. This technical manual charts the evolution of the top prototyping class of MotoGP motorcycle racing over the past twenty years. These have been years of digital integration and management in terms of rule making and deciding how much of an influence computer assistance will have in the sport. Unlike Formula One, which many have suggested has gone too far down the technology path, MotoGP has evolved to focus on enhancing rider abilities rather than replacing them. Spalding mentions the estimate that F1 is an 80% car engineering 20% driver skill equation, where as MotoGP is the opposite. Marc Marquez winning championships on the third best bike would certainly suggest the humans operating MotoGP bikes matter more than the tech, and yet these are digital machines.
There is a point in the book where Spalding has to re-orientate the reader on how electronics work in MotoGP. Unlike what a consumer is used to, racing electronics have nothing to do with safety. Their only intent is more speed even if it means more effort and skill is expected from the rider. While everyone watching a race has only ever experienced electronic interventions (anti-lock brakes, traction control etc) as a safety blanket thrown over their incompetence, a racer only experiences them through the lens of performance. Electronic intervention on a race bike make it more extreme and harder to ride. That alone should make the true breadth of electronics and digital technology in riding a bit more clear. They are only self-driving us because someone wants them to for their own reasons, not because the tech is inherently focused in that direction.
Crawford often speaks of the mechanical work he's doing on various machines, but mechanical work doesn't end where a computer is involved. There are some parts of vehicular evolution where automation is a much needed advance. Crawford does make a point of mentioning this, but grudgingly. Reading Classic Bike Magazine a few weeks ago I came across a great article about Dr Desmo, Fabio Taglioni, the Ducati engineer who spent his career continually looking for advancements for the brand. His quote about computer controlled fuel injection is much like a MotoGP team's fixation on performance rather than protecting a rider from their own incompetence and is yet another reminder that electronic and digital technology does not have to replace human agency but can in fact enhance it.
Sorting out the Triumph's fuel injection system by finding a modified fuel map and installing it on the bike's FI computer was one of this year's most satisfying repairs.
I like getting a bank of carbs sorted out as much as the next person, and sometimes I make a point of working on bikes without electronics to distance myself from what I do at work all week (mechanical repairs offer a more immediate kind of satisfaction), but I've also had great technical satisfaction from the hybrid mechanical and electronics repairs I've had to make on the Tiger. I realize that electronics and computer based repairs are often out of the comfort zone of the home mechanic, but that's based on the kind of anti-digital prejudice Crawford carries through his philosophy. If we could all get passed that prejudice perhaps we could reclaim the digital tools we've surrendered to the attention merchants.
It's critically important we don't romanticize old technology for the same reason we shouldn't romanticize previous time periods. If you think the 1960s were some kind of magical time in human history odds are you're a heteronormative, neurotypical white male. From the point of view of the vast majority of the people on the planet the nineteen sixties were fucked, and so was much of the technology we were using back then. That time of excess and privilege has led us to the brink of disaster fifty years later. Longing to go back to it or recreate it is a kind of insanity.
This is distinct from respecting culture and engineering from a certain time period when it showed us a better way forward. I greatly enjoy working on older machines in order to keep that history alive, but if you're putting on rose coloured glasses that make you blind to the possibilities of today's technology then you're just as manipulative as the sociopaths who are destroying society for their own gain.
Crawford talks about technology that is locked and closed, like Mercedes without dipsticks to check your own oil, or electronics that are sealed to prevent 'tampering'. Corporations are able to do this because people have been convinced that digital technologies are something they can't comprehend, but this is bullshit. The companies offering to do everything for you aren't technology companies, they are advertising companies. Ignore them and ignore authors who dismiss digital technology as inherently nannying. Modern technology can just as easily be used to enhance human ability and force us to be smarter, stronger and faster as it can be used to make us stupid, docile and compliant. The issue is the intent of the people peddling it, not the tech itself.
If I can't convince you maybe Kenneth Clark's angle in 1969's award winning documentary 'Civilisation' will highlight things:
Clark's concern is that automation plays to the hands of authoritarian regimes. He couldn't see the emergence of multi-national corporations that we're now under the yoke of back in 1969, but he isn't wrong about automation playing to fascists. Crawford shares the same concerns, and they're well founded, but one of the best ways to take back control for more people is to make them literate in the technology being used to enthrall them.
All that to say don't be afraid of the digital aspects of motorcycle maintenance. This tech was made by people so you can figure it out, and in doing so you will also teach yourself to author the technology the attention tyrants are using to snow you under. From that point of view of self sufficiency and understanding of technology Matt Crawford should be on board.
and this is another one. I've been playing with the Tuneboy engine management software that came with the bike, which works well, is put together well and is easy to use. In working with the Tuneboy kit I discovered TUNEECU, a more open-source option for programming your own engine maps.
Back in the day you had a carburetor that used screws and jets to set the amount of fuel that got metered into the engine. If you changed altitude you had to start swapping hard parts (usually the jets that sprayed fuel) to keep the bike running right, and sooner than later you had to manually trim the whole thing to keep it running right. Electronic fuel injection took that all away. A computer under the passenger seat on the Tiger takes inputs from sensors in the air-box (barometric pressure), in each of the three injectors , the fuel pump, radiator (engine temperature) and a crankcase sensor to constantly adjust things to use the most effective amount of fuel to make the bike go. Put another way, carburetors are a mechanical, low resolution solution to feeding fuel into an engine. Electronic fuel injection is a responsive, high resolution fix to the problem of delivering the right amount of fuel to a motor.
Tuneboy map editor - you can change settings and tell the ECU (electronic control unit) what to do under certain circumstances.
A fuel map is a spreadsheet of numbers. Sensors feed the computer what RPM the engine is turning at and how much throttle is being asked for and based on the number in the fuel map, the computer delivers a set amount of fuel. The 'fuel map' is literally a map that directs the computer to deliver a set amount of fuel. If you're at high RPM and have just shut off the throttle, a smart EFI system will cut fuel delivery entirely, saving both fuel and emissions, something a carb couldn't manage. If you suddenly give the bike a handful of throttle at low RPM, the map will direct the fuel injectors to deliver an optimal amount of fuel as it picks up speed, whereas a carb will always just send a mechanically set amount of fuel based only on how much wrist you're giving it.
In Tuneboy's system, you can change fueling and ignition maps, and modify things like idle speeds. The issue has been that the only maps I can find for Tuneboy are the stock ones from Triumph, which were set up to favour fuel economy and emissions over smoothness and drive-ability. Meanwhile, TUNEECU (if you can navigate their 90's style web design and atrocious apostrophe use) offers you modified tunes that can smooth out your lumpy OEM map.
Of special interest to me were custom edits that made the list and have been on there for 9 years. I don't know who Deano from South Africa/SA_Rider is, but they know their stuff. The map on there does wonders for your Tiger's smoothness and pickup. It might use a bit more fuel if you're heavy handed, but the difference in motor operation is impressive and worth it.
I was unable to find a digital tool to transpose the HEX files from TuneECU into my Tuneboy DAT format, so I opened up the modified HEX file and transposed the numbers over to the Default Tuneboy 10120 Triumph engine map and resaved it. You can find that modified Tuneboy DAT file with the TuneECU South African mode here.
Finding this stuff isn't easy, and it's only getting harder as these old bike recede into the past, so I'm hoping this post help you find what you need to get your Tiger purring again. It did wonders for mine.
Even though the old vacuum pipes held vacuum, I swapped them out for some similarly sized clear fuel line I had (you can see them going from above each injector to the idle stepper motor. The TUNEboy software also comes with a diagnostics tool (with very cool 90s graphics!) that lets you test the radiator fan, idle stepper motor (which moves up and down modulating the vacuum in that black thing to the left/bottom in the picture) and the RPM gauge.
It comes with a cable that'll connect to your Triumph and is easy to get going, and comes with all the stock tunes. It also lets you tune on a dyno, if you're minted. It ain't cheap, but the minted guy who bought my bike new was, so he sprung for it and I'm still enjoying his largess over a decade later.
TuneECU can be found here: https://www.tuneecu.net/TuneECU_En/links.html Try to get past the out of control apostrophe use - they're better at software than they are at the speaking English goodly.
The older version is free, but finicky with Windows' old serial port drivers. You can buy the app on the Android store for fifteen bucks, which seems perfectly reasonable. You can then connect via bluetooth from a phone or Google tablet, though I understand you miss some connectivity that way.
It gets tricky these days finding the On Board Diagnostics (OBD) serial cable you need to connect the bike to the PC. You can buy 'em from the UK, where people like fixing things. CJ Designs in Wisconsin will sort you out with one too: https://cjdesignsllc.com/?s=TuneECU
The TuneECU page goes into detail about how you might use the TUNEboy cable, but it requires so much messing around with knocking default Windows drivers out of the way and forcing others on that I wouldn't bother (I didn't).
The other day I was once again going over the details on the Tiger after taking the tank of for the billionth time. Even though the stock pipes for the vacuum controlled idle system for the electronic fuel injection hold vacuum when I test them, I can't test that when they're on the bike, so they might be leaking where they join. I happened to have some fuel line in the right size, so I've taken out the Triumph hoses and put these clear ones on instead to isolate another possible point of failure. Once I got them in I fired up the TUNEBOY software and figured I'd run the idle control system test since it would move the plunger up and down and with everything off I could check to see that it's all working as it should, except the ECU wouldn't connect to the computer. I've done dozens of TUNEBOY adjustments now and know how the bike syncs with the PC over the serial port, but it wasn't connecting. While trying some variations I turned the ignition on on the bike and the ECU made unfamiliar popping noise, and then none of the dash lights would come on (the running lights still do though). The ECU no longer clicks off when the ignition is switched off either, which suggests it's not coming on either. The intermittent nature of this failure always made my ass twitch in terms of it being electronic rather than mechanical. Mechanical failures tend to be more consistent and easier to diagnose, and I've replaced everything around the idle control system now, so unless Triumph sold me a dickey idle control motor, which seems unlikely since the first one lasted 17 years and did over seventy-six thousand hard, Canadian kilometres and survived seventeen -40°C Canadian winters. Assuming all the new parts are working as they should, an ECU that was losing the plot is as likely a culprit as anything else I've been chasing, and now it seems to have popped entirely. So what do you do when your old Triumph's bike brain loses the plot? Get another, I guess. Used ones seems to be extraordinarily expensive and look to be in rough shape out of US used parts suppliers on eBay. And for some reason they're charging twice what European suppliers are for shipping. With that and the fact that The States seem like they're on the edge of a civil war, I think I'll be looking to the dependable Germans who have COVID19 well managed for a replacement Tiger brain. If I'm thinking that, I wonder how many other people are avoiding business with the US right now. But before I go that far, I'm a G.D. computer engineering teacher, so I'm hardly going to let an ECU go in the bin without having a go at it first. If this is a short or something simple, I can solve that easily enough. If nothing else I can see how the ECU is set up architecturally, but more often than not I'm able to get electronics I have to open up working again. Time to flex my soldering prowess. The most frustrating part about this is that I may well have solved the idle problem with replacement hoses, or maybe I didn't. Maybe I chased down all of these hoses and parts for nothing and it was the ECU losing the plot all along. Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) is a wonderful thing, but the early systems were fragile. There a lots of posts online about early Triumph EFI headaches, and I've added to them. Guy Martin does a good special called The Last Flight of the Vulcan Bomber. They grounded the last of these nuclear bombers in 2015 because they no longer had the expertise and technology too keep them safely air worthy. In the show Guy talks about why there are plenty of older planes like Spitfires still flying when the Vulcan has to be grounded. He says the Spitfire was made from bicycle parts you could fabricate in a shed, so they're relatively easy to maintain. The Vulcan was an industrial machine with early electrical and electronic systems that were many times more complicated. He goes on to talk about how the Vulcan looked like it came from another planet when only seven years earlier an Avro Lancaster was the state of the art. There are performance advantages in these leaps forward, but there are also maintenance headaches that mean these early jets will never fly again.
Early fuel injected bikes are a lot like that Vulcan - they can do things earlier bikes can't like get better mileage, not need parts changed to ride at altitude and generally require less maintenance. I just fixed up one of the last carbureted bikes, a 1997 Honda Fireblade, over the winter. EFI was around then, but Honda wisely went for highly evolved carburettors rather than new, fragile and poor performing EFI systems. I rebuilt the carbs, which are a complex but highly evolved four-carb set, and the bike runs like a Swiss (or rather Japanese) watch. The EFI on the Tiger did the job without any attention for 17 years and seventy-six thousand kilometres including two rides into the Rockies - something no carburetor could do, but when it finally broke, boy did it break. It's things like this that will make these first generation EFI bikes rare in the future. Like the Vulcan, they're so complicated and difficult to maintain when they go wrong that they'll get retired from service where an older, simpler bike might still be fixable. RESOURCES FOR CHASING DOWN ECU PROBLEMS ON A TRIUMPH 955i MOTORBIKE: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Triumph-Speed-Triple-955-2000-2004-ECU-Steuergerat-CDI-S1000T3/324154967093?hash=item4b79244435:g:BCEAAOSwZrteryUL
The Tiger continues to stall out on me at the most inopportune times. It starts from cold and idles high, but once warm the lower idle doesn't seem to hold and the bike will stall, but not all the time, only when I really don't want it to. Riding back from Haliburton last weekend, the bike stalled at lights and when I got stuck in traffic on a 6 lane highway traffic jam during a rain storm, but when I pulled over later it idled normally. This kind of intermittent failure is very hard to diagnose. Looking up the issue online, intermittent stalling on a Triumph 955i engine seems to be an issue. I've replaced the idle control system and tested the vacuum tubes again (no leaks), so I don't think that's the issue. It might be a sensor that doesn't return information consistently, but there are a lot of sensors feeding the computer that controls the fuel injection, so unless the bike is showing an error, I don't want to start replacing them willy-nilly. The bike does occasionally show errors on the Tuneboy Software that came with the bike:
July 1st it showed: P0113 Intake air temperature sensor P0230 fuel pump relay fault P1231 fuel pump relay open
P0462 fuel level sensor input P0463 fuel level sensor input P0505 Idle control system malfunction... but then they all seemed to go away and the bike was running well when I left for the long ride last weekend (over 800kms over 2 days), at least until I was riding home at the end of it when the intermittent stalling returned. It was showing this again this week:
I'm not sure that the air temperature sensor would be enough to stall out the engine, but this at least gives me a couple of things to look into: that air temp sensor and the fuel level sensor (though again, that shouldn't affect the idle). Some advice people have given (on the internet, so take this advice with a healthy dose of skepticism) is that out of balance throttle bodies might cause the issue, so I got a Carbmate vacuum balancer from Fortnine who have their shit back together as far as filling orders go and got it to me in less than 2 days (use UPS, not Canada Post, who are still not working properly). I balanced the throttle bodies with it, but the stalling persists. I'm now looking at the mapping for the bike in addition to keeping an eye on errors that might pop up. This video uses Easy Tune, which I haven't monkeyed with, but gives the impression that early Triumph electronic fuel injection was a bit of a mess and many dealers don't know how to resolve it:
That's a bit worrying because if I'm still stumped I was going to take the Tiger down to Inglis Cycle and have them resolve this with some factory testing, but if I'm going to pay dealer rates and get the bike back still stalling, that's not cool. TuneECU was a free Windows software download (it's still available but not supported any more), but now it's an Android app you have to pay for (though fifteen bucks isn't unreasonable if it gives you control over your bike's ECU). Unfortunately the Tuneboy cable and software I have isn't directly compatible with it without some dark Windows driver mojo (newer windows auto-install a driver that doesn't work with the old chipset on the Tuneboy cable). Triumph uses the same FTDi FT232RL VAG-COM OBDII/USB cable as VW does, but I think I'm going to try and resolve any mapping issues with the Tuneboy since it came with the bike and works. I think I'm going to go back and look at the fuel pump relay and the wiring for it as an intermittent fault there would starve the engine and cause stalling. Less likely are the air temperature sensor and fuel level sensor, which have been a bit whacky with the fuel gauge going from full to empty and back to full again, but I don't see how that could cause a stall. If there's gas in the tank, the engine will use it. My order of operations is: - fuel pump relay (which might have gotten wet at a recent cleaning, so it's on my mind) - fuel level sensor - air temperature sensor If they aren't crazy expensive, I might just get all 3 new rather than paying shipping x3, which would probably cost more than the parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvHqNeClz2U video guide to TuneECU (I can't stand online how-to videos, I prefer text. Waiting for 30 second intros each time drives me around the bend, but maybe you like that
Now that the CBR900RR Fireblade project is sorted and on the road, I'm finding myself doing what the original intent was in getting it: learning from a different type of motorcycle. Unlike the heavy industry Kawasaki Concours, or the SUV of motorcycling Triumph Tiger, the 'Blade was built to a different design brief. The other bikes were over engineered heavy to last, but the the Honda is a feather. That philosophy is at odds with the heavy handed git who owned it before me and managed to maintain it into such a state of disrepair that it kept it off the road for years.
From the rear brake cylinder that was assembled backwards and over tightened, to the over tight wheels and the slipping clutch I've just adjusted to actually be at spec rather than over-tightened, I'm finding the Honda was a victim of a heavy hand and unsympathetic mechanical inclination. When I was a teen my dad was talking me through a head gasket repair on one of my first cars. We weren't minted, so the only way I was driving was if I could keep an old car on the road; mechanical training was an implicit part of vehicle ownership for me growing up. As we were tightening the head back on he made a point of talking me through the bolt pattern - always tightening opposite bolts so it would seat evenly, and then said something that I've never forgotten as we started tightening down the head: "always one tight, not too tight." I guess the guy who abused this lovely piece of Honda engineering into years in a garage never got such good advice. Mechanical sympathy is an important part of maintaining any machine, but especially a motorcycle, where if you are cack-handed you can end up seriously hurting yourself when it breaks. In that way, motorcycle mechanics are a lot like aircraft mechanics, it's a do it right or it can go very wrong kind of situation. Part of that sympathy is taking the time to understand what the engineers who designed the machine want you to do in terms of looking after it. In the case of the CBR900RR, Honda would like you to leave 10-20mm of play at the end of the clutch lever - this one was set so you could strum it like a guitar string. This play is to ensure that the clutch fully disengages when you let go of it. An over tightened clutch cable means it's always set to be slightly pulling and engaging the clutch. Making it too tight isn't just a failure of the hands, it's a failure in thinking that wounds the machine. In this case, the over-tightened clutch cable explains why the 'Blade was slipping RPMs when I opened it up. A sympathetically tuned motorbike will give you a purity of interaction that allows you to more fully understand the machine. This is one of the reasons why I value technical fluency so much, it puts your ability to operate technology into focus in a way that the technically ignorant will never realize. *** Meanwhile, in the land of Tim where he's trying to keep a 17 year old European and a 23 year old Japanese bike rolling during the perilously short Canadian riding season, the Tiger's stalling when hot continues. I've ordered a replacement air idle control valve from Inglis Cycles, who have once again exceeded expectations during a pandemic by sourcing the part from Triumph in the UK and getting it to me in about a week. One of the nice things about the Tiger is that it's fuel injected, so all that carburetor management is taken care of, but the evil end of computerized fuel injection is that after seventy six thousand kilometres it's finally gone wrong, and an electronic system like that can go wrong in a lot of different ways.
I'd never gotten into the Tuneboy Software that came with the Tiger (the original owner installed it along with a Power Commander), because if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But now that it's broke, I got going on it the other evening. Getting into the bike via a computer was pretty cool. The software is Y2K retro-hip and the connection was straightforward. The 20+ pages of instructions weren't really needed (I'm handy with computers). Windows 10 automatically recognizes what you're plugging in (back in the day, WinXP would have needed drivers installed), and the software is responsive and quick to connect. It occasionally drops connection, but unplugging it and plugging it in again resolved that each time.
The compact disk (told ya, Y2K hip!) had all of the stock maps for my year of Triumph Tiger 955i engine on it, so I saved what was on there in case it was some kind of cool specialty map the previous owner had worked out (dude worked at a nuclear power plant, so don't underestimate his tech skillz), and then I flashed it with the stock numbers, which took about 20 seconds and returned a confirmed result. There is a slight lag, but otherwise this is easy to use stuff.
I then played with the diagnostics tool for a bit, hoping for some data that will help me isolate the hot idle stalling fault. The software says there are no errors (promising that this is that mechanical failure then), and the only thing that looks out of place is a strange return on the engine temperature. It seems to read accurately and then show -40, even when the fan is coming on, but if the fan is coming on and the temperature gauge on the dash is reading normally, I suspect this is something to do with how the software syncs with the on board computer rather than an actual fault, but I'm going to keep it in mind. The problem with an idle fault on a fuel injected bike is that the engine management system is taking in data from a number of sensors and using it to balance engine activity, like idling, based on that information. I've got the mechanical component that regulates idle on the bike incoming, and I hope that resolves the issue, but what I fear is that it's something else, and with these complex electronics systems could mean that anything from a dozen different sensors or relays to a loose or broken wire. With any luck, it's that idle air control valve and I'm back on the Tiger... and the Honda, just not at the same time.
I came up with the idea of setting up motorcycles down south in rental storage units to access over the winter a while back. This is just the sort of thing I'd do if I had that kind of disposable money laying around. To set up San Francisco bike storage I'd need to get an Ontario bike down there and parked up in the storage facility. The idea is to have a ready to go bike that I can fly to with minimal luggage. I'd eventually be able to fly in to San Francisco with only a carry on bag, take a cab to the storage unit and be on two wheels in one of the best motorcycling locations in the world within a few hours of flying out of the snowbelt. For the setup I'd take known, works-for-me gear for the ride and then hang it up in the storage unit along with the bike. Flights back at the moment are one stop, seven hours and about $700 Canadian. The weather is already closing in here. We've had dustings of snow multiple times. This would be one of my last chances to make the ride out west before the white wall of winter descends on us. In trying to make good time to SanFran, I'd also aim to get a motorcycling bucket list item done: an Iron Butt thousand miles in twenty-four hours: Day 1: Elora to Hampton Inn Portage IL. Just under 500 miles over the border and to the edge of Chicago. Make sure everything is ready for the big push on Day 2 (the Iron Butt 1000 miles in 24 hours). Make sure everything is good to go on the bike, get in early, eat and rest up for an early departure. Day 2: Portage IL to Denver, CO. Be on the road by 5am for the big push west. Cross Chicago before rush hour picks up and then thump across the plains. 1027 miles in 24 hours. Get in to Denver overnight and then 2 days at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Stapleton.
Day 3: Rest day in Denver. Day 4: Denver to Grand Junction. Into the Rockies, 333 miles to the Hampton Inn Grand Junction. A lower mileage day means this should be as much about enjoying the mountains as it is about making time. Day 5:Grand Junction to Ely. 429 mountain miles to Ely and the Ramada by Wyndam Ely passing through 3 national parks, so it should be a pretty ride.
Day 6: Ely NV to San Francisco. 554 mile day to wrap up the trip. Get into San Francisco late, park up the bike and put everything into hibernation mode. Load up a carry-on bag with the essentials and take a cab to the airport. Retrace the four thousand plus miles back in five hours.
I should be able to take the bike out, park it up and be back home within a week, then I'll have a bike on-call on the West Coast. For this trip I need something that can cover big miles effectively but is still a useful tool on twisty roads. The big Triumph Tiger 1200XRx is a long distance capable bike that fits a big guy like me. It's also easy to maintain (shaft drive, fuel injection) and comes with many long distance handy abilities like long suspension to soak up bad roads and luggage for the long trip. A big Tiger in this format costs just over $24k Canadian. It's a pretty thing, I saw the new ones in the flesh at the Triumph Tiger ATLAK meet up last summer. Many magazines describe the bike as very large, but I didn't find it overwhelmingly so. In fact, I was surprised at how svelte it was for a 1200cc adventure bike. But there are some things about the big Tiger that I'm not a fan of. I've never gotten excited about the big aluminum panniers thing on adventure bikes, or any bike for that matter. I like the colour matched lucifer orange ones on my old Tiger. I think the aluminum ones look half assed and unfinished, and I get to pay hundreds more for the privilege of having them because others think they're a fashion item. The other issue is a recent BIKE Magazine review in which their Tiger developed a number of electrical issues. Whatever is waiting for me on the West Coast would need to work when I opened that storage unit roller door. The Tiger is also a reasonably sensible choice, but it'd be nice to have something a bit more come-hither waiting for me in San-Fran. For surprisingly similar money there is something that I'd describe as more of a dream bike: the Kawasaki H2 supercharged demon bike in sport touring form. The H2 SX is an efficient, powerful, supercharger-chirping-as-it-breaks-the-sound-barrier thing of beauty. It weighs about as much as the big Tiger but produces prodigiously more power and looks like a Japanese super model. On top of that it has beautifully designed and colour matched panniers that practically disappear into the stunning looks of the bike, rather than looking like tacked on, low-rent metal boxes. Having the SX sitting in a storage unit in San Francisco would be a constant West Coast siren call. If I wanted to go far, it could handle it, if I wanted to canyon carve in and around San-Fran, it'd do that to. As much as I love adventure bikes for how well they fit me, I think I'd have the Kawasaki super model waiting for me on the west coast. It'd be a blast to ride on the trip out there and would fit in with Californian bike culture much better.
