How Bespoke is Too Bespoke?

Owning a Fireblade checked a box, taught me
many things and was a zero cost experience!

I always try to balance out bike projects so that I land in the black on them.  I've gotten pretty good at this.  The Fireblade Project cost me about $2300 all in and then I got to ride it for a season before selling it for $2500, which I then put towards the Concours14.  Even with fancy seats, windshields and other gubbins, the Connie only owes me about $7000.  Older model, double the mileage bikes are going for eight grand, so I'm still ahead there too.

People who throw big money down on customization that they like seem to think other people will pay extra to adopt their choices and tastes, which never made a lot of sense to me.  This goes for houses or in vehicles - just because you're willing to pay a premium to get a certain look, doesn't mean anyone else is, and expecting them to shell out for your choices is a bit naive.

The Concours was a cagey purchase that
still has me well in the black.

What does always sell is functionality.  As much as I'd like to get all romantic and throw money at the old Triumph I'm restoring, I'm more interested in making it work, and then riding it.  To that end, I'm not interested in creating a perfect replica of a 1971 Triumph Bonneville to put in shows, so modern touches (especially when they're more cost effective than stock-at-all-cost options) are something I have no trouble with.  A bike that starts easily and runs sweetly sells itself much more quickly than a cantankerous but period correct trailer queen.  One's a motorcycle, the other is art, and art is notoriously in the eye of the beholder.

One of the reasons I've always gravitated toward cheap and cheerful 80s and 90s Japanese restos was because the parts are usually easy to find, including hard parts from a breaker if needed, and they're as cheap as chips to buy because people tended to use them rather than put them up on a pedestal.

My first brush with 'vintage' (I think a 51 year old air-cooled Triumph from before the collapse of the British bike industry qualifies as vintage) has me wondering if my approach still works.  The cost of parts is much higher than more recent Japanese bikes and this particular Bonneville was half taken apart by a muppet who wanted to be in Easy Rider, so I'm constantly finding parts missing or incorrect.  I'm also struggling with missing non-metric tools after having owned metric bikes my entire life.

When I'm reading Practical Sportbikes I enjoy the articles on DIY and the stories of scratchers who got a machine put together with their own hands.  When they run one of the 'specials' articles where it's a rich guy with clean hands throwing money at a project, I lose interest quickly.  Classic Bike Magazine is similar.  When they're talking about an owner keeping an old machine running on ingenuity and guile, I'm all in, but the minute it's a millionaire adding to his collection with another bespoke machine put together by someone else, I've lost interest.

I just finished Guy Martin's new book, Dead Men Don't Tell Tales, and Guy ends the latest one talking about trying to find what makes him happy.  This requires a fair bit of self awareness - something that most people don't have.  Guy's particularly difficult in that he will often act on an urge that turns out to be incorrect, but, as he says in the book, he's evolving.

There's a scene in Guy's Garage where Cammy, his professional race mechanic mate, knows how to fix the car they're working on but Guy has his own ideas and keeps bashing away at it wrong.  Rather than push the point, Cammy backs off and waits for Guy to realize he's using the wrong tool for the job.

Guy is critical of Cammy for being slack in his approach to work in the book, but I'm left wondering if the truth isn't somewhere in between:  what looks like a lack of effort from Guy's point of view is actually a better use of his energy from the professional race mechanic's point of view.  There's more to all this than just jumping in to the physical labour, you need to be exercising the grey matter too.

What I'm taking from this latest round of Guy Martin media is that you're more likely to stay engaged with and finish big projects if they make sense to you.  To that end, I spent yesterday working out why the kickstarter on the Bonneville wasn't working (the muppet had put it in backwards).

The goal is still to have gone through the whole bike and have it back in working order without breaking the bank.  The amount spent on it matters less than whether or not the project is in the black.  If a functional '71 Bonneville is worth about five grand, then that's what I'll work to on the budget, while keeping an eye on what engages me most about all this:  putting a sidelined bike back into service again... and then riding it!

This morning I'm looking at Motogadget's mo.Unit Blue and considering how to best tackle a 51 year old wiring loom that looks to be in good shape but should probably get rebuilt if dependability is the goal.  An ignition powered by bluetooth on a smartphone is just the kind of steampunk anachronism that a riding focused buyer would dig.  That it's also invisible means it won't hurt the look of the bike (the only change is the ignition key isn't there).

Got into rebuilding the Amal carbs only to discover the muppet who took them apart before didn't install any of the air slider hardware for the choke, so now I'm hunting for hard parts for 51 year old carbs... in a pandemic.  Note my anemic imperial socket wrench set.

Ready to go and then stopped - neither carb has the air slider or hardware in it.  I'd normally call around to the local breakers, find a donor set of carbs and then keep them handy for situations like this.  That isn't an option with a 51 year old British bike.

It's coming along - slower than I'd like, but it's coming along.  When it seems too much I remind myself why I'm doing it: one day soon that engine will turn over for the first time in decades and shortly after that I'll be out riding the thing!

Vanmageddon: It must be February

It's getting to be that time of year again - months of snow bound Ragnarok motorbike hibernation are making me twitchy.  I like winter generally, it offers a very different and sometimes beautiful view of the world, but when motorcycling has become your go-to stress reliever, being out of the saddle for months is a source of pressure.  If you look at the seasonal leanings of this blog, you'll see winter generally leads to yearning.

This time around the fixation is on the Mercedes Metris Van.  I've previously looked at Ford Transits from a Guy Martin point of view, and other small van options for moving bikes to where I can use them.  The Metris has the benefit of being as efficient as the little vans but can swallow the Tiger with room to spare.  The other little vans would required a tight squeeze if it'd fit at all.


Another benefit of the Metris is that you can customize it to your needs and it'll still go everywhere a normal vehicle will.  It's also surprisingly competitive in price to the Ford and Dodge/Fiat options.  So, what would I do with the only Mercedes I've ever been interested in buying?

Last year at pretty much this exact same time I was mapping out waterfalls in Virginia.  The drive down to Roanoke is about 11 hours.  With the Tiger in the back I'd have left right after work and been in Roanoke by midnight.  After a good sleep and breakfast and I'd be out all weekend making use of those lovely temperatures while chasing spring powered waterfalls across the Appalachians.  After a good ride Sunday I'd have a big dinner then head back into the frozen wastelands of the north getting in after mid-night, but I'd have the Monday of the long weekend to get back on it again.

All told that'd be about 2000kms in the van and another six hundred or so miles riding in the spring blooming mountains.  If I could convince the family to come along, they could crash in the hotel or jump on the back and come along.

I've been reading Guy Martin's autobiography and his van powered wandering to motorcycling events all over the UK and Europe seem entirely doable, if you only have that van.  He seems to be able to fit an improbably amount into a very limited amount of time simply by getting himself there and then getting himself home again.

It's a good read that trips right along.  I enjoyed the narrative flow of the follow up book When You Dead You Dead more (I read it first), but you quickly fall into Guy-speak and feel like you're sitting in a pub with him hearing the tale.  If you like motorcycles and racing it's brilliant.  If you just like a good story well told, it'll do that too.

Finding a State of Flow in Motorcycling

I just finished Guy Martin's autobiography.  Towards the end of the book he talks about taking a non-rider around a road racing track in Ireland.  The show had a psychologist on hand who talked about the seeming insanity of motorcycle road racing.  Rather than just seeing it as adrenaline junkie speed thrills, the psychologist talks about the state of flow and how an athlete in it isn't in a risk mind-set.  The state of flow is an expanded awareness that most people have insufficient training and skill to be familiar with.  The extreme athlete isn't riding a wave of thrill, they wouldn't be able to perform if they did.

Stressed but prepared athletes enter a state of flow where they are so engaged with what they are doing that they disappear into their actions.  This isn't an act of imagination where they are thinking about what they look like from the outside, it's self awareness through the act itself.  This is a truer mirror of the self than any imaginative act.  

Many people consider self awareness to be this moment of recognition where you're constructing how you think you fit into the world around you, but this is ultimately fictional and prone to psychological abstraction.  A doubting person won't see themselves as they are any more than an arrogant person would.  It might provide you with a vague sense of your place in the world, but it isn't trustworthy.

Bull Durham is one of my favourite sports films.  The moment when Crash Davis catches himself thinking when he should only be a quick bat is a great example of an athlete being aware of a break in their state of flow.

Awareness in the state of flow has much more in common with the long tradition of Zen and other Eastern philosophies where the practitioner's sense of self is lost in the act.  But being lost in that act allows you to live in the moment more completely.  Instead of thinking about what might happen next or self-criticizing while performing, someone in the state of flow isn't conscious in the typical manner.  The wasted energy spent on consciously being self aware is instead spend in the activity itself; the activity becomes who you are.

When a talking head asks an athlete what they were thinking about when they were performing, the athlete always seems confused by the question.  When they ask if the audience was a factor in their performance they are baffled.  If you're rolling ideas around in your head while you're trying to perform you know you're not at peak performance, you're not the moment itself.

One of the reasons I enjoy riding motorcycles is because I've been doing it long enough that I can get into the process and become a part of the ride.  Zen monks use physical tasks like sweeping the floor to put themselves into the present.  I find riding a motorcycle does the same thing for me.  The complexity of using all of my limbs and my whole body to operate the machine allows me to let go of my conscious self and become something more.  

In a more extreme case like Guy Martin's, he is able to get into a flow state while doing almost two hundred miles an hour on a motorbike on a public road.  This can seem like breath taking daredevilry, but it isn't, it's a master in the state of flow.  The mind is clear, you're aware of more than you ever can be when you're looking through the pinched viewpoint of your conscious mind.

That expansive state of awareness is what happens when you're in flow, and it feels wonderful.  You can see out of the back of your head and your body seems capable of reflexes that would confound you if you tried them consciously.  If you've ever experienced that moment of bliss,  you know it's worth finding again.

Six Wheels Across Canada

Crossing Canada (and we're not even going
coast to coast) isn't a little trip.

Next summer we're aiming for the family cross country trip.  If you live anywhere except one of the largest countries in the world that might not require too much forethought, but it takes over 2000kms and 3 days just to get out of the province we live in, then there are another four provinces to cross before getting to the family reunion in British Columbia.  The thought of doing this on a bike is both invigorating and a bit overwhelming, and besides, I'd like to spend some time in the car with everyone soaking up the views together.

What to do?

Is it possible to get a vehicle that would get us across Canada reasonably comfortably but would also allow me to drop two wheels down when the roads demand it?

I've had the van itch before, but is there a vehicle that could carry the three of us and a bike well?

Guy Martin's Transit Van fascination has long been an influence.  It turns out you can buy a special Guy Martin Proper edition these days in the UK.

Choices for North America aren't that special, but you can still put together a custom enough van that might be the Swiss-Army knife of a vehicle that I'm looking for.  What's interesting is that on the UK site they talk about using a Transit as your 24/7 vehicle like that could be a thing, but North Americans would find Transits impossible to live with (because North Americans are just too precious?)

The long wheelbase, medium roof Transit will handle four seats with room enough to comfortably swallow a Triumph Speed Triple as well.  With a finished interior it'd be a comfortable way of making the epic cross country trip and could handle all the luggage we could throw at it.

In cross country mode it'd have the four seats in and plenty of room to stretch out and cover big miles.  I'd be tempted to swipe some of the "Proper" Transit and sporty it up a bit, but the main idea would be to have a modern, efficient van that is able to do many things.

With the bike out we'd be able to stretch sleeping bags out in the back, and there are some other interesting options I think I'd explore.  The Aluminess Roof Rack turns the whole roof into a patio, which would be handy on trips for photography, as a base for drone filming operations or as a vantage point when the van is taken to events.  It has a cool LED spot light bar on the front too.

There are a number of interior finishing options available.  I'd take the van to a finished interior, but I don't know about a private jet on wheels, I'd want it to keep some of its utilitarian appeal.  Being able to rotate the front seats would have obvious benefits though.  A number of companies finish these vans, from use based needs to full on camper conversions.

The medium roof, long wheelbase version of the Transit will take in about 163 inches long in the cargo area - a Triumph Speed Triple is about half that, so it'd fit behind a second row of seats.  Maximum load width is almost 70 inches, the Speed Triple is less than half that wide at the handle bars and much less elsewhere, so it'd fit comfortably on one side of the rear cargo area.  Maximum load height is 72 inches, the Speed Triple is less than 50 inches tall.  Even a big bike like my Tiger (54 inches tall, 34 inches wide, 89 inches long) would still comfortably fit in the Transit.  Since a Transit will take close to 4000lbs in payload, the thing could easily handle a pair of big bikes without breaking a sweat.  One bike, 3 people and a pile of luggage wouldn't make it break a sweat.

The ten thousand kilometre odyssey across Canada would be a lot more fun with such a comfortable, spacious and capable vehicle... and being about to ride the Rockies and the West Coast west and then back east again would be spectacular.

Almost four thousand kilometres of Rocky Mountains and West Coast?  Magical!  Having a vehicle that can deliver it together AND on two wheels?  Bazinga!

Norfolk Wisdom on BBC's Speed Dreams

I just finished watching BBC 2's Speed Dreams: The Fastest Place On Earth, a documentary about a group of British motorcyclists who travel to Bonneville to see how fast their folk-engineered motorcycles can go.  It's a great watch and one of the best motorcycle focused things I've seen about Bonneville, and there have been many.

One of my favourite bits about this one is that it isn't one of those (insert celebrity name here) explorations of extreme motorbiking.  Those can get thin pretty quickly when they lean mainly on the twist of watching a footballer or actor doing something that hundreds of others have done with less while the poor celebrity laments their fame and finds ways to make the trip as expensive as they possibly can.  It might be time to shelve that formula.  Motorcycling is inherently egalitarian.  Millionaire problems while doing it just aren't that interesting. Meanwhile, Speed Dreams covers the gamut from build-it-in-your-shed eccentrics to bank funded high end amateur riders, but I find the ones who do it with less far more interesting.  Money makes people tedious and shallow.  It's not their fault, they can't help it, it's just what money does  They end up with an audience because people like to watch wealth.  The characters underneath it are nearly always atrophied by it.

Speaking of interesting, my favourite bit of Speed Dreams is when the Scottish lead engineer of the high end team comes out and waxes poetic about the shear size of the place...

Then the old fella from Norfolk who picks up the litter on the beach after he had a nervous breakdown and built an old Indian bike in his shed with recycled parts walks out and does us all Norfolk proud:

'ha''s Norfook for yow.  It made me miss home.

You can catch this one on Motortrend TV with a free trail, or on BBC if you're somewhere they'll let you stream it.  Amazon also looks like they add it in occasionally.  Back in the day Top Gear (with the old guys) liked it too.

Other Bonneville Motorcycle Media:

Guy Martin and the world's fastest motorbike.  I usually like Guy's stuff, but this isn't one of my favourites, probably because it comes off as a Triumph ad, he never gets his hands dirty.  Even the Triumph bit is outsourced to another engineering group making it look even more like a marketing exercise.  They don't manage to break any records either.  You can stream this one on Channel 4 UK, though there are other Guy motorbike themed things I prefer (his run at Pike's Peak on a custom hand made machine is fantastic).

Henry Cole's Worlds' Greatest Motorcycle Rides is a good series to get you through long Canadian winters and his run at Bonneville is a genuine tear jerker.  That he's trying to do it on a Brough Superior is English eccentricity at its best.  First time he met Sam Lovegrove too, so there is a good bit of engineering/technical to it as well.

Odin, Thor's dad (Anthony Hopkins), plays Burt Munro in The World's Fastest Indian, a well put together film telling the story of one of Bonneville's heroes from down under.

Out of Nothing is another shed-built Bonneville attempt from an American North West perspective.  It sometimes wanders dangerously near to hipster philosophical - Americans tend to take themselves very seriously when doing manly things.  I prefer the UK self deprecating humour rather than the chest thumping, but it's still a good film.

Bike Delivery System: escaping frozemagheddon!

It's supposed to drop into the -40°Cs in the next couple of days.  We're in the bowels of winter here and I'm getting cabin fever.  I've already day dreamed of the kit I'd need to go to track days, but that kit would serve another purpose, to get me clear of the never ending winter with my own bike.

Having a second vehicle that is utilitarian is never a bad idea, but I'm not much of a truck guy.  I am a Guy Martin fan though, and he happens to have a Transit Van!  You can pick up a well maintained, low miles Transit Van on autotrader.ca for about twenty grand, or about the price of a new hatchback.  It'll get over 32mpg,  and will happily carry a couple of bikes and kit (or other stuff) as needed.  With a carrying capcity of over 1600lbs, it would be more than up to the job of moving two bikes and riders out of the snow belt.

When it's about to hit -40°C, the Transit could get loaded up for a long weekend and aimed south.  A power drive could get me to The Tail of the Dragon, where the two bikes in back could be unloaded, ridden hard, put away wet and driven back into the inhuman wintry darkness after a couple of days of two wheeled therapy.

Tail of the Dragon, eating its own tail!

The Tail of the Dragon is only 11 hours away, but while it's minus forty here, it's in the low teens in Tennessee.  A banzai ride in the van into ride-able territory would make the vehicle much more than just a track day tool.

Based out of Marysville, Tennesee, I'd do a 210 mile loop one way and then do it backwards the next day...  Friday: leave noon, arrive in Marysville about 11pm.  Saturday: all day clock wise.  Sunday: all day counter clockwise. Monday: leave after breakfast, be home by 8pm.

Stage one would be getting the van.  At that point I'm in for about $20k.  It'll also come in handy for track days and picking up bikes.  I'd be able to throw my Ninja and a buddy's bike in there for the drive down and get to it.

The Triumph Daytona took out bikes twice its
displacement in Performance Bike's Track test.

Stage two would be getting a bike that doesn't have to compromise to get me there.  A sport focused machine that will arrive ready to take on the twisties would do the trick.  My first choice would be the Triumph Daytona 675R.  At only 189kgs (416lbs) ready to ride, it's a light weight machine that punches well above its displacement.

You can pick up a new, last year's Daytona for about twelve thousand bucks.  For the ten grand under the price of the cheapest Volvo SUV, I'd have a a bike delivery system of epic proportions, with an epic bike in the back of it.  When it isn't taking me out of the snow belt it could be picking up used bikes or taking me to track days.

I've almost talked myself into this!

A British Appreciation for Industrial History & Hands-On Restoration

There is an element of British television that revels in the industrial history that many generations of us lot lived through, and I'm hooked on it.  My favourite is Henry Cole & Sam Lovegrove's Shed & Buried which follows the two as they dig up hidden treasures found in some of the more eccentric sheds in the U.K., including a lot of older motorbikes:

They find all sorts of old machines in people's sheds which often leads to impromtu history lessons on brands I've never heard of or hidden bits of industrial history I hadn't heard of before.  From seed fiddles to motor memorabilia to the esoteric history of British motorbike production, it's never dull and usually enlightening.

They don't just rummage around in other people's sheds.  The show also casts a light on the 'car boot sale' and the used sales trade in the UK.  This culture of reverance for past technology is completely foreign in Canada.

It's tough to find anything motorbikey in Ontario to begin with let alone anything old and interesting, yet Henry & Sam seem to be able to find any number of interesting old bikes for around £1000 ($1700CAD).  In a country like Canada that prefers to hide its history under a modern marketing blanket, throwing stuff away is a cultural imperative.  This (very colonial) approach means there simply isn't an ecosystem of old machinery to explore.  This is exacerbated by Canada's history as a resource extractor rather than an industrially focused manufacturer; we don't make much here so there is no home-grown pride in any vehicle.

These cultural differences in background prompt media and awareness that is distinctly different in both countries.  The British produce a plethora of programs that explore industrial history and mechanics.  Shows like this would never fly in consumerist focused Canada.

Here's a case in point:  Shed & Buried started out with a '69 Triumph Daytona project, sorta like the one below described as 'an excellent buy' in Ottawa right now for $4650 Canadian .  Henry paid £600 ($1000CAD) for his old Daytona in similar condition.

If they exist at all, older bikes in Canada are prohibitively expensive.

What got me thinking about this was someone else on FB Marketplace offering disorganized boxes of old Triumph parts for $3600 without even a clear idea of what's in there.  Henry and Sam picked up a 1950s BSA for £400 they found in pieces in a caravan.  Canada's disinterest in and lack of history around industrial manufacturing make it a very difficult place to find old project bikes - unless you want to go into massive debt for an incomplete box of shit.

If, like me, you find living in this vacuous, consumerist wasteland frustrating, there are a lot of British TV programs that will remind you that finding old things and getting your hands dirty restoring them is a viable thing to do.  Here's a list of what to watch if you're looking for some proof that you're not crazy:

Find It, Fix It, Drive It: if you're crafty with VPNs you can stream this on Channel4.

Guy Martin's How Britain Worked:  Guy's background as a mechanic comes up in most of his shows

Car SOS: one of my favourites - restoration leading to catharsis

Wheeler Dealers: started in the UK, went to the US and lost its way, now back to UK

Even Top Gear makes a point of mechanics, though often in jest:

Tiger Brains

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

There are early Triumph EFI issues aplenty online:
https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/ecu-repair-refurbishing.525873/
https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/bad-ecu-on-my-2006-speed-triple.159082/
https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/955i-idle-hesitation-porblem.971699/#post-2004081361
https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/ecu-unit.80778/
https://www.thetriumphforum.com/threads/s1000t3-ecu.22000/
https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/1999-955i-ecu-needed.93566/#post-1107942

Used Parts, not of the vintage I'm looking for though:
http://www.rubbersideup.com/triumph/tiger?p=2

https://www.bikebandit.com/oem-parts/detail/triumph/t1291000/b1389042?m=121594&sch=565828
Wahay!  A new ECU is two-grand, AMERICAN!  That's over $2500 Canadian!  The whole bike cost me three grand.  See what I mean about the costs of keeping emerging, fragile old tech active?

Finding Meaning on Two Wheels: a philosophy of motorcycling

My professional life is kicking the shit out of me this year, so when the never ending winter of COVID finally ended and the roads cleared so that I could ride again it felt like coming up for air after a winter underwater.  It isn't too far a reach to say that riding feels like breathing to me.

I'm in the process of buying another bike, one big enough for my son and I to go on rides again with, and the current owner said he'd never ride again.  I can't imagine a situation where I'd ever say that.  You sometimes hear stories of elderly senior citizens who still ride.  That'll be me, or I won't be a senior citizen.

In the professional reflections blog I've been thinking about full commitment and how a job that encourages it can make you your best self.  It's a lasting sadness that so many people see work as purgatory rather than an opportunity to find their better selves.

The Japanese are much better at this than westerners are.  They don't wish each other good luck when doing something difficult, they simply say, "gambate!" or 'do your best!'  And that effort is what is respected regardless of outcome.  They make effort a socially appreciated thing where western cultures tend to fixate on winning.  There is a great scene in the Tokyo Ghoul anime where the bad guy is dying after a vicious fight.  He's an evil, cannibal ghoul so there aren't many redeeming features there, but everyone stops to listen respectfully to his last words because he put up such an epic fight.  We're all too busy trying to win to care about anything like that.  We'd vilify and belittle him rather than respect the effort.  This makes us remarkably unhappy because the problem with competition is that there is always a loser.

When you're approaching an activity that makes full use of your facilities you get lost in it.  It doesn't limit you, it expands you, makes you better.  Motorcycling is a technically complex, physically and mentally demanding activity that asks a lot of you, but the rewards are worth the risks.

If you're Simon Pavey or Guy Martin or Valentino Rossi, you race because that's where you have to get to in order to find the edge of your skills and give you that sense of complete immersion.  The leading edge of my own motorcycling has also moved on.  Where I'd once be happy with commuting on a small bike, I'm now working my way through ownership of different kinds of bikes and wish to expand further.  The limits I'm seeking in motorcycling aren't just in riding, but also in mechanics.  It's for that reason that I find events like the Dakar, especially when someone like Lyndon Poskitt does it in the malle moto class, so fascinating.  They're combining that technical skill with riding ability in a way that most racers can't or won't.

My work is usually able to give me enough latitude to fully immerse myself, but this year COVID has made it a broken thing unable to do anything well.  It has changed from an opportunity to seek excellence to never ending triage in mediocrity.  This has me asking hard questions about what I'd do if I didn't need the money it provides.  These are questions you should ask yourself before retirement, but they're also questions you should ask yourself when you're in danger of getting mired in work that doesn't let you find your best self.

Watching Ride With Norman Reedus last week, he was on the South Island of New Zealand where he had a chat with a young man from Canada who had opened up a business there.  One of his reasons for living where he does was that there had to be good riding roads easily accessible nearby.  This means he can explore riding in challenging circumstances, which seems like enlightenment to me.

In my final years of teaching I hope I can rediscover that sense of energizing peak performance that improves rather than limits me, and if not there then in another job that gives me the latitude I need to chase excellence while supporting my family.  Should I ever get to the point where I don't need to spend my days working for someone else, then it'll be time to move to a place where I can explore riding more fully.

That somewhere would have easy to access track days that let me explore riding dynamics at the edge of road riding, complex local roads that make me a better rider and off road opportunities that let me explore riding in a variety of unpaved situations.  Where I am now offers none of these things.  I'd also have the means to develop my mechanical skills to the limit.  I'm fortunate in that I have such a rich hobby and sport to explore.  I feel sorry for those that don't.

Motorcycling For Sport On a Budget

LOGISTICS

The trickiest part about trying to arrange your motorcycling to provide you with a sporting outlet are the logistics.  You can't ride a track/trials/dirt bike to where you're going to ride it in a sporting fashion, so you need transportation options that'll get you and your gear to where you intend to use it.

The obvious choice (if you're looking for a budget choice) is to look at cargo vans - or so I thought.  Thanks to COVID, the market for these (like many other things) has gone bonkers as every unemployed rocket scientist in the world rushes out to grab a used van to deliver for Amazon.

Here are some current online choices:

My favourite is the fuggly Transit Connect that isn't even big enough to hold a single bike and is almost a decade old with over two-hundred thousand kilometres on it for $10,500, $8,500.  Eight and half grand for a heavily used POS.  Both my current on-road bikes, an '03 Triumph Tiger and an '10 Kawasaki Concours together cost me less than that, and they're both a joy to look at and operate, though carrying a dirt bike on them isn't likely.

If I want to get my Guy Martin on, New Transits start at thirty-five grand and can easily option up to over fifty.  The bigger Ram Promasters start at thirty-seven grand and can option to over twice that.  The wee Promaster City starts at thirty-four grand and can be optioned well into the forties.  Vans only really do the cargo thing and make any other usage tedious, and they're expensive!

The used car lot down Highway 6 has a 2015 Jeep Wrangler with 90k kms on it that they're asking $35k for it.  It isn't cheap but it seems in good nick and comes with the tow package.  We rented a Wrangler last year and I was impressed with its ability to carry weight and it's utility - it was also surprisingly fun to drive... and in the summer it'd get the doors and roof off and be able to do the Zoolander thing too.

A trailer goes for about a grand, this one comes with a ramp and he's asking $1300.  With a bit of bartering I could sort out a tow capable Wrangler with a useful trailer for under forty grand.  The Jeep isn't new, but it's only 6 years old and with a big v6 in it, 90k isn't too much of a stressful life - it actually works out to only fifteen thousand kilometres a year.

What's galling is that you're thirty-five grand into a years old almost 100k kms vehicle but the new ones run fifty-three grand - I guess you've got to have a lot of cash on hand to buy anything these days.

What'd be really nice is a state-ot-the-art Wrangler 4xe.  They tow, use very little gasoline and when things get sorted out with in-car fusion generators, I'd be able to take the gas engine out and go fully electric with it.  In the meantime, it'd carry all my bike clobber, would be a bulletproof winter vehicle and when the sun arrives I can pop the doors and roof off and enjoy it in an entirely different way; they really are Swiss Army knives!

SPORTS RIDING OPTIONS: Trials

Once I've got the moto-logistics worked out I could then focus on some sporting motorbiking.  This ain't cheap either, but some sport motorcycling is cheaper than others.  Trials riding is probably at the cheaper end of things with used bikes starting at about two grand and new, high-end performance models going up to about nine grand, though you can get a new, modern, Chinese made machine for under five grand.

I'm partial to older machines as I don't have to deal with dealer servicing and can do the work myself.  This mid-80s Yamaha TY350 comes with lots of spares and is in ready-to-go shape for about $2600.  Since I'm not looking to take on Dougie Lampkin, this'd more than get me started in trials.

The Amateur Trials Riding Association of Ontario offers regular weekend events throughout the summer and fall and would make for a great target to aim for.  I'd be a rookie, but I'm not in it to win it, I'm in it to improve my moto-craft and trials offer a unique focus on balance and control in that regard.

I'm disinclined to exercise for the sake of it, though I've never had trouble exercising in order to compete in sports, it's just hard to find any when you're a fifty-two year old guy in Southwestern Ontario.  Having trials events to prepare for would be just the thing to get me into motion.

There is also the Southwestern Ontario Classic Trials group, who also offer a number of events and categories and seem very newbie friendly.  That old Yamaha would fit right in with classic trials and would let me do my own spannering.

Our backyard has everything you'd need to practice trials, though tire tracks all over the lawn might not endear me to my better half.  Even with all that in mind, trials riding would be the cheapest moto-sport to get going in.

SPORT RIDING OPTIONS:  enduro/off-road riding

What's nice about the dirt-bike thing is that I could do it with my son, Max.  He got handy with dirt biking last summer at SMART Adventures so if we got into trail riding we could do it together.

Used dirt-bikes start at about $2500 and creep up quickly.  Most seem quite abused but appear to hold their value regardless.  For about six grand I could get us into two 21st Century machines that should be pretty dependable on the trails, the problem is there aren't any around here.  We'd have to drive for hours to get to the few that are left in Central Ontario.

The Ontario Federation of Trail Riders would be a good place to start in terms of working out trails and connecting with others interested in the sport.  Off Road Ontario offers access to enduro and motocross racing, but I'm not really into the yee-haw MX thing, though long distance enduro gets my attention (every January I'm glued to the Dakar Rally).  I also watch a lot of British television and I've seen a number of endurance off-road events on there that are appealing, so I wouldn't wave off enduro without looking into it a bit more.

SPORT RIDING OPTIONS:  track racing

There are motorcycle track days around Ontario from May to October.  The Vintage Road Racing Association seems like the best way in for someone not interested in becoming the next Marc Marquez but who is looking for some time on a bike working at the extreme ends of two-wheeled dynamics without having to worry about traffic.  The VRRA also offers a racing school to get people up to speed (so to speak).  I can't say that having a racing licence wouldn't be a cool thing to have.

The challenge with racing on pavement is that everything gets more expensive, from membership and training fees to the cost of equipment and bikes, and of course what it costs to fix them when you chuck them down the road.  Road racing offers a degree of speed and has obvious connections to road riding that are appealing, it's only the costs that make it seem like a step too far.

Sport motorcycling is tricky to get into.  You need the equipment to transport yourself and your bike and gear to where you're competing and then you also need the specialist motorbike itself, but there are options that can make it possible on not to extreme of a budget.  I'm hoping to find a way into this over the next few years.