Kawasaki Concours C14 1400GTR Valve Check Part 3 - Putting it back together again

It's a slow process putting all this back together again. Even with a prolific number of photos and copious notes here on the blog I'm finding this a fiddly and frustrating process. My current plan is to get everything plugged in, top up the radiator and run it to make sure it's back together right before buttoning it up (there are a f(@# ton of  buttons).

The latest fun has been plugging the plethora of plugs over the valve cover back in.

I've got a couple of plugs (21) left after connecting everything else. The question now becomes: are oxygen sensor plugs not used on a 2010 Canadian market bike? 

Got the plugs in, except for those two top left of the rat's nest.

Here's a close-up. That white one has me baffled but perhaps it's the front cam sensor.

Tomorrow (assuming the late March ice storm we have in store doesn't throw us back to the stone age), I'll check for oxygen sensors on the exhaust, and if not there I'll know that one of those plugs is probably unused.

The ice storm was persistent but mainly pretty - no hydro lines down around here.

Other things to check are the front cam sensor (7-R on the diagram) which was very difficult to reinstall with a new o-ring. That plug is probably dangling down the front and needs to find a mate on top of the motor (looks like it's plumbed in under the front plastic guard). If that's my missing plug and the other one is an unused oxygen sensor then I'm about there.

After that gets settled I'll do one last look around for anything I might have missed before topping up the radiator and seeing if this thing'll run. If does I'll reroute the wires properly and should have it back to a point where I can start reinstalling all the fairings - which is a whole separate pain in the @$$, but at least one I've done before.

Then things get philosophical. Work has picked up and I don't have the patience or headspace to spend hours each weekend keeping these old bikes in motion. The temptation is to get $10k (CAD) between them and then buy something that can go when I need it to without so much TLC. 

I can save the wrench turning for when I retire. I enjoy working on them but trying to do a job this complex when I'm having to leave it for weeks on end while travelling makes a difficult job more so. Had I the time and space to do this daily when I wasn't juggling a demanding job, it'd have been an entirely different experience.

I'm loving the travel opportunities and my work is something I enjoy, but the deep bike maintenance doesn't fit with it at this point.

Haliburton was magical...

Flying out to the maritimes is never a bad thing...

...but those weeks away mean I'm coming back to an incredibly complicated job sometimes 20 days after I last touched it.

I've never made enough to be sentimental about vehicles and keep everything (I'd rather put those resources toward travel anyway). Time to simplify the bike stable to let me focus on riding when I can squeeze it in. I'll save the time suck that is older bike ownership for when I have more time to suck.

Off-Roading Dreaming

My son, Max, got handy with dirt bikes at SMART Adventures last week and now I'm dreaming of some options that would let us explore trails together on two wheels.  If I had half a million dollars sitting around we could get ourselves into a winterized house/cottage on Lake Benoir on the south edge of Algonquin Park.  The only reason I'm even thinking about that is because of COVID.  In any other situation I'd rather travel than own more property but well over a year into this pandemic it doesn't look like travel as normal will return any time soon.  That'd be a couple of acres in the woods in a small, simple house (electricity but mainly heated by wood burning stove) that comes with a good sized workshop.  They have some nice resorts on the lake so this isn't as rough of some of Northern Ontario and it's right in the heart of the Canadian Shield.  Off-road trails abound in the area as well as some of the best riding roads in Ontario.  We'd immediately get ourselves Ontario Federation of Trail Rider memberships and then get into the woods!

Back in the real world where half a million bucks and doubling down on real estate isn't in the cards, getting off-road could happen in a number of different ways.  Here's the most to least expensive in order:

NEW STATE OF THE ART OFF ROAD KIT

Jeep Gladiator Overland:  $65,000

A capable off-roader that can get us to the trail head while carrying the bikes.  It'd make a great base from which to ride from and then would be able to get us out of the bush at the end of a long day of riding.  There are a lot of camping options that let you leverage the vehicle to make camping a bit less mucky including truck bed mounted tent systems and proper bedding.

2021 CRF250F:  $5649 x2

I took one of these out for the day at SMART Adventures and really got along with it.  I'd buy an Ontario used dirt bike but the prices are absurd.  Broken 20 year old bikes are asking ridiculous money!  New dirt bikes aren't madly expensive and this one, being a Honda, would last as long as I'd ever need it to.  I'd get two of the same thing to make maintenance more straightforward and then my son and I could ride together.

Total (the camping gear is another grand):  $77k

LIGHTLY USED OFF-ROAD KIT

2015 Used Jeep Wrangler:  $36,000

It's got 90k on it, a 5 speed stick and a V6.  It looks in good shape and comes with the towing cubbins I'd need to tow bikes to where we could use them.  The Wrangler has a pile of camping related gear for it that isn't crazy expensive.  The tent off the back is three hundred bucks and the rear air mattress less than a hundred.  The whole shebang would come in under $37,000 and would be good to go pretty much anywhere while still doing Jeepy things like taking roofs and doors off.

Used Dirt Bike:  ridiculous prices

Here's a random selection of used dirt bikes online in Ontario in 2021.  People are asking nearly four grand for sticker festooned, brutalized and rebuilt bikes covered in replacement cheap plastics because the OEM ones were smashed off.  Four grand for these POSes!  I don't know that there is a cost effective alternative to dirt biking, at least in price crazy Ontario.

Here's another example of the insanity complete with questionable literacy skills:  1998 ktm exc 250 2 stroke, Needs a crank seal, witch (sic) I have. ( don’t half to split the case) it’s a 40 min Job if that, it does run but I wouldn’t without doing that seal first as it pulls tranny oil in other than that it needs the front breaks bled and a few small things like bolts for a couple plastics and such, I have the ownership, full gasket kit for the motor, all the paper work on the bike. $2,500OBO  That'd be a sticker festooned, broken and abused 23 year old (!!!) KTM for two and a half grand!  I just can't make sense of Ontario's used dirt bike market.  By the time you've sorted one of these wrecks out you'd have dropped over five grand on it anyway, which would get you a new bike.

But then there are some Chinese manufacturer option:

SSR SR300S dirt bike:  $5000 x 2

Here's a 31 horsepower, 300cc, 286lb well specified off-roader that undercuts the Japanese equivalents by almost a grand.  Of course, the 'Japanese' bikes aren't made in Japan either so everyone is spending a lot extra on brand and dealership accessibility.  I'd have headaches finding parts for beaten up old Japanese brands anyway, so worries about parts don't really matter.  For a couple of grand less than two new Hondas we could still have new bikes, just without the branding.

Here's another:

Vipermax 250cc Apollo:  $2899 x 2

Based on Honda tech, these 250cc bikes have disc brakes and other modern tech and weigh in under 300lbs as well.  They're not quite as big and powerful as the SSR above but they're capable, new and feature a lot of recently updated tech.  The two of them together would cost almost what one CRF250F ($5800 for two vs $5650 for one CRF250F).  They're probably built in the same factory.  Isn't globalism fun?

If I could find a couple of used but serviceable 250cc trail bikes for a couple of grand each I'd happily take that on as a winter project, but they simply don't exist in Ontario and with the Chinese options, why buy terrible, expensive and used?

***

A Jeep would open up camping and off-roading options beyond what the bikes could do and it's something I'd like to get into in any case.  There are dirt bike hitch trailers for the Wrangler and it could tow a trailer too.

There are a lot of ways to get off-road and out into the wilderness, I just have to figure out the one that works for us.

Adventure Biking

An epic journey with
an epic budget

I'm over a year into the habit now and my biking interests continue to evolve.  One of the things that got me started was Ewan and Charlie's Long Way Round.  When looking for my first bike I was all about the adventure bike.  The idea that I could ride to Borneo or the Andes was pretty enticing.  A bike that could go anywhere and do anything seemed magical.

Look at me and my friend
Ewan on our big bikes!  It's
hard not to get taken in by
the image.

It turns out it is magical.  You give up a lot of physics to have a tall bike with knobbly tires that looks like it can ride to the Andes.  Being a guy in the vanishing middle class with a young family and work, I'm not in a position to gallivant off into the woods for weeks on end following my inner McGregor.  I get the sense that, like SUV drivers, many adventure bike riders are in it for the posing.  I've never been good at posing, it's one of the reasons that cruisers have never done anything for me.  I'm less interested in being seen on a bike and more interested in the process of riding it.

An epic journey on a
shoestring

To complicate matters I then saw Mondo Enduro and heard Austin Vince's arguments for adventure riding for adventure riding's sake (rather than adventure marketing for sale's sake).  The idea of taking inexpensive, small bikes around the world seems absurd from a Long Way Round/BMW/Adventure Bike Rider point of view where anything less than a 1000ccs without electronic assist and no wind is 'uncomfortable'.

Why can't I buy this
in Canada, Austin?

While Ewan and Charlie actually did the deed, they did it with an awful lot of support, brand new sponsored bikes, a staff and no worries about money.  That they did it is being leveraged a great deal by bike manufacturers to move large, heavy bikes that are ill-suited for off road work, but they look the part and let you live that movie star dream.

I get Austin's angle, and still get excited by the idea of travelling light and far for travel's sake, not for image's sake.  I'm currently reading Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels, and he too focused on the opportunities motorcycling around the world offered rather than the image it portrayed.

I just turned 45 and fantasized about mid-life crisis motorbike choices.  I was surprised to find that adventure biking didn't make it onto my list considering it was one of the genres of riding I was most excited by.  Like the SUV driver that has never driven on gravel but wants 4 wheel drive and a massive vehicle just in case it might happen, the idea that an adventure bike will make it look like I can travel down roads I'd never take is marketing that I just can't buy into.  

The road beckons, it's right outside my door, so why would I ride a bike that wasn't designed for it?  It's not like you can't go pretty much everywhere on a road bike, Nick Sanders certainly has.  If you want to get off the beaten path and camp Jo Sinnott can manage it on a Triumph Bonneville.  If you want to be extreme, Melissa Holbrook-Pierson will introduce you to the Man Who Would Stop At Nothing who makes Charlie & Ewan look like frat boys.

There is no doubt that adventure riding is a meaningful genre of motorcycle riding, just as off-roading is a meaningful genre of four wheeling.  But are you the guy who has to hose out his jeep after going deep, or are you the guy who polishes his SUV and pretends he's all about the mud?  I suspect I've read too many life changing adventure bike articles in magazines that sell the myth.  As long as adventure riding is about the image rather than the deed, it doesn't do much for me, mid-life crisis or otherwise, which makes me sad.

Motorcycle Book Review: The Rudge Book Of The Road

I was reading Classic Bike Magazine last month and one of the auctioneers in the back of the mag suggested getting my hands on a copy of The Rudge Book Of The Road if you are looking for an historical read that'll get you through a long winter and prime you for the coming springtime.

I had a look around and finally found a 1926 version of the book on Amazon for about thirty five bucks.

If you have a thing for art deco drawings, the Rudge Book of the Road will scratch that itch!

My copy was once owned by.. a W. Chapman?

Reading a book that's almost 100 years old gives you a perspective on motorcycling that you might not have considered before.  At one point the author talks about how much Rudge has learned from building motor-bikes over the past 17 years.  I found myself becoming conscious decades of development that since went into my current 1971 Triumph Bonneville project and then continued on for decades more as found in my modern Triumph Tiger and Kawasaki Concours.  A bit of historical perspective is a powerful thing when you're hands on with the engineering found in modern motorbikes.  With nearly a century of continuous development, reading about motorcycling from the dawn of the sport is good mental exercise.

The Rudge Book of the Road takes me back to a time when my grandparents were children and, as a modern reader, I'm left struggling to find a frame of reference in our overcrowded and mechanized world.  There were a quarter as many people on the planet when this book was written and internal combustion engines were in an early phase of rapid development as they revolutionized and democratized travel for more than just the wealthy.  This book makes a point of recognizing this exciting period in history:

Traffic jams and the expectation that everyone be commuting in motor vehicles in an increasingly crowded and polluted world makes this perspective feel particularly alien in 2022.  Can you imagine thinking about motorbike travel like this?  If anyone could do it, it's motorcyclists - we may be one of the last vehicular subcultures that clings this kind of romance, even as the vast majority drive their appliances without a second thought for how they work or experiencing any inherent joy in the activity.

Having lived with rough 'colonials' for most of my life, some of the language in this very British book made me smile.  It was written for Rudge Whitworth as a sales tool but it leans toward the romance of riding as a theme throughout.  Rudge themselves lasted until 1946 before they stopped production, so you're reading a book by a company that hasn't existed in over seventy years, which further makes reading this feel like an echo from a distant and unknown past:

The state of the art in terms of motorcycle engineering was making major steps in the 1920s.  Earlier bikes had you oiling the motor as you rode it.  Too much and it would clog the spark plugs and leave you on the side of the road having to clean your plugs, a job most modern vehicle operators would have no idea how to do.  Too little oil and the engine would seize, possibly tossing you down the road.  This degree of involvement in motor vehicle operation was being phased out in the mid-nineteen-twenties bringing more people into the moto-fold.

The idea of sitting down with your new machine and understanding what it needs and how it works is a foreign one in 2022, but Rudge makes this process seem almost meditative.  The idea of lighting your pipe and comprehending your new machine in your shed still appeals to a few of us.  Perhaps this is another of those colonial distinctions.  I have no trouble finding programs on industrial history and engineering when I watch British television, but Canadians seem more focused on resource extraction and office work than they are with understanding how things work and then manufacturing them.  This sort of mechanical sympathy will sound particularly foreign to Canadian ears:

Sit on a can of gasoline and light your pipe!  Those were the days...

This old book doesn't limit itself to motorcycling mechanics.  If you've never camped before they offer advice for those new to sleeping on the ground.  Rudge made sidecar outfits and even a trailer/caravan for people interested in taking everything with them.

When your trusty leather bound Rudge Book of the Road isn't teaching you how to moto-camp, it's explaining how the roads you're riding on might be built on top of old Roman roads or how to identify the architecture of the historical buildings you're touring past.  This makes me wonder whether Rudge's target audience was perhaps a bit more educated than your typical rider, but it also makes me wonder if maybe people were just a bit smarter back then without a phone to immerse them in social media in all the time.

The book doesn't stop at camping or architecture and goes on to teach you how to forecast the weather, tell direction and even tells you where the biggest hills on the island are so you know what gear to tackle them with.  It then provides charts on when the sun rises and sets so you know when to turn on your new-fangled electrical light.  Rudges were one of the first to go electric.  A few years earlier you were lighting a gas powered lamp on your motor-bike before proceeding into the dusk on mostly unfinished roads (while remembering to give the top and some oil).  There are (many?) riders now who have never turned a wrench or put a wheel off pavement.

You'll learn more from doing things than you will from "all the books or professors in the world".  Something we've forgotten in our screen-fueled information revolution?

There is another chapter written by F.A. Longman, Rudge's rider in the 1927 Isle of Man TT road race.  He writes with a racer's urgency and puts you in the rider's seat as he talks you around the T.T. mountain course while it was still young and relatively new.  It's amazing how little has changed in the racer's mindset even while they're using machines that have only just recently become mechanically self contained.  They were seeing huge leaps in speed as technology improved and riders came to terms with what this new technology was capable of.

After teasing you with the Isle of Man TT, the RBotR then gives you some 1920s style advice on how to get ready to compete in trials and perhaps even go road racing with your motorbike:

Civilisation continues to makes fools of us all in 2022...

Give up the cigarettes and alcohol entirely, but do keep the pipe smoking!  Can you imagine modern, liability-driven manufacturers encouraging riders to do this sort of thing on their new motorbike?  It's difficult not to get swept up in the enthusiasm and possibility of riding at a time when it was still new to so many people, including the people who built the things!  The lack of caution is exhilarating.

The book ends with a complete set of colour maps of the United Kingdom, but not before it talks you through buying your Rudge (this is a marketing piece, remember?).  Your fifty pounds (about $1350CAD in today's dollars) gets you the base model of the Rudge Four - for ten pounds more you can get the sport model.  New bikes were much more accessible back in the day! 

The final gift this old book gives you is a list of future readings if you're interested in motorcycles and travelling on them:

Unknown Norfolk is on my shortlist.  I wonder how many places I'll recognize from growing up there fifty years later.

The Rudge Book of the Road was such an interesting read that I'm going to keep digging for some of these other historical moto-reading options.  The RbotR suggests slipping one of these in your (tweed?) jacket pocket to read when you get to your destination and finally put your feet up - with your pipe, of course - after another exhilarating day of riding in the dawn of motorcycling.

A more modern motorcyclist philosopher, Matt Crawford, described riding as "a beautiful war", the Rudge Book of the Road shows that it has always been thus.  If you ride, you'll find this a familiar and enjoyable refrain.

No rear suspension other than springs on the seat and a tank that hangs under the frame: state of the art motorcycle engineering in 1927 seems archaic but these machines were a huge step forward in dependability and hint at the evolution motorcycles would take.

Art deco inside cover wallpaper!

Riding in the dawn of motorcycling...

Welcome to my insanity!

I'm back in the classroom again and teaching English for the first time in more than a year.  I took a senior essentials English class mainly because few people want to teach it (teachers like to teach people like themselves), and it fit my schedule.  Essentials English is just as it sounds.  These are weak English students who are getting what they need to graduate and get out into the workplace, they aren't post-secondary bound and tend to find school pointless.

The trick with students this bullied and indifferent to the school system is getting them to read and write at all.  Rather than drag them into a text book or make them watch the department copy of Dead Poets Society in order to prompt some writing, I thought I'd introduce them to my insanity.  In a week where we're all getting to know each other it helps if students see what you're into.  Showing your hobbies and interests is a good way to have them get to know you.  If they get excited about the idea of planning a trip and it prompts them to write, it's a many birds with one stone situation.

With some support, students quickly
got into planning a trip.  28 days,
unlimited budget!

The plan was pretty straightforward: you've got four weeks (28 days) starting next Monday.  Assume you've got an unlimited budget for a road trip (gotta travel on the ground).  Where would you go?  What would you do?  On the second day I gave them some pointers on Google Maps and some planning tools like a calendar and how to make notes online and they were off.  At the moment it looks like I've got pages of writing from students who generally don't.  The research they've been doing also lets me diagnose their reading level.

Needless to say, I bravely volunteered to present first.  It doesn't feel like homework when you enjoy doing it, and mine was obviously going to be a motorcycle trip.  I probably could have gone more bonkers on bike choice, but I have a sentimental attachment and some practical necessities that prompted my choice.  Rather than go for the South American adventure, I decided to focus on The States, which has tons to offer, especially if you aren't sweating the budget.

Norman Reedus' RIDE gave me an idea of where I'd like to go, the question was, could I get to the locations in the show and back home in 28 days?

Here's what I'm presenting:

I presented this to the class two days before it was due.  Seeing an example helps and gave me a chance to explain my own process in putting together the trip (deciding on a vehicle, breaking the trip into sections, etc).

That photo I doctored of a VFR800 a
couple of years ago came in handy!

Another side benefit of something like this rather than a boiler plate reading and writing diagnostic is that is gives students a lot of control over the direction of their writing, which means I get to learn what they're into, which helps me remember who each person is as well as offering me relevant subjects I can insert into future projects.

I'm hoping they surprise themselves with the results.  If I catch some of them in the future staring wistfully at Google Maps instead of playing pointless FLASH games I'll know that they've been bitten by the travel bug too!

It's a lot to try and pull off in 28 days, but when the budget is unlimited, I want more miles!

Into the Rockies ASAP, then down the coast, across the mountains again, and then up the Appalachians home.

Yellowstone!  Riding over a mega-volcano.

Death Valley and across the South West to the Twisted Sisters on the way to the Big Easy.

Back north in the Smokey Mountains and Appalachians.

I was thinking maybe an H2R or RC213 in a trailer, but then that meant driving a truck and trailer all over the place.
Better to be on two wheels all the time, and on the descendant of my first bike crush.