Finishing Touches

The snow is slowly receeding.  This week I was down in the city and saw someone buzz by on a bike and got all revved up.  Over the past couple of weeks I've put the Ninja back together.  It's about where I want it now in terms of looks.  It's gone from a debranded, flat black angry young man's bike to a colourful machine that knows what it is.


After it warmed up enough to get the paint sorted I sourced some stickers from The Sportbike Sticker Shop.  They arrived the day before they were supposed to in a plain envelope with cardboard backing in perfect shape ready to apply.  Since I was going for a blue and orange colour scheme and I could colour customize the Ninja stickers, I did.
  




I went for black Kawasaki logo writing for the lower fairing and 650r stickers for the front.  I picked up a Triumph sticker for the toolbox and the Japanese kanji for shinobi (Ninja).  Instead of on the toolbox the kanji ended up on the bike on the 'interesting' side (the side with the shock).  The metallic silver sticker looks great on the flat black leading into the exhaust port on the fairing.

The stickers went on well and seem to have bonded perfectly.  The site says you can clearcoat over them, so I'll do that as a final step and it'll be done.  I recommend The Sportbike Sticker Shop - you get your order quickly, it's very competitively priced and the stickers are quality pieces that look great when you get them on, just don't be surprised if you get what looks like a letter from a relative only to find it full of awesome stickers.



With any luck we'll have some heavy rain and then a 10+°C day and I'll be off on the kingfisher coloured Ninja.

What thirty bucks gets you from The Sportsbike Sticker Shop

Bikes v. Cars, the one we lose

$33,800

Since I started riding last year I'm smitten with motorbikes.  I like old bikes, new bikes, sport bikes, adventure bikes, bikes with sidecars, hyperbikes, scamblers, cafe racers, touring bikes, low cc bikes, big cc bikes... I dig 'em all.  The motorbike offers a unique approach to efficiency and size in personal transportation that most other vehicles can't touch.  I'm not a big fan of choppers or Harley type cruisers, but I get the appeal.  One I don't get though is the CanAm Spyder.

A thirty-four thousand dollar tricycle?  I'd be sorely tempted to pocket five grand and buy a Mazda Miata.  The Mazda is cheaper, gets better gas mileage, corners better and goes significantly faster all while keeping you dry and carrying way more stuff.  It's not like the Miata is a slouch on the road either, it'll put a smile on your face in the curves.  The Mazda not only gets the wind in your face but in your hair too (you don't need a helmet).

$28,250

One of the reasons I'm so fixated on bikes is that they outperform the most engaging experiences I've had driving cars.  As a sensory experience and a source of efficiency and power bikes take some beating, except in this case.  I don't mind trading some safety for that kind immersive, complex experience.  When it comes to Miatas and Spyders though the calculus clearly points to the four wheeler.

Mechanical Sympathy

At the end of a twisty road, deep in the hills, the shop of my dreams...

courtesy of www.floorplanner.com, it's easy to play with, give it a whirl!

Since doing bodywork on my first bike, I've remembered how much I enjoy doing it.  The new shop will be a working paint shop with a booth and an oven capable of power coating parts.

PAINT

Open faced paint booth: Paint-booths.com

Price:  $2599

PAASCHE HSSB-30-16 30" Paint Spray booth

Price: $525

MECHANICS

DSA800SE-GL2 30L (8gal) 1600W dual 20/40KHz Ultrasonic parts cleaner
$850 

20 Gallon Heavy Duty  solvent parts cleaner
$115

Anderson Motorcycle Stand
http://andersonstands.com/workshop_stands.htm
700x2100mm
$2900

Industrial Air
60 Gallon Electric Air Compressor
24x27in footprint
$710

accessories (hoses, connectors)
$50

High Volume Low Pressure paint gun
California Air Tools SP-324 HVLP paint gun
 http://www.californiaairtools.com/spray-guns/sp-324/
$107
http://www.homedepot.ca/product/sp-324-hvlp-gravity-feed-spray-gun-with-air-regulator/998799

Lincoln Electric Handy Mig Welder Kit
$450

Lincoln Electric Cutwelder
$330+tanks $300







It's a work in progress.  Wouldn't this be a nice thing to retire into?

Rearsets and Customizing how you sit on a bike

Stock Ninja on me

Unlike cars, a motorbike has a set position for all riders.  Can you imagine a car that had a seat without adjustment?  That's what sitting on a bike is like.  When one doesn't fit you make adjustments, unfortunately most of those adjustments are aftermarket choices.  If something doesn't fit, you customize.  This is yet another way bikes are different from cars.  Can you imagine if all car drivers had to customize their own vehicles?  There would be far fewer traffic jams...

Modified Ninja on me

If I make some minor adjustments to the rearsets (foot pegs and the frames they attach to) on my Ninja I can reduce my forward lean by almost half, relax my knee angle and make the bike a custom fit for me.  The other advantage of custom rearsets is that they allow you to focus the bike.  Instead of the stock 2-up rider/passenger rearsets, many are simplified, single rider kits that allow for adjustable footpegs that suit the rider's dimensions.

Modifying your rider position is a next level move in riding.  Don't be satisfied or dismiss a bike that feels a little out of sorts.  With some minor upgrades you can set your foot pegs and controls just where you want them.

Micro Ninja

I picked up a Celestron digital microscope/camera a few weeks ago.  These are surprisingly cheap and let you take some astonishing video and photography on a micro level you might not otherwise get to see with a normal camera and even the fanciest macro setup.  

The model I got takes 4mb images and does high-def video at high frame rates (for smooth slow motion).  After messing around with ice crystals and eyeballs I turned the it on the Ninja.

I've always thought the petal type rotors on the Ninja are a nice feature, and up close they take on an abstract modernism that is really beautiful.  I couldn't help but critically exam them while they were under the microscope, they seem to be wearing very evenly.

Looking at the chain up close was another matter.  What I thought was a clean, well lubricated chain didn't look so clean under a microscope.  The road grit that gets caught up in the lubricant is obvious at even low magnification.  I suppose the only time your chain looks nice is before you use it.

The radiator fins made another interesting closeup.  These look perfectly formed and even to the naked eye, but up close the folds in the cooling fins look like they were made by hand.  It's another world when you get to micro-photography.  No corrosion and they look to be wearing well though.

The small-print on the tires are very sharp considering that they are branded into rubber.  The sidewalls look to be in very clean shape after my first season too.

What was freakier was looking at the micro-detail in the treads.  Motorcyclists have such tiny contact patches on the road, they tend to be much more tire focused than four wheeled vehicles.  With the naked eye the tires on the bike still look in great shape, but under the microscope they made me nervous.  Don't look at your bike tires under a microscope unless you've got a strong stomach:

That's the narrow end of one of the tread cuts on the rear tire (not quite a season old) of the Avon Storms on the Ninja.  Once again, they look in great shape to the naked eye, but tires are the sharp end of the spear on a bike and up close they show their wear in the tread grooves.  In this case it looks like the contact patch is in good shape but the rubber in the grooves has dried out.

As a photographic exercise the Celestron digital microscope/camera was a lot of fun to play with, and at only about fifty bucks it might also make a handy diagnostic tool (the photos are jpgs and the videos are avi, so you could easily share them with people too).  In video mode it could create high-def, high frame rate (slow motion) images as you scan over an area and show cracks or damage in fantastic detail.  It would be interesting to run this over internal engine parts after high mileage to get a sense of how they wear.