the daily random.
Kim, Peter, and I took a trip down to Road Rider this afternoon. Kim bought a pair of
Bohn Bodyguard
pants, which are pretty cool. You wear them under your normal pants,
and they have padded hips, shins, knees, and kidneys, if I remember correctly.
She also got a Fox tank bag. From what we can gather, it's the same one
that Peter uses, and he really likes his a lot. It's not magnetic, has
a nice map pouch, and holds a lot of stuff. Hopefully that'll work well
for her too. While at Road Rider, I picked up a black bungee net for the
SVS (the one I have on the Nighthawk is blue! I can't use a blue bungee
net on a red bike! *wink*), and a free copy of Friction Zone, but otherwise escaped with my wallet
unscathed.
I really like Friction Zone. I'm thinking of horking over the $30 for a subscription. This month's issue has a nice article on carburetors; it's well-written and easy to understand, and has useful diagrams accompanying the text. There's also a section in the magazine about CHP motorcycle accident reports (this month's detailed an accident in which the valve stem on the rear wheel separated slightly, causing the tire to deflate quickly, and the motorcycle to fishtail. The driver managed to pull to the side of the road, but both s/he and his/her passenger were thrown from the bike. The driver emerged with minor injuries, but the passenger was wearing a helmet that was slightly too large, and when s/he landed, s/he experienced major blunt force trauma to the skull and a cracked spine. Despite CPR, s/he died en route to the hospital. Moral: check your tires and tire pressure before heading out, and make sure your helmet fits!). That was a bit of a downer, huh? I promise the rest of the magazine is upbeat. :)
peter's bike.
Peter brought some gas back to his bike, and it started up after a few
tries. We let it run and warm up in his garage for a while (funny how even
with the garage door open, those fumes really fill up the room), and
entertained ourselves by revving the engine and watching smoke literally
pour off the bike from the oil or coolant burning off. His bike also has an interesting
tendancy towards engine percussion, which I'm pretty sure is the valves tap tap
tapping. Peter's been saying for a while that his bike needs a valve
adjustment (well, that's what he *means*. What's he's *really* been saying
is "we need to reassemble that Nighthawk so that you can start working
on *my* bike next!"), so it looks like that's next on the queue.
I'm a bit concerned about the extraordinary amount of smoke off the bike, too. I guess the first thing to do there is to check if the smoke is blue or white. If it's blue, then it's an oil problem. I've heard that fully synthetic oil can leak through loose ring clearances more easily than petroleum oils; that's something to check out (the loose ring clearances, I mean). Blue smoke can also be an indication that there's a valve stem seal loose, and since we've already determined that we need to do a valve adjustment, that's a good guess. If the smoke is white, on the other hand, then it's water. That's a larger problem, because that's often a really good indication that the head gasket is leaking badly. The more research I'm doing on this, the more that I think that the tapping engine and excessive smoke are related; the more I think they're related, the more I'm thinking that Peter should take the bike to Spears. I've read more than one report now of people saying, "yeah, I heard this tapping noise right before the engine seized," and if there's a blown gasket in there, too, I'm not sure I want to be the one to rebuild any part of the engine. Damn. I wish that there was a way to learn the mechanical stuff without being responsible for someone's personal safety and bike survival. :(