hotter than the sun.
I'd just like to say that it's 84 degrees inside my apartment right now, at 10:30pm, with all the windows open and a fan on. It apparently got to 103 today. "full leathers are more comfortable than skin grafts....full leathers are more comfortable than skin grafts...."

bye bye, paycheck.
I sent another payment off for my bike loan today. I figure with the down payment and the payments I've made so far, I own the frame, the seat, and the handlebars. Zoom!

back | next
back to archives | bluepoof.com
email me

the continuing saga that is peter's bike.
Peter and I did a valve adjustment on his bike over the weekend. I won't go into that here, since there's a write-up on the maintenance page now. But I will talk about the mess we found when we went to check the valves.

First of all, Peter's bike looks like Number 5 from Short Circuit. Y'know, the robot that was made up of all the junk parts? "Number five is alive!" OK, nevermind.

I just totally dated myself, there, didn't I? Crap.

So, anyway, we took off the cylinder head covers to do the adjustments, and when we got to the front cylinder block, we realized that cylinder 2 wasn't looking so good around the exhaust valves. In fact, it was looking right disgusting. I should point out at this point that Peter's bike is just a fountain of shudder-inducing close-ups of disgusting-looking bike parts. Remember when the connector to the voltage regulator caught on fire? Let's take a look at that picture again. Eew. But anyway, this time, it was the exhaust camshaft on the cylinder 2 side. We figure a teensy metal flake must have gotten into the oil supply, and gotten trapped between the camshaft and either the cover or the cylinder block that the camshaft rests on. We say this because there's now a huge gouge in the camshaft, going all the way around it. Want to know something neat? Little trapped pieces of metal that are pressed up against a shaft that's rotating really really really fast get pretty warm? How warm? Pretty darn warm. Warm enough to burn oil and scorch metal. Yum!

So, we had to take apart the cylinder head to take off the camshaft cover to clean it and assess the damage. The cover itself is twenty bucks, no problem. The camshaft, on the other hand, is around $160. And the beauty of it is that if what's above the camshaft (the cover) is all scorched, what's under it will be just as bad. And what's under the camshaft? Why, the entire cylinder block? Bam. Five hundred bucks, and you have to remove the engine from the bike in order to replace it. Basically, it's a cylinder rebuild, since you have to take everything out of the block and put it all back in the new one. You'd be surprised how much stuff there is in a cylinder block. So, anyway, Peter took the camshaft cover off, dremeled all the gook off of it, and we just put it back on. It didn't get that way overnight, and it wasn't really causing any trouble (the cam still opens and closes the valves correctly, which is the whole point of the camshaft). I don't think either of us would mind rebuilding the engine, but that'd mean that Peter would be bikeless for quite some time, and neither of us is willing to sacrifice that.

my evil plan is working.
So, over the weekend, I was looking at cycletrader just for fun, and stumbled across a '95 VFR that's being sold in the area for relatively cheap. Peter wrote down the phone number and called the people, but they weren't home and he left a message. He was hoping to hear back from them today; I wonder if he talked to them.

I'd just like to say that as much as I've been teasing Peter that he should get a new bike to ride while he's mucking with the VF750, I did do my duty as a girlfriend to try and tell him that he doesn't really need a new bike. I suppose this isn't very credible coming from me, huh, but I did try! The blood's off my hands now.

If he does get it, though, I'll be trying pretty hard to get him to do this paint job on it. ;) Yum.