Musings from “Life Is a Road” author–Daniel Meyer
Archive for May, 2009
Y’all don’t forget…
May 28th
Come out and see me at the Clarksville Fine Arts Festival this Saturday. I’ll have books, about 25 watercolors, and close to 60 pencil works. Even a few prints as well!
There’s food, music, and art!
It’s going to be a gorgeous day for a ride!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
When you’re spinnin’ round..things come undone…
May 22nd
When you’re spinnin’ round..things come undone…
Yeah, that’s a line from a song. I can’t sing though, so I let y’all hum it instead.
A very true line though…
I push the Valk…and hard…
A road trip can be a month of hard riding…maybe in a couple days.
A commute in Dallas or a city like it…is just plain abuse. There’s no getting around it.
Hard throttle or hard brake. Not much in between. Ride the bike to its limits or get off the road.
I do the maintenance…and regularly check for problems…but ya can’t catch it all.
Fortunately, either by good engineering, or just her kick-ass personality, the Valk is outstanding at warning me of a situation without breaking down and leaving me standing.
Today, on the way home, she warned me.
I lost two cylinders. The customary smooth, outrageous power went away…and it was just power. No smooth. No outrageous.
I like outrageous.
Took a minute to determine that was the issue…felt at first like she was running out of gas. Exactly like that…
She cut out…sounded terrible…but still had the power to maintain the 80+ needed to keep out of the way of traffic here.
The “with impunity” part of my normal commute had to exit, stage right, though.
In Dallas, if it runs, you keep moving. I headed for the house.
Definitely electrical…had a little time to play…in the moments the cages weren’t actively trying to kill me. The cruise wouldn’t set…that’s a clue, it’s signal comes from the #1 coil…but the tach still worked, I’m not sure where they pull that on the valk.
The rest of the commute I kept wondering…I couldn’t remember…did she have multiple pickups? Could one of them be bad? Bad coil? Ignition box going? Voltage problem?
Nah, plenty of voltage. I’ve guage for that.
Two cylinders dead. #1 and #2…the #1 coil then (left frame rail, outside).
Home we got. Pulled the tank. Nothing obvious wrong. Pulled the coil. The ground side connection was just slightly wobbly…the spade terminal expanded a bit allowing it to wobble.
Is that enough?
Oh hell yeah. Coils are interesting critters.
They are powered all the time the machine is on…the magnetic field builds…to fire one you break the ground (that’s what the ignition box does, clean break at precise time, based on what the pickup(s) are telling it). When the ground breaks the magnetic field collapses, ZOT!
With a loose connection…just slightly breaking clean ground…the magnetic field may never build enough to collapse…it may build fine but with the bad connection may fire prematurely…or weakly…or over an extended period instead of a “snap”.
Pinched the connector till it fit tight again…put her back together, and off we go. Vroom Vroom!
It’s all in the details…
When you’re spinnin’ round..things come undone…
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Annnd Nobody died!
May 19th
Y’all might recall this little malfunction…
A little closer view…
Ordered some new ones…a better design this time. I haven’t ridden in DAYS! GHAAAAAA!
Was waiting on the friggen bolts to come in.
The poor postal guy…walking toward the door with a package in his hands…looks up to find a 300 LB fat guy, tools in his hands, charging down on him at a full loping run, lunging for the package and shouting “Oh thank GAWD!”
NASCAR style… 8.3 seconds later I had them installed. Would have been sooner but I stopped to take the pictures. The packaging was still fluttering in the air as I roared out of the driveway.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh! A ride! Maybe I won’t have to kill anybody now.
Better design, yes? Much stronger.
Incidentally, I’ve figured out how to clean my bike! It’s not so hard…remove old dirty broken part…install new clean unbroken part, go for ride!
Near death experience?
I can’t get a clear picture of it, but the other riser is cracked in the exact same place this one broke. BOTH of them are also cracked where the bolt opposite this broken side holds the cap on.
Wouldn’t have taken much more of a bump and I’d have been holding a loose set of handlebars and wondering just how the heck I was going to explain that to whatever I ran over/through…and possibly screaming like a cheerleader on helium…depending on my mood.
If y’all have these…or similiar…note the thin-ness where mine broke…I HIGHLY recommend you replace them. Risers are not a wear item. A break is sheer bad design and bloody dangerous.BOTH of them are also cracked where the bolt opposite this broken side holds the cap on.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Blaarggg!
May 13th
Ton of bricks > me.
Caught the avian swine bubonic ebola zombie plague virus…or something like that.
Monday…one nostril decided it was allergic to something…little stuffy…just one nostril…no big deal. Tuesday felt better.
Wednesday, I was so sick and unsteady that I couldn’t get out of bed.
Did the only sensible thing. Emailed the boss that I wouldn’t be in, went back to bed, and passed out.
Half a bottle of Nyquil may have come into play there somewhere.
We’ll see how tomorrow goes.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Well…*that’s* not good…
May 5th
Y’all see what’s wrong with this picture?
Here, I’ll zoom in a bit…
Soooo….that was just a bit of a surprise…there was this hard stop, ya see…and the bars dropped…kind of hard to steer when the bars are beside your tank…
The bottom half of that riser is gone too…there’s a stress mark in the chrome…that would have done me in I expect…
Pretty sure they are Custom Chrome risers. Been a while since I bought ‘em. Should have noted before buying that they weren’t beefy enough at the point where they broke. Most every other model is stronger there.
They are the first ones shown in this article
I wouldn’t use ‘em (again). If you have them, I’d change to something else. I ride, and ride hard…but there is no reason other than faulty design for them to have broken.
Sigh. Parts are on order. Hope I get ‘em quick! I’ve already got the shakes!
Must. Ride. (bounces up and down looking for the UPS guy)
I suppose I’ll have to take the cage in to work tomorrow.
I wonder where I’ve left the keys to that thing…
I wonder if it’ll start.
Sigh. Parts are on order.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer