To close for comfort... circa April 2008

I had a close call today on my way to work, a not so subtle reminder that “Familiarity and prolonged exposure without incident leads to a loss of apreattion of risk.” Most of the time close calls are the cop you didn’t see and got a warning, or a near crash where you and your bike would have got banged up but would still live to fight another day. Today’s close call wasn’t on of those by any means, in retrospect I was all in and failure would most likely been fatal or close enough that I might wish it had been.

Just as a little back story last week I was stopped and lectured about my “reckless driving” and how I was endangering peoples lives, my veterans plate kept me out of handcuffs and I have been riding less aggressively since then. The cause for that stop and chat with local law enforcement was spawned by my rapid acceleration down the onramp and passing a slow moving car (it was a two lane onramp) in the process. I was riding a Triumph Scrambler so there were no land speed records broken, the less than 60hp at the crank and a 450lb dry bike do not lead to such things. I think my loud pipes and smooth line in conjunction with the slow moving car made it appear that I was going much faster than I was. Anyways for the record I am very grateful to have gotten off with just a verbal warning and understand that from the cops vantage point I must have looked to be very much in the wrong, we all have our jobs to do after all and he was doing his.

Back to the story at hand of this mornings encounter and my close call. I was commuting up I5 from Olympia to Lakewood (same exit as McChord AFB for you Zoomie types) during the morning rush hour times, between 8-9am. Outfitted in my typical commuting attired to aid in people seeing me and my survivability if people didn‘t, I was in my FieldSheer armored jacket and over pants with my ever so fashionable Icon Mil-Spec reflective vest and brand spanking new Arai XD3 brain bucket. The Scrambler in addition to the afore mentioned loutish pipes is also running a high output PIAA Super White headlight, I’d like to think I’m pretty conspicuous, guess I was wrong. Anyways in my newfound more responsible riding I was slowly passing a sliver Mercedes Benz C-class sedan in the far left lane when the driver decided that properly checking there mirrors and signaling did not apply to them. They start to slide over into the chuck of highway I was occupying, while I do not have my PhD in physics I do know that two things can not occupy the same space at the same time, ohh did I mention it was starting to rain too. I start to get on the brakes and lay on my horn, my front tire was somewhere next to either the rear driver side door or the rear quarter panel at this point. Generally this will get the driver attention who’s lack of situational awareness to decide they should get back in there lane and not kill me, I guess maybe this waste of air was busy on his or her cell phone or just didn’t give a damn. The left side breakdown lane is generally cluttered with enough random shit in the 20 miles I commute on to rebuild the million dollar man a few times over so I didn’t think that would be a very good escape route. Now hard on the brakes I am able to have my front tire dodge the rear bumper that is poised to takeout my front tire by about a foot or so In retrospect I am glad I upgraded my front brake pads to Sprint ST spec. units put in the Works Performance dual rate springs in the forks, every little bit counted today that is for sure. Now if that was it this wouldn’t have been noteworthy enough to even write up, it would have been a normal close call. With the danger of the car hitting me avoided I find myself in a new even more dangerous situation, I am fishtailing, not just a little fishtail, think a tank slapper but the front wheel is still pointing straight. When this whole this started I was going a little over 70mph indicated on my speedo, I failed to note the speed when the fishtailing started, I was sorta busy to recheck after the initial braking, sorry guys. Anyways I fucked up and failed to properly modulate my rear brake to prevent the ass end from braking loose, I was able to fight it out and straiten the Scrambler back out. What do I see in front of me, the fucking Benz dropping the hammer and hauling ass away, I guess they final saw me. I doubled down into 3rd gear since I’m only going 45mph at this point and started to drop the hammer myself, I wanted fucking blood. If I hadn’t been so busy manning the back brake I could have kicked the shit out of the car as it was trying to take me out, we were that close. I yell into my helmet and realize it is best not to chase (what would I do when I caught the car?) and slide over a few lanes to wait for the adrenaline dump to leave my system. The truck that had been behind be gave be a big thumbs up as he passed me, I guess my save was impressive to see, the alternative would have been a very nasty high side into traffic, that would have sucked a lot. I was a bit shook up the rest of the day, when I got to work I walked in and said “This bright fucking orange vest is pretty easy to see right?” I firmly believe if I had failed to recover from my ass end breaking loose I would be either dead or wishing I was. A high side at those speeds in rush hour traffic (50/50 odds that I would have gone over the center divider into oncoming traffic) I would have go run over, I’m sure my gear would have got me through the crash, but getting hit by a few tons of steel going 65mph or more nothing would have save me.

I guess I’m posting this as a reminder of the risks we all take by shaking off the steel cage, and to get it off my chest, I have made a few calls to share this with people who would understand. Sometimes you go all in and don't realize it at the time, I didn't going into this and that shock me up the most. The other thing that I want to get across is it seems that running you over is ok if they kill us. Part of me wishes I took something off that car as a trophy for living through it and to remind everyone of what can happen, there were no brake lights other than mine. Be careful out there and watch all around, people might not want to kill you but that doesn’t mean they care if they do. My skills were not good enough to save me, luck is what did it, and sometimes being lucky is better than good, you just can not count on that. Lady luck is a great mistress, but a very unfaithful wife.

On Forks... circa 2007

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”- George Bernard Shaw

Rebuild forks has been a thorn in my side since I started working on motorcycles, and I started working on motorcycles before I actually started riding them. People who have brought up fork rebuilds to me know of my disdain of doing them. I know that it is a pretty simple process to do replace fork seals and the like, I just deep down hated to do them. I would ride with blown seals, many times with replacement seals sitting in my toolbox. Safety wiring of torn or rotted out dust boots to the fork leg so I could ride without addressing the issue, was also not an uncommon sight. In retrospect it was a stupid thing to avoid doing, I had rebuilt both conventional and upside down forks and knew that it wasn’t hard to do, I had even told people it was easy. For some reason I still hated the task.



Over the past month or so I’ve had to work around this issue and around a half dozen sets of forks were rebuilt. The hatred is no longer there, I’ve got my system down and the task is now cataloged with the like of timing an old CB360 motor, and that I can do in my sleep. I’ve also figured out the root of this hatred. Pneumatic impact tools are your friend or you need weird factory tools. They, just like buying a compressor, cost more money then I normally have on hand. I am a bit ashamed to admit I still haven’t bought a compressor with all of the fun pneumatic tools, and my specialty fork tool collection is very limited. Another factor is that it seems most people either hate maintaining the front suspension on there bikes, or the bikes I seem to work on most have sat quietly for a decade or so to let the fork seals become nice and hard. Cases with hard dried up seals will almost guarantee that the forks are on a bike older than me, and that mechanically do not allow for the use of the slide hammer method of removing the seals. Rather I end up sitting there prying the seals apart with dikes, pliers and screwdrivers, not the ideal tools for the job.


With the fear and intimidation gone, so is the hatred. At the end of the day when I dump out old, smelly, burnt up, used up, nasty, and contaminated oil I get reminded that the task is reaping rewards. Not once have I finished the job and said "Damn it, the thing rode better all fucked up."

Project Bike: 1972 Honda CL175... circa 2007

Note: This bike was built for a friend of mine "G-Man" and this was pulled from a message board where it was originally posted so it might be a bit choppy. I put alot of hours into this bike and have quite a bit of pride in how it came out, hence the effort to bring it over.


Part One:
Written by G-Man

So this week I ordered the first wave of parts, totaling about $600. no big deal. They will arrive on Tuesday and Thursday. But much work still needed to be done.

Let us remember how she looked at the start of Saturday... This was not to last.



Firstly, I procured some coffee for myself and the FBR (who was gracious enough to help me through this endeavor). he promptly added grease and jaeger to it, my hero.



Now on to the fun. first we took off the seat, removed the side covers and exposed to air boxes so
we could get some pod filter measurements.



Next we decided to remove the taillight and add my low-profile one and bob the fender with an old plate.



Rear fender before...


FBR with his angle grinder...


Rear fender after...


Later on we will remove the bracket, paint it up real nice and it will be good to go. At this point the several pizzas we ordered showed up and we promptly devoured them in record speed. They were meatlovers... it was good meat. Next we decided to remove the baffle so that my ride didn't sound like a hairdryer humping a lawnmower while taking on water.

We did it the old fashion way they did abortions before Roe V. Wade...with a screwdriver and a hammer.


This worked fine for the first 2 layers... but the third layer was being a bitch. An hour and two screw drivers later a brilliant idea came to mind... SHOTGUN PIPES!!! Get the angle grinder back out.


Before and after on the exhaust...


Now we reach a holding pattern. We did flip the bar to get a feel of that the new one will be like, but other then that there is nothing much else we can do until the parts start showing up. So we put her back into the shed, said goodnight, and went inside to drink some more.


Stay tuned for next weekend when the parts are here...

Part Two:

Righto so more progress was made today, and since G-Man forgot his digi cam. I took the pics, ready here we go...


It was time to pull the levers and ditch the old style MX bar for the clubman, damn buttery soft bolts that hold the levers on got frozen, time for the angle grinder yet again.


Time to clean the pipes before final trimming...


"This doesn't feel right"


"I'm pretty good at this job, I've been training my whole life! "


Trimming up the top pipe a bit, these spark filled shots never seem to get old.


A nice stagger to the twin "free flow" pipes.


With it been cold as shit outside we opted to smoke out the shed and not waste any of the heat our poor space heater was trying to kick out.


Another picture of the pipes but with the side cover in place.


The wiring mess as we swapped out headlights.

We would have took more pictures, but with cold the batteries in the cam were dieing like it was cool. As it stood when we locked up the shed we had the pipes sorted, all the lights worked, a Harley style 5in headlight was mounted, and the wiring was about half done. New turn signals are on order as well as all the other parts we are waiting for. And just to note the pipes sound evil, it doesn't sound like a 175cc twin at all. It's a very sharp clean sound, almost a race bike type note, not blatty at all. We'll have to see how the local law enforcement likes it. Oh and the whole endeavor was fueled by (well for me at least) PBR or pre-mix (Coffee with the German additive Jager).

Part Three:
I was at work, this was written by G-Man

Well, all parts have arrived... now we just need to put them all on. This will take place sat the 24th and it will be an excellent day. Today myself and Adam did some minor work to pass the time...

First off we took the old tires to the Suzuki shop to have them put on the new ones. They won't be ready till Monday however


ahh ammo cans...is there anything they can't do?


Next we tried to put on the pod filters... They wouldn't fit. This wasn't due to size, just location and direction of the carbs. Well a quick trip to Home Depot and some moxy and we were good to go.

Surprisingly the side covers fit right over these bad boys. Terrific.

Also my plate arrived. Bought goddamn time... and some ass hammer already got G-MAN and some OTHER ass clown got GMAN...if I ever find them...


Tomorrow is the huge push... expect alot of pics.

Part Four:

Well, it's 99% done. All we need is to put the tires back on and remount the taillight bracket and then we can roll her out and ride her.





It wouldn't have been a good day if I hadn't busted out the angle grinder...



Part Five:

Today we will do the taillight and tomorrow i will grab the tires up from the Suzuki dealer. Then its done save for a few minor upgrades: need to purchase a front brake sensor for the taillight and slapping on some nice rear sets.

Righto, so she's back in on piece, we still have some small tuning issues to finish up, but this is how she looks after a few weeks in my workshop. I did manage to take a quick spin on it, she's loud, but feels like I need to mess a bit with the jetting (we did chop the pipes and put K&N pods on).



Getting the wheels back on, took the shop long enough to mount them (I was just to lazy to do it myself).


Two very nice machines, I can only imagine what the people next door think.


Done Sir, Done!!! (My other pics were blurry).

Part Six:
Written by G-Man again...

I got some more pics... this thing oozes sex. All that's left to do is some minor aesthetics such as replacing the current sets with rear sets, tuning her up, slapping on a kickstand, tracking down a front brake sensor and, eventually, putting on a solo seat and a paint job. But as of now she is ready to ride.
My nifty starter switch.





GOD DAMN... that's nice.

Part Seven: Not Really Done Yet...

This is a sample of what was done in the approx. 10 hours solid work done on Saturday. The tank is from my Super Rat project (1979 XR250 framed CB360) and fits beautifully with the frame and the seat. It's as if they were made to be be all up in each others. We fabricated mounts for the rear of the seat for stability and modified the forward mount for easier access. G-man grinding off "unneeded parts" Currently, the bike is apart and sanded down and waiting to be painted. It's going to get a solid OD Green to begin with. Once decals get made, it's going to have a badass little red/black star and stripe in homage of "Gravity Kills."

Part Eight:

For this fine machine parts have started rolling in like my humble workshop in a shed is a "real" shop. We are on a paint prepping spree, and I'm getting ready to start fiberglassing part of the front of the tank where the tunnel is since it sits much higher on the frame than it did on the proper 1979 XR250 frame. So now for the pictures of some of the yummy bits, there are some really sick fully adjustable rear shock off of a CB750 on the bike now, but I was too lazy to drag the bike out of the cold storage shed for a photo shoot at one in the morning.

New Lucas style tail light

Another angle of tail light

EX500 rearsets, they mounting holes on them almost line up dead nuts to the passenger peg mounts on the bike.

The rearsets after I gave them a little love with the angle grinder.

The tank all stripped waiting for glass and paint.

Another angle of its shiney self all sitting there, stripped naked.

Here are the tools of the painting, classy with the Rusto...


And here G-man is... Is he painting or molesting stray woodlands creatures?


Tank all glassed up.


Tank being primed.



and painted


and here are the side covers and seat



Part Eight and One Half:
This is a product of too many cameras being used at once, didn't feel like fixing it.

Since we had two cameras out there the past few days, here are the rest of the pictures of out progress. We also managed to get the rearsets mocked up. We will also have to lengthen the kickstand due to the rear shocks being a bit longer than the factory ones were, but they are fully adjustable so its all good.


The new rear shocks.


The badge mounting holes all smoothed out.


Mmmm smooth...


A super high-tech method to lift the rear of the bike...


The EX500 rearsets mocked up.


Another angle.


Now do we run a GP shift pattern, or find a longer shifter linkage rod and stay standard?

Part Nine:

All right I just finished putting in another good 4 or 5 hour block of work, hell this stuff is becoming a pretty good second job, well other than the fact that I get paid in booze, subs, and bike parts (well even that isn't that bad.) Anyways the shift side rearset is now bolted into place, we are going to run it with an upside down shift pattern for now till we find a longer shift linkage, this way we can start road testing and get the carbs in order. After we installed the new rear shocks (they are about 1.5in-2 in longer) we noticed the side stand was pretty much useless, hell the center stand didn't lift the back tire off the ground anymore. Since my poor super rat project has become a major league organ donor the kickstand was scavenged off of that, and it worked great. I don't feel too bad about doing this since on the super rat bike the added weight of the CB360 motor made that kickstand way too long. Anyways this kickstand is kinda special, I had attempted to cut it down a wee bit and re weld it years ago when I was still in Quantico, well I suck at welding and the welder I was using pretty much sucked as well (cheapo wal-mart arc jobbie), so I went to the scrap bin to find a sleeve. Well the sleeve is a chuck of gas tube from a M249 SAW, so I guess that will give G-Man some street cred points within the North East para-military cell. Fitting the rear light assy pretty much sucked, it is one of the plug and play jobs for the new Triumphs, and it is designed to go on a fender. The other thing is I have some commitment issues and I was drilling into the fiberglass tail cone, so I ended up doing some classy measuring with 550cord and prayed that I lined it up centered, I think its pretty close. The other issue that I will addressed later this weekend is the light body grounds itself, well fiberglass does not conduct well, so I'll have to run a wire for that, no big deal since half the wires were too short to reach anyways, time to break out the soldering iron. The tank looks pretty good, although I wish I glassed up the dent in it, but G-Man said he didn't care and really wanted to get it done, I'll have to live with it. The centerstand assy and stock rear brake had to be cut of since the were frozen to the pivot rod that they shared, so a few more pounds of dead weight to the scrape pile (note not thrown out, I almost never throw out parts, even silly things like cut up gas tank chunks). Well now for the pictures, I hope to get this done soon so Rock's bike can start getting some attention, then maybe mine...


The new tail light and turn signal setup, note that the tail section is not bolted into place, so I'm blaming any and all canting on that for now.


The "new" tank in fresh paint, the flash really makes the dent jump out.


A high front view, the top of the channel filled in and cleaned up pretty nicely.


The shift side rearset as she sits now, the good people at Kawi were nice enough to have the shift lever pivot on a bolt so there is nothing in the way to run this set-up for now.


The kickstand with brace.


The other side of the kickstand.


Some dead weight gone...


As she sat when I locked up the shed, I really like the new lines that tank brings to the bike.

Part Ten:

Here should be the final few pictures for this thread, the decals for the tank came in, we got it to idle ok, and G-Man took it home with him. The jetting will be tweeked a bit at some point, but is good enough for now.

Right Side.

Left Side.

Getting used to the feel and control set-up.

First ride for G-Man on his bike.

Part Eleven:

The head gasket was leaking on one of the cylinders, so that had been the real problem when I could never seem to get it tuned right. Honda has long since discontinued stocking the head gasket, and aftermarket ones just don't seem to exist either. After a few weeks of searching we found one place that has a N.O.S. one, we are still waiting for the guy to cash the check. Anyways here are some sad pictures of the broken dream that is currently this bike...


Guts ripped out and stuffed in a corner...


Waiting for rebirth...

Part Twelve:

We got the head gasket, installed it, and still had tuning issues. Part of which is the guy doing the tunning (me). Anyways the bike was going to go to a pro to do it right, and I figure its alot easier to tweek a carb in if we make other changes once we have a solid baseline. But no shops would touch it. So it was time to baffle the exhaust in hopes that would bring the exhaust (and in turn the carbs) closer to the stock baseline. It sorta worked, anyways here is what we did, if I had a lathe it would be alot nicer, but it works.

All the parts needed for a home made baffle system for straight pipes.

After drilling a hole in a plumbing cap and stuffing the copper rod into it.

Cross drilled 1/4 inch holes for the baffle effect.

Threaded holes for mounting to the exhaust pipe.

Exhaust packing...

Mounted up...

And from a little back...

Overall it sounds pretty good, and my attempts at tuning worked much better. Should be pretty close to finished now, maybe...