Dumb things I gotta do

I'm just trying to take stock here of unfinished business on the bike...

First and foremost, I need to pass inspection, which means getting the horn functional again. It mysteriously stopped working when I did the suspension swap, and I haven't taken the time to track down exactly what's broken.

Second, I need to solve the ABS and grip heater switch problem. Both switches mount to a plate that screws to the bolts holding the handlebars to the triple tree. Unfortunately, with the new setup, the spacing is different. I think I'll do something that mounts to just the right hand side, a small piece of aluminum or something. Either that, or I'll put together something that mounts to the handlebar crosspiece.

Next, I have to address the steering lock situation. I managed to get the ignition lock subtly misplaced, and the lock isn't working. I can't even turn on the parking lights... Although this might save my battery.

The sidestand is also too short now, and leaves the bike at an awkward angle. I'm thinking of just welding a short piece of steel into place near the end to lengthen it.

My wiring for the auxiliary fog light is still in place, but I have no mount made up for it. I'd really like to get that take care of. I don't feel right without extra light out front.

Handlebar risers would be a good, no, a GREAT idea. I may try to make do with the 25 mm risers in the tool box next time I have the handlebars removed. I'll probably have to fabricate some spacers to get the longer screws from the 35 mm risers to seat properly.

What else, what else? Oh yes, I want to make a mounting plate for the 'Dakar' tool kit, so that I can carry it on the tail of the bike without needing any other luggage.

Odds and Ends

I thought I should post an image of the Touratech tail light support I installed. I picked it up at the ADVRider flea market for about 20 bucks, and it should save me considerably more than that in the event of bottoming the rear. Admittedly, it's less likely these days with the upgraded suspension, but after all: Now I'll be hammering it harder off road.

Here I'm getting ready to begin:


And here it is, installed:



Installation was quite straightforward, but a little difficult because of the tight confines. I rather wish I had done this while I had the exhaust cans off the bike, as the crosspiece got in the way. It also makes sense to take off the bar at the rear of the luggage rack if you can.

As this was a used part, there were a couple of issues. It was lacking some of the washers and nuts needed to secure things, and one of the black plastic spacers was missing. I made these replacements:



You can see where they were installed in the first picture, above the connections up in the wheel well.

Finishing up

Today I took care of a few last details on the suspension upgrade. Primarily, this means cutting the tie wraps I was using to hold the ignition cylinder to the upper triple clamp, and fabbing something up.

A poster at ADVRider.com who did this same upgrade put up some pictures and drawings, but since my triple seems to be of a slightly different design, so is my upper plate. I didn't take any pictures of the machining process, but at least I have the final unit captured.

It's made of three main pieces, a top plate and two connecting rods. The top plate was bored for the lock cylinder, and drilled for the three bolt holes. I also put a tab that matched the shape of my triple tree.

I also got the beak attached, which required four new mounting holes. It sits a little farther back than it used to, but not by very much. I need to try and compress the suspension, to see if I need to add washers to adjust the angle of the thing.

Now if I can just figure out why my stupid horn stopped working... I've got to pull out the multimeter and see what's going on in there.

Dead horn?

*sigh*

I took my bike to the DMV inspection station today, and discovered that my horn is not working. I suppose I should have tested it after I reinstalled it. What a pain in the ass.

The guy offered to let me come back later, but I asked him to just fail me, so I have a few days to work on it. I'm sure it's something simple, but I don't have time in the middle of a work day to take care of this crap.

A quick test ride

Yesterday, I realized that if I do not get the bike inspected today, I can't legally ride it over the weekend. That would suck.

So I buttoned it up, leaving off only two things. One is the front beak, which I plan to put back on once I grind off the bosses on the lower triple that get in the way. The other is the ignition lock holder, but that was all good with a couple of zip ties.

The bike is completely, utterly different from what it was before. And I mean that in the best possible way. Small bumps aren't noticed, large bumps don't upset it. Brake dive is minimal, but it's easy to raise the front suspension noticeably with the accelerator. I love it.

Pictures later.

More morning wrenching

I can't leave the job alone as long as it is unfinished. I had 20 minutes this morning, and used 30 of them to reinstall the rear master cylinder and flush the rear brake lines. I used just about all of the DOT4 I had on hand, but that's just perfect, since you can't keep that stuff around.

Tonight I begin reinstalling pieces in earnest, beginning with the exhaust system. The bike should be rideable by tomorrow. Good thing, too. I need to run it over to the inspection station before the weekend if I can...

Good news on the brakes front: I went home at lunch time, and the brake lever was still tight, with no indication of leaks in the system. I think five hours at pressure should be sufficient to prove the system sealed.

These are details of the upper and lower banjo fittings. The upper is a 90 degree fitting oriented exactly opposite to the way the OEM 60 degree fitting was. This lets me put the brake line up between the triple trees immediately, and carry them down near the front of the fork leg.




I took the opportunity, while I was home, to do just a bit more disassembly towards the rear shock install. The pannier lugs came off, as did the side plastics. I had removed the right side muffler this morning, and I sprayed and loosened the nut holding the left side muffler just now. I also sprayed the joint between the pipes, and gave the rubber/steel hanging interface a bit of grease. This evening I can pull the muffler and proceed to raise the subframe.

Here's a picture of how I held the subframe up for the shock change. I used a ratcheting strap between the cargo rack and the handlebars. Instead of following the official directions to completely pull the subframe, you can easily remove just the lower two bolts, loosen the other two a bit, and swivel the whole thing up. Watch the electrics! You need to move a few things out of the way to avoid damaging them.

A little progress

I worked on the bike a bit more on Monday evening... And very early this morning, as well.

Last night I knew what I wanted to accomplish: Install and bleed the brakes. To do this, I needed to take the brake line and banjo fittings that Jim sent me, and put them together into some semblance of the real thing.

I had little choice but to use the 90 degree fitting up at the bracket for the ABS diversion. That actually worked out very well, with the fitting pointing forward and in towards the center of the bike. I routed the hose as best as I could, and got to work building my hose.

The first fitting went on beautifully, locked down tight. The second gave me some concern, as it didn't feel right, and kept twisting. Sure enough, it was leaky when tested. A second try led to seeming perfection, although I had to cut back some of the braided stainless steel in order to get the inner hose to fully seat in the fitting.







I filled and bled the brake system, and then left it to sit with pressure (velcro wrap on the handgrip). If it's ever going to leak, I want it to do so in the garage.

Then I figured it was time to get after the rear end of the bike. So I grabbed the installation ins... where were my installation instructions? A few moments of panic were eventually resolved by visiting the Ohlins web site. The first step is to remove the right muffler.

That took PB Blaster, a pry bar, and a small elbow injury. But I got it off. Then it was time for work, so I had to leave the job for later.

Suspension Upgrade Underway

I had a busy weekend, partly due to the fact that I finally have all the parts I need to do my suspension upgrade project. JDRadman has been a huge help, to the extent that he even forwarded me some brake line parts I can't source locally. I can't thank him enough, so I am not even going to try, although whenever I meet Jim in person I'm going to ply him with bourbon and beer.

Saturday morning I saw that the weather was nearly perfect. This meant I had to (oh, the horror) go for a ride with the wife. After a quick shopping trip, we headed out to burn up some fuel, since I need the tank to be light when I lift it for the shock swap. We hit an old railroad bed I like to ride, and I could easily feel the weakness of the stock suspension riding two-up with luggage over small whoops.

We got home and had some lunch, and then it was time to work... So I forced myself to start. I always have a terrible inertia about these things.

The job started well, I took some measurements of the bike loaded and unloaded, as a baseline for comparison. Before the job, the bike looks like this:



Then I took off the plastic, front wheel, handlebars, beak and fork tubes. This took very little time, and I was feeling great.



Next it was time to attack the triple tree. The big outer nut came off easily enough, but the countertube frustrated my every effort. Heat didn't break it loose, PB Blaster didn't seem to help. I actually bent a big Bondhus T-handle in the middle of the beefy handle, all to no avail. After attacking it for far too long, I gave up in disgust and defeat, forced to leave my bike on the walkway as a reminder of my mechanical ineptitude. When I retreated the bike looked just like it does in the above picture, except that I replaced the jack with stands and strapped the centerstand tightly into place.

I awakened the next morning keenly aware of the challenge that awaited me. It took me three aeropressed double-shot americanos to get motivated. But motivated I finally was, and I attacked the problem again. First I tried the 'right' tool for the job, and found that things were still as tight as... , so I gave that up for lost. I was within perhaps five minutes of just cutting the thing off, when I decided that if I was going to be destructive, I could perhaps be intelligently destructive.

I locked a pair of vise grips on to the countertube just as tight as I could get it. Then I took the hollow handle from my jack and put that over the handle of the vise grips. The fit was surprisingly good. Stretching my arms from breaker bar to pillion grab handle, I pulled for all I was worth. After an agonizing moment POP! went the tube, and out it came without further drama. There is no visible corrosion, no hint of red (or any) loctite, just a countertube with damaged threads where I used the wrong tool for the job but got 'er done.

After that progress was as expected, but I was watching the clock because I had to leave the house. I assembled the trees, measured and found I needed 7 mm of spacer for the top nut, and started searching. I didn't have anything that would fit directly, but I did find a small piece of 6061 T6 aluminum that I had cut from the end of a large bar at some point in the distant past. Said bar was about 8 mm thick, and just about the same diameter as the bearing surface of the nut, hallelulia!

I knew I spent all that money on a mini-lathe for a reason. It was a matter of perhaps half an hour to set up and cut a spacer that fit perfectly. The only closeup I took of the thing is this blurry one of the assembly during a test fitting. I don't like the look of that seal thingamie, and I believe I'll hit up the Yamaha dealer for a replacement.





In no time at all, I had the triples installed and the front forks fitted.



Then I got the front tire back on and had myself a rolling chassis again.




And aside from the brake caliper and handlebars, which are also in place, that's what the bike looks like right this second. We had to go out for the afternoon and evening, which rather killed my plans of completing the installation.

Basically, to complete the front, all I need to do is get the brake line installed. I believe I have a routing that will work, but I'll test-fit that later today. Then it's on to the rear, to put on this bad boy:



More soon!

Rear suspension...

So I've got the Yamaha fork upgrade lined up, some of the parts are here, others are in process. That left me with the rear, which would be absurdly low once I stick those long front legs on there.

I considered a stock Dakar shock, but honestly, that's not all that much better (beyond length) than the stocker on there now. That's when I saw the special buy on Ohlins shock absorbers from Dan over at Kyle Racing.

So I ordered a brand spankin' new Ohlins BM750, an 'S46HR1C1S' model. What do the numbers mean? Glad you asked!


S - single tube
46 - diameter in mm
H - Gas pressurized with a Hose-mounted reservoir
R1 - Damping adjustment knob
C1 - Compression adjustment knob
S - Hose mounted Spring preload adjuster

That's a lot of knobs. Particularly as I'm used to having only the preload adjustment available.

Battery stuff

This is a delayed update... Well, I gave up on that sealed battery from BMW of Santa Cruz. After weeks of back-order (and my bike sitting idle) I got word that the batteries they finally got have the terminals reversed.

A man can only take so much, and there was a fortuitously timed post over at ADVRider.com that mentioned another place with sealed batteries for my bike. I ordered Saturday, and rode to work on Friday. Done. The new battery (A 'Scorpion' branded product) was an easy drop-in replacement, and no more fiddling with the overflow tube.

New parts are in

On Friday I received something in the mail: My new axle and brake caliper bracket. These are the key parts needed to adapt the BMW hub to Yamaha (KYB) dirt bike forks.

This thing is a very clever design. Since the Yamaha axle is a larger diameter, it had to be bigger on both ends than in the middle,and trust me: That would make mounting the wheel quite difficult!

So JDRadman's brilliant solution was to put a nut at one end of the axle, that is also rounded and acts as the bearing surface for mounting in the fork leg.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's an essay:

ABS lower brake line routing overall

Mounting bracket and banjo bolts for front ABS intercept

Dead battery :-(

Oh dear, I went to fire up the old girl this morning and was greeted with the sick sounds of a battery that's gone belly-up. Such a shame. I was afraid this was going to happen, ever since that time it got fully discharged last year.

So I ordered an AGM sealed battery sized to fit the F650GS from BMW of Santa Cruz. At about 80 bucks shipped I hope I get a few years out of the thing.

Now I need a new trickle charger, I guess. It sounds like the old Battery Tender isn't going to work with this thing.

Looks like the fork mod idea is gaining traction

And maybe, just maybe, I can be happy that I was unable to do the work this Winter. This post at ADVRider.com will show you what I mean. It looks like one of the FFs over there will be manufacturing just the pieces I need. I'd much rather source the job to one of 'us' than either use a full Yammie front end or cobble the pieces together myself. The axle and brackets are the key pieces I'll need to use the stock BMW wheel assembly with the USD forks. I'll still have a solid upgrade path to Excel rims or whatnot, but I can do it incrementally, which is really important right now.

So here's the new seat

Rick Mayer has done a bang-up job on putting together a custom saddle for my old warhorse. The new seat is beautifully made and beautiful to look at. Click the images to see them in full. Quality is not the very best, as I took the pictures with a phone... But they're not bad for phone pictures, I figure.





It's set up as a wide-ranging compromise saddle combining long-distance two-up touring with dirt riding. I think Rick struck an excellent balance for my needs. The seat is already more comfortable than stock, and as I put a few miles on it I can only see it improving.

My new saddle is on the way!

Rick Mayer has shipped my upgraded saddle back to me as of today, and I'm dying to try it out. I'll post some pictures when it comes in. It's scheduled for delivery on Wednesday the eleventh of March.

Now I guess I ought to see about those water pump seals I've been meaning to change...