The Screaming Viking

I bought a device off a guy that is known as “Jack’s O2 Mod“.  This thing is a resistor connected to a couple of couplers.  It plugs in line between the O2 sensor and the fuel management system.  What it does is “fool” the computer into thinking the mix needs to run a little richer.  In one of the first posts I put up about the 13o0 I covered where the bike is setup to run lean at idle or low throttle for emission purposes.  This shouldn’t cause any damage, but it’s not the ideal situation as far as heat and performance is concerned.

The page I linked goes in to some detail about how to make the mod yourself for around a buck.  My problem is I solder like a 2 year old.  I also don’t want to make changes to the bike that can’t be backed out.  If I splice into the wires…it’s pretty permanent.  I contacted a guy that has commercialized the finished contraption and he has stopped making them.  He was putting them together and sold them for 50 bucks.  I put a post on a 1300 message board to see if anyone had one they wanted to part with.  A guy answered me, and we made the deal for 30 bucks shipped.  I received it the other day, took about 5 min to connect and fired the bike up.  The mod does exactly what it advertises it does…it clearly richens up the mix at the lower throttle settings.

It’s tough to explain why this little adjustment is needed on a bike unless you ride.  Even then, some guys don’t put in the little bit of effort to improve the performance of their bikes.  I don’t get it.  It gives me a little bit more power at the lower end of the first couple of gears..which in town and on the gravel make quite a bit of difference.  Also, spending 30 bucks here will allow me to put pipes and another intake on the bike before I have to install a new fuel management system.

I got a bit of time to work on the squeak in the rear end.  I assumed it was from the belt being too tight.  To be able to adjust it, I had to take off the muffler, loosen the rear brake caliper, and loosen the axel nut.  Then I had to adjust the tension bolts on each side of the wheel.  This sounds like a little bit of effort, and for my first time taking it apart it didn’t go too bad.  I loosened it up quite a bit, because I assumed my weight would tighten up the belt when I sat down.  I set the belt and had the kid check the tension when I was sitting on the bike…incredibly loose…too loose in my estimation, but I still took it for a little test run.  It was clear on the driveway that I had done more harm than good.  Rain was coming in so I had to put things away for the night.

The next day pulling things apart, adjusting the belt and putting things back together took about 15min….the first night it took around an hour.  I tightened the belt up quite a bit and took a swing around.  I had thought initially the noise was gone, but towards the end of my ride the noise came back.  I checked the belt and it is still a bit looser than the mfg suggests.  I’ll tighten it up some tomorrow morning.  I am hoping to put a couple hundred miles on the bike…so maybe I’ll wait till after I get back.

I ran in to a guy at the bar tonight that rides a Stratoliner.  That bike is a bit bigger than the 1300.  Weight wise it has about 200lbs, it has a higher center of gravity and about 500cc’s more displacement.  I had thought pretty hard about looking for one of those, but I had my doubts about how it would handle on the gravel.  The guy I spoke with said it is not fun to ride on the dirt roads.  I think I could probably get used to it, but I’m glad I decided to go with the 1300 instead of something quite a bit bigger out of the gate.  Maybe down the line I’ll get something bigger…but we’ll see.

The last bit of maintenance I’ll have to do, that the previous owner clearly didn’t, is to adjust the valves.  The yamahas get a pretty good “tick tick tick” sound to them after awhile.  I called a dealer to see what they would charge to do it, I figured if it was around 200 bucks I would consider it.  I’ve looked in to the job and the first time I do it I’m expecting to take around 10ish hours.  After that first time I expect to do it faster…but while I’m figuring things out it will take more time.  They quoted me north of 500 bucks to do it.  For that price I’ll take care of it myself.  Man, I don’t see how guys own these things without doing their own wrenching.  Outside of changing tires and major engine work…I’m confident I can take care of whatever is going on.  Hopefully I don’t have a serious problem where I have to test that though.

I mentioned in the first article I posted about the new bike that I needed to replace the handle bars.  I did quite a bit of reading about this process, even read through a very verbose walk through of the process.  Every thing I read about this process said you need to get either new grips or new weights for the grips because the stock 1300′s won’t work with the RSTD bars.  My bike has after market heated grips.  I asked the guy I bought the new bars from if the grips I have will work with them and the said they should be fine.  Worse case, I get the bars on and they don’t work…so I’m waiting a couple of days for grips.  We didn’t have practice yesterday (wednesday) and I was all worked up about fedexing the paperwork and checks for the house sale to the realtor (I’ll type up this story one day) so I had time and needed the distraction.

The process didn’t look too difficult, but it was my first time through it and I didn’t want to scratch anything.  As the article suggests, I did drap an old blanket over the tank so things don’t get scratched or dented up.  I started unbolting things in the order it tells you too, and much to my surprise everything came off fine.  The grips were a lot easier to get off than the article says they’ll be.  I am assuming it’s because the guy that put them on did a piss poor job of glueing them down.  I ended up bolting the bars on and taking them off a couple of times.  The article mentions one piece who’s cable isn’t going to be long enough to slip on the end of the bars after they are attached…turns out there were a couple of pieces.  I snugged things down and climbed on the bike to get them adjusted where I thought they would be comfortable.  It might be a little bit of a process to get them in the position I want…but I’ll need to put some miles on the bike before I know they needs to be turned.  While I was bolting things together I would stop occasionally and fire up the bike, rev it, flip the switches…just to make sure things were working.  Turns out the grips are weighted fine..which was a relief.  It wouldn’t have bothered me too much to spend the 60 bucks on grips, but waiting a few days for them would have been annoying.

After I bolted things together, I sat down and was really surprised just how much of a difference there is.  These new ones will let me sit back and up right quite a bit more than the old ones.  Since I was working on the bike, I decided I would change the oil as well.  I don’t know what kind of oil they had in the bike, but it was shifting ridiculously hard.  It clunked into 1st and 2nd like a grain truck.  I had problems with this on my 650, and changing to the Rotella t6 made a huge difference.  I’m hoping for the same out of this bike after things get worked to all the areas.  The oil is a little more expensive than the regular stuff, but we’re looking at 20 bucks compared to 15 bucks per change.  It seems to me if it’s clunking less it must be better for it…so that’s pretty cheap insurance.  I doubt I’ll put on more than 5k miles a year…so I’ll only change the oil once a year.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a change to test ride the bike last night.  As I was working on it, I pulled a muscle in my back.  Given my advanced weight I do have a bit of back problems.  I had a cramped muscle there for a few days that I expected would work itself out…but apparently it decided to just pop (or whatever it does).  I’ll be fine in a couple of days I’m sure.  It looks like it’s going to be wet for a little bit, so the couple of days shouldn’t be a big deal.

The next thing I’ll need to do is loosen up the drive belt.  It is whining when I give the bike power and from what I read that indicates it is too tight.  If it was too loose there would be more of a chirping sound.  I looked at it briefly last night, but I was running out of time to work on things.  I also need to have the valves adjusted.  I’m not entirely sure if I want to do this on my own or not though.  I’ve read through some stuff….but I’d have to tear quite a few things apart to get to it.  I’m sure it would cost me a few hundred bucks for shop time though.  Maybe this project can wait for winter when I’ll have days on end when I won’t be able to ride.

I have bitched and moaned on here constantly over the past couple years about my perceived “need” of a bigger bike.  While I was living in Fargo, the 650 was decent to get around town.  It ran good, sounded and performed well and was easy to toss around in traffic.  Last summer out here I rode the bike in to work a few times and it sucked.  Given the size of the bike…and my size, any head wind at all pretty much shuts it down.  With a fair head wind I can maybe get 80 out of her.  That seems like it should be enough, but the problem is with a top end of only 80, if you are cruising down the highway, getting from 70 to 80 takes a few seconds…and then being able to do only 80 you don’t pass very quickly.  Also, the bike isn’t a very comfortable ride for more than 45 min or so.  Granted my ample ass doesn’t help things, but one of the big deals for me is how the wind hits my legs.  As I’m sitting there normally, the wind will constantly push my legs off of the gas tank.  With this going on I have a couple of options, I can let the wind push my legs apart until they naturally stop…which isn’t comfortable, or I can hold my legs against the tank…which will eventually lead to some pretty significant muscle fatigue depending on the length of the trip.

I had looked around a bit and found a really nice looking bike at umotors.  It was an ’02 1700 roadstar, pretty well setup…within my price range.  Since it was after hours, I emailed them.  To my disappointment the bike was sold.  The wife and I were making a trip to minot for a dr. appointment, and on our way back I decided to check out a few dealerships.  The first ones didn’t have much for used inventory.  At the last stop, purehonda, we found a 2007 1300 v star with 17k on it.  The bike had quite a few of the niceties that I was looking for, hard bags, high windshield and floorboards.  It looked sharp and seemed to have lived a fairly easy life.  I decided to explore financing options for the bike. Read the rest of this entry »

The rise in fuel prices coupled with the very nice spring has made it easy to get the bike out earlier than normal.  This year I didn’t turn off the petcock on the gas tank.  Normally I would turn the valve off and drain the gas from the carbs, fill up the tank and be ready to rock.  Come the next year I would drain the tank, put fresh gas in and let it flow into the carbs.  The potential downside with that is the seals and everything can get dry in the carbs.  This year I decided to let the gas sit there.  It seems to have had no negative repercussions so far.

Living on the farm, I have more gravel to travel than I did across town while I was working in fargo.  Last summer there were quite a few wet days and without chaps I wasn’t able to ride to work while keeping my work clothes decent.  I did buy a cheap pair of chaps, but they are cheap and don’t fit my ample ass at all.  This year, I decided to go a different route.  Any pair of chaps to fit me were going to be quite expensive, so instead I decided to get myself a pair of unlined Carhartt bib overalls.  If you are familiar with Carhartt at all you know they make a quality product.  I bought them in black so it wouldn’t be such a stark contrast to my black leather jacket.  As douche as it sounds, they actually work quite well.  They are comfortable to wear and seem to do the job just fine.  It is a bit of a PITA to have to put these on and take them off at work…but in the grand scheme of things it’s a small trade off.  I am going from 15 or so mpg to 30ish.  I enjoy the relaxing bike ride both before and after work more than I enjoy driving the truck in.  Overall I think it will work out for a little bit.  Not sure what I’m going to do when/if I have to start hauling a baby around…might have to strap a milk crate to the back of the bike.  Should be able to find a small helmet somewhere….

I did find my old motorcycle blog quite useful as I was trying to figure out what adjustments I had made at the end of last year.  It looks like I hadn’t sync’d up the carbs or completed the individual PMS adjustment for each jug.  That makes sense because with the move I wouldn’t have had my gauges or tach until way later.  Right now I’m not even sure where my tach is…hopefully in my toolbox.  I wouldn’t be terribly heart broken if I had to buy another one, the one I did have only registers 1/2 of the actual RPMs…I’m not entirely sure what the technical reason is for that.