Brakes; who needs 'em?
Apparently not me.
I swapped my front levers out for Wunderlich adjustable levers (much better for those of us with shrimpy hands) and immediately noticed that my front brakes were fux0red.
Turns out that the simple act of removing the old brake lever (ONE BOLT!) pulled the master cylinder plunger pin out of the rubber boot that it lives in, thusly:
"Oh poot," said I, and threaded the spring back into the boot as best I could.
That done, I figured I'd bleed the brakes in case air got into the line. And that's when I noticed the tumor.
Yeah.
So the Beemer is once again relegated to "back bike status" (i.e. the bike that's parked in by other bikes) until I can get a replacement front brake line for it. Here's hoping Road Rider or Cal have the right size stainless steel line in stock.
Take my money awaaaayyyyy!
I finally got off my behind and made up a PVC tool tube for my F650GS. I have these on both of my XT225s and love them.
Here's the write up for the XT225-- the only difference with the F650GS was that I drilled two small holes in the skid plate to mount the angle bracket. I also installed two screw caps instead of a screw cap and a plug cap, so that I can open the tool tube from either end.
There are no problems with clearance with the front tire (stock size Tourance).
Sorry for the weird lighting effects; this picture was way backlit.
In the tool tube, I keep:
* 5-14 mm sockets
* 1/4" socket wrench
* Extension for the 1/4" drive sockets
* Folding hex keys
* Folding torx keys
* 13-in-1 ratcheting screwdriver
* Small vice grip
* Cable ties
* Roll of electrical tape
* Roll of Rescue Tape
* 1 pair of vinyl gloves
I'll also be putting 3 tire irons in once they arrive in the mail (my extra ones went to Seattle with the white XT225).
When I bought the F650GS used, it came with bar risers. Unfortunately, they were already a little too tall for me while I had the normal seat; with the lowered seat, I felt a bit as though the Beemer had ape hangers.
Fortunately, Peter and I have memberships at TechShop in Menlo Park and have taken their Safety and Basic Usage class for the milling machine.
Pardon the crappy pictures; they were taken with a cell phone camera.
The bar risers before:
Setting up the mill to take off a quarter inch:
Milling the bar riser:
One down, one to go:
I installed the shorter risers on the Beemer yesterday morning before my Wind Dancers ride, and I believe the experiment was a success. Even taking off just a quarter inch made my wrists more comfortable. I might take off another quarter inch in the future, but for now, this works.
Hooray for TechShop!
So, while diagnosing the intake manifold problem, I discovered that my throttle cable was frayed. Apparently this is a common problem with the F650GS as Die Korporation picked a stupid, sharp-angled, way to route the cable under the airbox.
Anyway, I bought a new throttle cable at Cal BMW when I picked up the new intake manifold.
Unfortunately, Die Korp, in its infinite wisdom, produced two lengths of throttle cables for the F650GS, depending on year, and naturally I wound up with the wrong length. This, of course, begs the question of why the parts guy didn't look up my model year on the schematic, but I digress.
Hint: with a throttle cable installed and the throttle closed, you don't want your throttle body to look like this:
At least I figured it out with a very minimum amount of head-scratching as to why the bike was suddenly idling at 4000 RPM.
So yesterday I went back to Cal and got a new, correct, throttle cable. Funny how much better that works!
It only took almost three weeks, but I finally have the Beemer happy again. Yay!
Unfortunately, three weeks of riding the XTs have spoiled me with their perfect-for-short-arms posture and my hands are killing me today.
I think the root cause might be that the bar risers on the F650GS may be about 1/2" too tall for my shrimpy arms. I may bring the bar risers into TechShop over the weekend and use the mill to take a little off the top, as it were.
Remember how I said at the end of the exploratory Santa Cruz mountains ride entry that the bike was starting to run poorly?
Well, it got worse. It got tons worse. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it pretty much just sucked. I've spent the past four nights tightening things and examining hoses and spraying electrical cleaner on connections and pretty much anything else you can think of when one's bike suddenly puts you in mind of the mechanical bull at the county fair.
Thanks to the wizards at The Chain Gang, though, I finally found the problem:
One should not be able to put one's HAND through one's INTAKE MANIFOLD.
Let's look at that again, shall we?
Well, now, I guess that might cause some PROBLEMS with the FUEL INTAKE, now, wouldn't it?
So tomorrow's task is to call up Das Korporation (also known as Cal BMW) and pay many US dollars for a replacement intake manifold. At 90 bucks a pop, I better not be replacing these every 11,000 miles...
Barring anything weird popping up when I do its annual service, the white XT is now ready to go to Seattle!
Tonight I mounted a Turbo City Borrego rear rack; here's the write-up.
I originally wanted another Happy Trail rack, like I have on my black XT, but it doesn't appear that Happy Trail is making that model anymore. I didn't like the looks of their new model, and since I liked the Turbo City windscreen I put on the white XT, I ordered their rear rack.
I think it looks pretty good:
It's going to be a right purdy mini tourer. :) :)
In preparation for its upcoming ride to Seattle, I bought a Turbo City windscreen for the white XT.
Here's the installation write up!
It's "annual XT service" time in our household, which means that I get to spent a disproportionate amount of time with my favorite 225cc thumpers.
I did my XT over the weekend, finishing up last night, with a surprisingly minimal amount of drama. I guess one benefit of not putting many miles on the bike is that it takes a while for things to go wrong. ;)
The only trick was that the service manual claims that there's a "T" marking on the flywheel for setting the piston to top dead center, but there's not. There's something that looks like an elongated "H" and then a vertical line. Anyway, I misread it and ended up accidentally adjusting the valves at the end of the exhaust stroke instead of after the compression stroke. That made for a very noisy bike when I started it back up!
The XT225.com boards suggested the following trick: put your thumb over the sparkplug hole when you manually crank the engine. That way, you can feel the "suck" and "squeeze" strokes and you'll know when the piston is at TDC (basically, after your thumb gets blown off the sparkplug hole). It worked like a charm and the XT225.com guys have now made me an honorary redneck backyard mechanic. :D
Hopefully the other XT will get done shortly as well...I need to put a little extra love into that one as it's going on a road trip soon! Peter decided after riding the DRZ400 in Australia that he really doesn't want his XT anymore, so I'm going to bring it up to Seattle and leave it next to Colleen's garage. That way, I can fly up to Seattle and go off-roading with Colleen and her KLR whenever I want! I'm super excited about that.
With any luck, therefore, I'll be riding the white XT up to Seattle around Labor Day weekend and Colleen will ride her KLR down to meet me partway. More on that as it unfolds. :)
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