Loss of Control

The centerstand of the BMW gave way yesterday morning.

I was parking the bike, as per the usuals, and just as I hoisted it onto its centerstand I heard a strange noise and the machine suddenly pitched forcefully away from me, landing on its side.

Woe and utter confusion - what happened to the laws of physics???

Well, what had happened was that the left side "foot" or "leg" of the centerstand had bent and sheared nearly off, unbalancing the bike. Ultimately, after many hours of calming down and becoming much less angry and frustrated, the damage sustained is minor with the most being concentrated in the sub-$100 centerstand part. A few scratches here, a scuff or two there. It still sucks and sent me for a loop at the time, but what can you do?

Rude, rude stuff

The XT's carb is in a few pieces on my garage floor. The bits have been delicately arranged on an old washcloth - for the most part, cleaned.
Old gasoline turns to varnish. I was told this over and over, "You'll have to clean the carb." and those who told were right. It took some light tapping on a towel wrapped float bowl, but I finally pried the damn thing off of there - while managing to do a decent, if non-intended job of saving the bowl gasket. I have today found out that this gasket is unavailable. If I had destroyed it, I'd be making my own.
So with the bowl off I found a light layer of sticky gunk on everything. This gunk began to vanish quickly with the use of Carb Cleaner - basically spray laquer thinner - so evil. Evil but super effective for melting off the crap that was gumming up the works.
The jets and needle seem to me to be ok - what happens with these old thumpers is vibrations cause the needle rattle against the inside of the jets, widening the fuel port in an oval pattern. Shit looks pretty round to me.

My friend A. said, while I was describing my discoveries, how the float bowl kinda works like a toilet bowl - and it really does - as the level of gasoline in the bowl rises, it lifts two floating plastic shapes, which in turn push a small needle up into the spot where the fuel comes into the bowl, slowing the rate of new gas. As the gas in the bowl decreases - because the throttle is open and its going up the jets into the Venturi to mix with air, the plastic shapes fall slightly which pulls the needle out of the fuel entry port which lets in more gasoline.

Mark at ThumperStuff is sending down some diaphrams for a second part of the carb as well as a new spark plug and the replacement part for the piece of metal I found on the first day. When the plug shows up, I can check to see if I am getting spark. It is encouraging to have a helpful, enthusiastic and knowledgable parts supplier.

Clown time is over

Carburetor theory and tuning by Dan.

Brand new key

As I write, the ignition cylinder sits behind me, in a zip-lock bag like so much evidence. (But of what? abuse? neglect?)
Tomorrow or this weekend it'll be hustled to a reputable locksmith.

As for the carburetor, the MANUAL says it plainly enough:

"Slacken fully the carburettor(sic)/air filter hose screw clip and remove the two socket screws which retain the inlet stub flange at the cylinder head."

I must not have the right set of tools for that last bit, removing the two socket screws. They come straight out of the back of the cylinder head and right into the workings and body of the carb - meaning there is strangely little space in which to fit an L-shaped allen wrench. I got one of the screws loose but had to use a set of plies which, even if I'm not that worried about appearances, scratches the hell out of the screw and couldn't be the proper way to get things done.

The Power of Language (ongoing)

(Overheard and submitted by ST2.)

"Uh, maybe the middle of the sun is NOT where I wanna be right now."

Parts via post

A tidy cardboard box sat on my doorstep when I returned home last night - it was from ThumperStuff!

Oh man, a pile of new items for the XT that included all new cables (four counting the decompression cable), some filters, some electrics and a gasket. Exciting.

Other than that, progress has not been made due to other commitments such as the Ducati / Aprilia / MV Agusta shop and the day-job.

The next two jobs to be tackled are as follows:
1. Remove the ignition cylinder and take it to a locksmith to be re-keyed. Who knows where the original key is, I don't.
2. Take the carburator off and "inspect it". I have never taken a carb apart or off or anything like that - it should be super f'ing interesting.

I almost forgot - I had left the oil sump pan off of the bike for no other reason except that it was now clean and on the shelf while the bike is still pretty filthy. All of the oil had drained out of the bike except for a few drops that would fall each day on the large piece of cardboard that the old machine is parked upon. Last night the suggestion came, from mechanic S., that the bike would be better served with the sump pan back on if only to make sure a bunch of damn black widows don't crawl up into the engine and establish yet another messy graveyard in my garage.

Kickstart

This evening I "heard" back from Mark over at ThumperStuff. From the images and a description of my kickstarters orientation, he reckons this mysterious and beaten sliver of 25 year old Japanese metal is indeed tied to the kickstart mechanism.

The bike has a single cylinder. It also has an extra lever on the left handlebar; the decompression release. One pulls in this lever and slowly moves the kickstarter lever through its range of motion while looking down at a small window at the top of the cylinder head. The idea is to move the piston just past the compression stroke. This can be determined by looking for a yellow plate to appear in the small window.

If one attempts to stomp on the kick-starter without setting the piston just past the compression stroke, and perhaps stomping down while the engine is set just before the chamber goes boom, well then, the kickstart lever fights back with a great deal of force throwing your leg up in the air and, as I've just learned, maybe even your knee up into the handlebars.

Good stuff!

I ordered some reasonably priced replacement parts as well as a couple of gaskets. The next time I spend with the bike I think I will remove the carburetor to inspect and clean.

The BMW got a good workout this weekend. Stazz stopped by on his CB5/50 on both Saturday and Sunday and we went for some quick and hard, for me at least, riding up through Angeles Crest and upper and lower Big Tujunga. I have not felt so comfortable on the bike as I did on Sunday riding home back down the 2 highway. The big ol' heavy thing seemed to flow right through corners, more leaned over than I have been in a while. Practice I guess.

It is burning oil still. Also, the front fork seals are toast as oil began to weep out under hard braking.
Now that I am back on a full-time gig for the foreseeable future, I think it is time to invest a bit into 1988. It is time for a spline lube, as I have no idea if/when one was ever done in addition to these damn seals.

The oil I will monitor this week. I'll present the drop in level to my mechanics and see what the say.

Little piece of Chinga

After spending yesterday afternoon diving right into the world of 25 year old Yamaha enduros, I decided to fettle around a bit. Draining the oil wasn't good enough for me, nope, I kept reading the Haynes MANUAL and found out about the oil sump, sorta like a car's oil pan, only much smaller. Six screws and I'd have another piece of metal that I can clean the gunk off of AND it has a metal screen inside t'boot, I was sure that could use a bath in some cleansing gasoline.

Easy enough really until the oil caked sump was pried off the bottom of the engine.
Hmmm, I thought, I wonder what that bit into and sheared looking piece of metal is doing in the sump?!

I don't know much, but I knew this t'weren't right.

Holding the piece for comparison, I began to wander through the MANUAL until I found what I'm guessing it is; a Pawl, it is part of the kickstart mechanism. As I read about this part I remembered that the kickstart is sort of slumped more forward than it should be, in fact, its resting against the exhaust pipe - not right again. So now the plan is to rattle some cages, see if anyone can tell what this part is by the image I took.

So now, without really knowing for certain, I have begun to think that the engine of this thing will have to be cracked open. Because of that, I decided to remove the rusted exhaust - it is just a handful of bolts, I could put the nasty old thing back on if I wanted too. Stazz helped me get that bad boy off of there and we were greeted with a nice little pile of small grain rust.

The Future: We can rebuild him (Him? Can we? We?)

It has begun.
Today I put in a call to Mark over at Thumper Stuff dot com. He patiently listened to me babble on about this heap I've got sitting out in the garage and then cheerfully dispensed with some advice on how to go about beginning to get the XT back in shape.

Some parts were ordered.

Also, in my internetual wanderings, came across the SingleCylinder Gazette. The Gazetter in charge over there has a '79 XT himself and has posted a nifty story, with pics, of when he raced a vintage locomotive through the California desert. Just reading this story is inspiring to me - if only to hope that my old bike will one day be road worthy, train-dueling or not.

I should also mention The XT500 Site. This was probably the first page I found that had info on my old Yamaha - even has some images of old magazine ads. Beautiful.

So after getting an encouraging post back from Joe at the Gazette, I finished clearing out the newly re-arranged garage and moved the patient into its ward, removed the battery and started draining the black, black oil. I pulled the spark plug and took a look. It was caked with crumbly gunk.

The K100RS SE will be living out-of-doors for the time being.

The Past

Welp, recently I have been excavating the past more than normally, what with the 20th year high school reunion, the listening to favorite Ramones records and the resurrection of this blog. So what better time to bring back this, not so old saw:

Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

The Power of Language (ongoing)

"So, what about the (unintelligable)...?"

"Oh, I did it."

"You did it?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome."

Troublems

I went away for two weeks. A ramblin' road-trip back to Louisville, down to New Orleans, across Texa to the Grand Canyon and then home to Los Angeles.
One suprise that I found after returning was that the company that hosts hosenpants.com was making some back end computer changes - unfortunately for them this was planned right when the last hurricane was about the hit.

It seems that everyone at the hosting service has survived intact, but because of some sort of snaffle between me and the folks I originally registered this domain with, I have been unable to successfully update a bunch of important computer settings and/or have all my business moved over to Xrackhosting, my host, the Floridians.

I think that the corner has been turned and my fingers are crossed that I will be able to recieve hosenpants mail in a day or two as well as having this site not vanish from time to time.

On that topic: today I saw that all my posts had disappeared, yeah all three of 'em, from the site. I was unable to update 'em or repost 'em because of some fuckup in Moveable Type. I initially thought, well, perhaps this would be a good time to go ahead and upgrade to a new version of MT.

This thought lasted 1/2 hour too long. I started into the chore of upgrading before getting bored with it and going out to actually get something productive done with the morning; mow the lawn. While mowing I came to think that while there are probably lots of great things about MT, I don't think I ever use them. I post some mumblings from time to time, thats it.

Not too long ago I created David Pestorius dot com, a simple website for a curator/gallerist friend from Australia. I used Blogger so I could easily update what shows or events he has going on. The toughest part, if it can be called that, was drawing the logo in photoshop - well, actually it was finding out why the logo would jump a few pixels on different pages.
The point is that ye olde Blogger still does what I need it to do.
So I scrapped all the MT stuff, saved myself a bunch of time and false accomplishment for installing it, and have logged onto the old service to find this old file still available, complete with a still timely cartoon.

There will no doubt be some futzing going on in the near future.