Topic: 23 Rides in 2023, Frank's New Years resolution that we can all enjoy.

[Bankerdanny]

Got out for about 150 Sunday riding from our house near Battle Creek Mi up to Grand Rapids for the Distinguished Gentleman's ride and then home. Unusually for me I didn't really take pictures. But here it is in our garage after an oil change Saturday.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, the expansion chambers are made by a fellow T500 enthusiast in Britain and are quite reasonably priced for hand made stainless pipes. I’m running early model “Cobra” carbs, which run pretty rich, but with the cylinder porting that a PO did and higher compression heads, it seems to go really well, and cruises at 60 MPH @ a shade over 4000 RPM, which seems pretty good for an old 500 twin. Once I get the ignition timing spot on I’ll take it for some longer rides, I just don’t want to risk burning some holes in the pistons.

[Kevin D]

Ride #4 168 miles

I went a little further today, not by design. I nearly struck out on lunch, 1st and 2nd choices closed, and ended up in Jackson at my 3rd choice. It looks like fast food but with black angus beef, pretty good, and the place is certain to be open. The better treat was on the ride. The honeysuckle is blooming, everywhere along the roads. Some planted, mostly wild. The flowers don’t stand out but the sweet scent is so nice. The bushes are inconspicuous but once you spot them, wow there’s a lot of them.
 The Honda performed very well and at 168 miles is not yet on reserve. I usually fill it after each ride but maybe I will run it to reserve this time.

[Terry in Australia]

Great pics Kev, and great fuel economy too, I think the furthest I’ve ridden on my K0 was around 130 before it started to miss and fart, letting me know it was time to hit reserve. Of course I was probably riding at highly illegal speeds. The T500 is thirsty, I’m sure that I’ve filled it at least twice so far, and it’s only done around 120 miles? Smaller tank than a 750, but I’m always surprised when I pop the cap before a ride and don’t see much lurking within…

[RAFster122s]

No honeysuckle here in the desert... We have other fragrant desert plants, some of the flowering plants are fragrant while others you have to be very close or stick your nose in, not a good idea if you have allergies and aren't sure that is one of your allergens...
The desert has a distinct aroma when it rains and in the summer the asphalt gives off a peculiar scent after a rain. Sometimes it generates ozone from the heat and the water of a shower hitting it...

[Kevin D]

Great pics Kev, and great fuel economy too, I think the furthest I’ve ridden on my K0 was around 130 before it started to miss and fart, letting me know it was time to hit reserve. Of course I was probably riding at highly illegal speeds. The T500 is thirsty, I’m sure that I’ve filled it at least twice so far, and it’s only done around 120 miles? Smaller tank than a 750, but I’m always surprised when I pop the cap before a ride and don’t see much lurking within…

Just for fun, I peeked into the tank this morning. The CB is on the center stand elevating the rear of the tank.
The petcock fill tube is above the fuel level about 1/8” : I won’t be going much further without some action.

Danny, my son was also out Sunday in the Metro Detroit DGR (200 riders?)

[Bankerdanny]

Just for fun, I peeked into the tank this morning. The CB is on the center stand elevating the rear of the tank.
The petcock fill tube is above the fuel level about 1/8” : I won’t be going much further without some action.

Danny, my son was also out Sunday in the Metro Detroit DGR (200 riders?)

I was surprised that there wasn't one in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area. My choices were 70 mile up to Grand Rapids or 100+ over to Detroit.

[ekpent]

Just for fun, I peeked into the tank this morning. The CB is on the center stand elevating the rear of the tank.
The petcock fill tube is above the fuel level about 1/8” : I won’t be going much further without some action.

Danny, my son was also out Sunday in the Metro Detroit DGR (200 riders?)

I was surprised that there wasn't one in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area. My choices were 70 mile up to Grand Rapids or 100+ over to Detroit.

  Hopefully you took some nice back roads Danny most of the way and stayed off 131.

[BenelliSEI]

Ride #4 168 miles

I went a little further today, not by design. I nearly struck out on lunch, 1st and 2nd choices closed, and ended up in Jackson at my 3rd choice. It looks like fast food but with black angus beef, pretty good, and the place is certain to be open. The better treat was on the ride. The honeysuckle is blooming, everywhere along the roads. Some planted, mostly wild. The flowers don’t stand out but the sweet scent is so nice. The bushes are inconspicuous but once you spot them, wow there’s a lot of them.
 The Honda performed very well and at 168 miles is not yet on reserve. I usually fill it after each ride but maybe I will run it to reserve this time.

Kevin…. I’m jealous! Too busy farming and the last race weekend. My K1 has not been out yet! This week, for sure…..

[Kevin D]

Ride #4 168 miles

I went a little further today, not by design. I nearly struck out on lunch, 1st and 2nd choices closed, and ended up in Jackson at my 3rd choice. It looks like fast food but with black angus beef, pretty good, and the place is certain to be open. The better treat was on the ride. The honeysuckle is blooming, everywhere along the roads. Some planted, mostly wild. The flowers don’t stand out but the sweet scent is so nice. The bushes are inconspicuous but once you spot them, wow there’s a lot of them.
 The Honda performed very well and at 168 miles is not yet on reserve. I usually fill it after each ride but maybe I will run it to reserve this time.

Kevin…. I’m jealous! Too busy farming and the last race weekend. My K1 has not been out yet! This week, for sure…..

Farmers gotta farm.
Racers gotta race
Riders will ride.

There is a string of good weather days here in the near future. I’m hoping that holds out through early June.

[Terry in Australia]

I gotta ride, but if it’s raining, I gotta hide…..

[Bankerdanny]

Just for fun, I peeked into the tank this morning. The CB is on the center stand elevating the rear of the tank.
The petcock fill tube is above the fuel level about 1/8” : I won’t be going much further without some action.

Danny, my son was also out Sunday in the Metro Detroit DGR (200 riders?)

I was surprised that there wasn't one in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area. My choices were 70 mile up to Grand Rapids or 100+ over to Detroit.

  Hopefully you took some nice back roads Danny most of the way and stayed off 131.

I took 131 there to make sure I arrived on time but tried to take back roads home.

[Kevin D]

Ride #4 168 miles

The petcock fill tube is above the fuel level about 1/8”

Last chapter in the fuel reserve level:
I putzed with the bike a bit today: I cleaned and oiled the air filter, I removed the petcock bowl and dumped the least little bit of dregs out. Haven’t done either of those jobs for a while. Then putt-putted around the neighborhood for one more mile until the carbs were starved, set the petcock to reserve and went straight to the Shell station for 3.7g at 173 miles for 46.9mpg

[Don R]

 I did about 85 miles today, I went to help a friend work on his street rod. On the way home I went by my favorite old Mom and Pop motorcycle shop. It looks like Pop is still doing most of the work. I picked up a new tube for the nugget, the front went flat.

[jgger]

That's great Don, you're back in the saddle!

[RAFster122s]

Don, Glad you got a good ride in... Good you were able to pick up a new tube.

[Don R]

 Thanks, the front tire held air overnight so it's going back on. I'm building an Edsal brand steel shelf to mount the #2 dragbike on, the naked K0 (motor and frame) is also going off the floor. I need floor space and am lousy at selling bikes. My heart isn't really in it.

[RAFster122s]

Just make sure you leave instructions for your wife on the value of the stuff if you die before her...that way she has a better chance of not giving it away for way too little...

Drybar comedian, has a funny routine and he talked about wife telling him a $50 big bottle of whiskey was too expensive. He went into their bathroom and picked up a small bottle of her nighttime eye serum and asked her how expensive it was, she wouldn't tell him but said he could get his $50 bottles of whiskey and she wouldn't say anything about it again...
He said if they had a fire he was getting the drawer of cosmetics from the bathroom on his way out of the house!

[Terry in Australia]

I really need to do some insurance admin. I sold my 2015 Ford Territory with under 50,000 miles that I leased/bought new when I was driving back and forth to Caberra every weekend, to my son last year as I’d hardly driven it since returning to Melbourne and he needed a bigger vehicle to cart his camera gear around.

He put the Territory in for a service yesterday at the 80,000 mile interval, and they quoted him $2500 to do the service and replace the rear differential bushes, which seems to be a common problem on late model Fords. Bottom line is his car won’t be ready until next week. When I sold him the Ford, I gave him $5K “trade in” on his 2002 Subaru Liberty GT, a twin turbo beasty, with around 300 BHP, that had driven him nuts as it would constantly overheat within 5 minutes of starting it. For that reason I hardly drove it until one day I saw an American Youtube vid of a guy using a liquid head gasket sealer that you just pour into the radiator and it appears to fix everything. I gave it a shot, bought a bottle and tipped it in the rad, and ever since, no more overheating.

Anyway I loaned him the Subaru while he’s waiting to get his Ford back from the dealer.I had ti call Shannons Insurance to let them know he’d be driving it, and while talking to the guy he suggested upping the insurance value from $5K, to $15K, as these cars have suddenly hit the collector market. The difference is only $70 per year, so I figured it was a good idea.

They sent me a new policy and I was shocked to realise that a lot of my bikes are under insured, and I’m also still paying insurance on several bikes I no longer own. Like Don, I’ve been very slow to part with my bikes, but I’d completely forgotten to cancel the insurance on the RC51, the K2 and the F2, so now I need to call them back and cancel them, as well as upping the agreed value on the T500, K0 and Z1-B, as I’d never be able to buy replacements with what I originally insured them for.

[Kelly E]

I really need to do some insurance admin. I sold my 2015 Ford Territory with under 50,000 miles that I leased/bought new when I was driving back and forth to Caberra every weekend, to my son last year as I’d hardly driven it since returning to Melbourne and he needed a bigger vehicle to cart his camera gear around.

He put the Territory in for a service yesterday at the 80,000 mile interval, and they quoted him $2500 to do the service and replace the rear differential bushes, which seems to be a common problem on late model Fords. Bottom line is his car won’t be ready until next week. When I sold him the Ford, I gave him $5K “trade in” on his 2002 Subaru Liberty GT, a twin turbo beasty, with around 300 BHP, that had driven him nuts as it would constantly overheat within 5 minutes of starting it. For that reason I hardly drove it until one day I saw an American Youtube vid of a guy using a liquid head gasket sealer that you just pour into the radiator and it appears to fix everything. I gave it a shot, bought a bottle and tipped it in the rad, and ever since, no more overheating.

Anyway I loaned him the Subaru while he’s waiting to get his Ford back from the dealer.I had ti call Shannons Insurance to let them know he’d be driving it, and while talking to the guy he suggested upping the insurance value from $5K, to $15K, as these cars have suddenly hit the collector market. The difference is only $70 per year, so I figured it was a good idea.

They sent me a new policy and I was shocked to realise that a lot of my bikes are under insured, and I’m also still paying insurance on several bikes I no longer own. Like Don, I’ve been very slow to part with my bikes, but I’d completely forgotten to cancel the insurance on the RC51, the K2 and the F2, so now I need to call them back and cancel them, as well as upping the agreed value on the T500, K0 and Z1-B, as I’d never be able to buy replacements with what I originally insured them for.

I recently changed my insurance for the MGB GT's and my bikes to collector vehicle insurance. Back in 2015 I had to stop driving my MG because with the additional medical bills from cancer I couldn't afford to insure both the cars and bikes and I chose bikes.
 Now I am able to insure the bikes and MG's for less than I was paying for 3 bikes on regular insurance. The bonus is with 5 bikes and 2 MG's I get a big multiple vehicle discount, all of them are on agreed value and the 84' Sabre 700 and the 77' KZ 1000LTD are legacy bikes because they have been in the family since almost new. If one of them gets totaled I get my payoff and I get the bike back for no extra charges. All of the vehicles are insured for more than I have into them.

Everything is also on collector plates except for the 94' Kawasaki ZG 1000 Concours, that isn't old enough yet. I keep the 84' GMC S15 on regular plates because it's my daily driver and I'll probably do the same with the Concours. It's my long distance bike and our state collector plate rules say that you have to have a registered daily driver. It may not apply to the bikes but since collector plates are a one time fee I can manage it.
At any time in the future I can up the values of the vehicles without penalties. I should have listened to Paul sooner but I got it done finally.

[Terry in Australia]

Well the weather was really cold today, but the sun was shining (now and then) so I'd planned to take my son's Royal Enfield 650 for a ride today, but I've had an ongoing project over the last week that I wanted to make a dent into, so sacrificed my ride today, for some workshop fun instead. I've been working on building a stand for my boring bar so that I can do 4 cylinder engines much easier than with the original system, that was designed before I was born for boring single cylinder lawnmower and chainsaw engines. When I was boring Dion's 750 cylinders for the Cyclex 65.5mm pistons I realised that by pulling the boring head out to the max to reach the middle cylinders I was actually boring them at a slight angle, which effectively ruined two sleeves.

Old boring bar stand by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

So last week, bored (pun intended) out of my brain goofing off at work, I sketched a new stand, that would allow for a multi cylinder block to get bored a little easier. I had lots of 30mm x 2.5mm wall thickness square tube in my garage, so I drew up a plan with measurements, and spent a long time cutting it all up with my new Vevor portable bandsaw that I bought months ago and never used, then used the tiny 120 amp MIG welder that Diion gave me to weld it all together. The welds are ugly, but even with my fancy new Eastwood panoramic welding helmet that Don recommended, sadly my poor old eyes aren't getting any better, but the welds are good enough, it won't fall apart.

The most expensive part of the project was the 32mm (inch and a quarter) thick slab of 6061-T6 aluminium plate, but I wanted to ensure that there wouldn't be any warpage. I've still gotta weld in a couple more square tube braces, and work out a quick way to clamp the cylinder block (or top engine case, for oversized sleeves) underneath the table top, but I'm pretty happy so far.

New boring bar stand 27 May 2023 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr   

[Terry in Australia]

Well if I thought the weather was bad yesterday, compared to today, it was like a spring day. It was raining when I got out of bed, and still raining when Spotty brought over his "custom" exhaust that he needed some holes welded up.

By around 1pm the rain had stopped, so I bravely put a wet weather jacket on (and wished later that I'd also put the wet weather pants on....) and fired up my son Tim's Royal Enfield 650 "Continental GT". I hadn't even gotten to the end of my street before I realised that in the 4 years (this month) that he's had it, he's probably never checked the tyre pressure, because seriously, it was just horrible to ride. Luckily it also needed fuel, so I rode to the nearest gas station and pumped up the tyres (it only had 8 psi in the front and 12 in the rear) so I put 32 in the front and 36 in the rear, which is about what I put in everything I own, apart from the Rocket III. (38 and 42 in that land barge) Not surprisingly, the bike felt so much better, and didn't fight me when I tried to turn around corners like it had before. I dropped my black Yamaha FJR1200 back around 2013 when, riding around the block on the day I bought it, I rolled the front tyre right off the rim!

Another problem I had though, was when I grabbed the front brake, it locked on, and wouldn't release the caliper's grip on the disc until I waited a minute or two, in the rain. This has happened to me before, twice, when two of my 1990's BMW brake hoses rotted from the inside out, causing little balls of rubber to travel down into the calipers. What would happen was the black rubbery crap was forced into the caliper under pressure from the MC, but as there's no return pressure when you release the brake lever, the brake won't release. I almost turned around to come home, but then I remembered that I rode the ill fated BMW R1100RT all the way from Hervey Bay to Melbourne (1200 miles) with no front brakes last year, so being the manly man that I am, I just kept on trucking.

My destination was Kilmore for chips and gravy, so I stopped off along the way to take a pic, or two.

Royal Enfield Sunday 28 May 2023 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Royal Enfield Sunday 28 May 2023 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I rode on to Kilmore, and the lovely Indian(?) man who runs the place brought me out a big serve of chips (fries) and gravy, and a bottle of Sarsaparilla, while I had a cigarette. It was still misty raining when I got there that I parked under the awning again, but the sun came out while I was eating, and stayed dry until I was about halfway home.

Royal Enfield Sunday 28 May 2023 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr       

Anyway, I was freezing, my jeans were wet (from the rain, not the joy of riding) and so I finished my lunch, jumped on the RE, and rode home. Ride #19 wasn't very long (maybe 65 miles) but by the time I got home I was frozen, and had completely lost all feeling in my hands (so much for my "Joe Rocket" winter gloves....) my back was killing me (more MRI's on Wednesday) and my jeans were wet,so I put the bike away, and jumped in the shower to thaw. Apart from the flat tyres and wonky brakes, I love this bike, and I'm gonna keep riding it as long as Tim lets me. Hell, I might even buy one........

Royal Enfield Sunday 28 May 2023 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

[Kevin D]

I have seen those clouds before Terry. They’re usually hanging around here threatening to spoil any outdoor activities in the spring or fall. Nice photo with bike matching clouds.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Kev, it’s a brilliant bike, it handles really well and gave me confidence to throw it around some fast bends at highly illegal speeds. They came out of the factory with Pirelli Phantom tyres, which were a fantastic tyre back in the day, and still don’t disappoint, if they make a 19 inch front I might throw a set on a hotrod K1 I’m currently collecting parts to build later this year.

While not the most powerful mid range bike on the market, they will happily do the ton, and S&S are making 850cc big bore kits and hot cams for them, so there’s plenty of scope for performance improvements if deemed necessary. My only gripe is the stretch to the clip on bars, and no centre stand, but I think the ones from the 650 “Interceptor” should fit, which, for me at least would make it the ideal cruiser. I hope Tim’s not in a hurry to get it back…..

[ekpent]

Great weather today (sunday 5/28) and took a 21 mile ride east to check out member BankerDanny's new house he and his girlfriend have acquired. Very nice house on 5 acres in the country and close to good riding territory. Unfortunately for him he still works in Chicago. Since he had his 750 here we also lit out for a nice ride together through some twisty country roads and a pit stop at a popular lake where we hung out a little with a guy I know. Nice time and Thanks Dan for letting me know you were around, made for a nice afternoon.