The Bike is Ready

I decided to put a new front tire on after all.  I think the one on there would have got me through the first seven days of the ride, but probably not the next five.  That means I would have to change it during the time Jenny and I are in Woodland, and we already have plans for that five day period that include a valve adjustment check on her bike.  This is a major operation and might take most of a day if shims are needed for the valves.  Plus there are lots of other things we plan to do during that time, including taking a day ride to the coast.  So I took the old tire off, and this time it only took me an hour and a half.....but I had some help from Carolyn at a couple of critical points.  One of which was getting the front wheel back in the forks.  It takes at least four hands because the wheel has to be lifted so that the axle can be slid through the forks and the hub, while the brake rotor slides into the caliper and the spacers at each side of the hub don't fall out.  Then the axle is threaded into the right fork leg while keeping all this alignment intact.  Crazy.  Anyway, I'm keeping the old tire in case I get desperate for a front tire I can re-mount it at some later time.  To remove the front tire I have to use both a front and rear lift, and while I had it up there I also installed the brackets for the Givi side cases:

Next, I mounted my Garmin GPS with the maps of the route already loaded:

All that's left is to do some yard work, make a dentist appointment, take a load of trash to the dump, and then pack and RIDE.

I don't think I will be able to keep this blog up to date during the ride.  I've been taking my pictures with a Windows phone, but I take along an Apple Ipad, and I can't see any way to download the pictures except by emailing them to myself.  Maybe there is a cable that connects a Windows device to an Ipad......I'll check into it.

Getting Ready......New Tire

The original rear tire that came on the bike would not make the PNW Grand Tour.  It is almost worn to the wear bars as can be seen in this photo:

I could maybe get another 500 miles or so out of it, but not the 2400 miles I'm going to ride before I return to Woodland.  So, after removing the wheel from the bike, I put it on my tire changing tool to break the bead:

Then pry the tire off the wheel:

First Side Off

Tire Off Wheel

I took a picture of  the new tire back on the wheel, but it was blurry, so here is the wheel on my balancer jig: 

And the wheel back on the bike:

Jenny found a guy in San Francisco who can change a tire, including removing and re mounting the wheel on the bike, in 20 minutes.  It took me that long to get the wheel off, and the total job of changing the tire and re mounting the wheel to the bike took just over two hours.  Oh well, I'm retired, right?  I should have all the time in the world, but still, I think changing tires is a bit of a hassle.

The front tire is not as worn, which is normal, so I'm thinking it can at least get me back to Woodland where I can mount a new one I have waiting, if I need to.

PNW Grand Tour

Last winter I was contemplating another ride across the country to celebrate my 75th birthday.  After I worked on it for awhile, even choosing a route, I came to the conclusion that the logistics were just too difficult.  Plus, I remembered how roads in the middle of the country are too flat, windy, and straight.  Jenny had wanted to go along on part of the cross country ride, but I think I convinced her that a grand tour of the Pacific Northwest, where I showed her all the good roads I have discovered since we moved here, would be more fun.  This is the route I developed:

The ride with both of us together starts in San Francisco and makes a counter-clockwise loop.  Each day is color coded, and the total mileage is about 2800.  After five days we will arrive back at Woodland where we will spend some time with her kids Jonas and Adina, who will fly up for a visit.  Maybe we will take a local ride while here, and I will also do some maintenance on her bike.  Then we will take three days to return to San Francisco, again taking some of the good roads I have discovered.  Of course, I will have to ride to San Fran and back, so I will be doing about another 1500 miles.  I leave on July 22 for San Fran, and we leave on the grand tour on the 25th.  Should be a great ride and I'm really looking forward to revisiting these roads and showing them to Jenny.

Vintage Ride and Bike Show

Orv and I decided to take our old crocks down to Corvallis for a ride and show put on by the Oregon Vintage Motorcyclists.  There would be a ride starting at noon on Saturday, and then a show and judging on Sunday.  Since Corvallis is about 100 miles from our neck of the woods, we would not be riding the Triumphs down there, but Orv has a trailer so we hauled them down.  This was going to be a family affair with the wives along for an overnight stay.

A couple of days before the event, I decided to ride the Triumph to a nearby gas station to gas up, so I would be ready to ride on Saturday.  However, the bike started running really crappy and I barely made it to the gas station, and it quit completely on the way back.  Since Carolyn wasn't home I couldn't call her for help, so I pushed the bike to a nearby house.  I was only about a mile and a half from home, so I was just wanting a safe place to leave the bike while I walked home to get my truck.  The nice old couple who lived there insisted on driving me to my house, and then helped me load the bike when we got back.

With only a couple of days to get the bike sorted, I asked Orv to help me diagnose the problem.  We checked for spark and there was a good spark at the plugs. so we thought maybe the timing was off.  After resetting  the ignition timing and checking for loose wires in the electronic ignition set up we tried again, but no joy.  We pulled a plug and checked for spark and now had none......an intermittent electrical problem, the worse kind.  Orv's intuition, or some miracle led him to check the ignition switch, where he found a loose wire.

Friday afternoon I rode the bike down to Orv's house and he had it loaded by Saturday morning when Carolyn and I arrived.  We got to Corvallis early and got the bikes unloaded:

The event was at the Benton County fairgrounds, and there was also a vintage tractor pull going on at the same time.  Lots of excitement!

Getting ready to ride

As you can see from the photos above, it was a sunny day, so I put my tinted shield on my helmet.  But, by the time the ride started it was cloudy and threatening to rain (it's Oregon!).  The next problem was that my mirrors had gotten knocked loose in the loading or unloading process and I had to remove the right one and put it in my tank bag that I had bungied onto the seat.  Nevertheless, the ride was going well and we were seeing some beautiful country and going over some covered bridges, which were the theme of the ride.  Orv was following me because his speedometer had quit, but about halfway through the ride I saw that he was not behind me any longer.  Turning around, I found him stopped alongside the road......no spark.  Fortunately, the club provided a sag wagon, and so they loaded him up: 

I would have ended my ride too, but the sag wagon was going back to the fairgrounds via the I-5 freeway, which I didn't want to ride on, and I had no idea how to get back to the fairgrounds by myself, so I continued on with the ride group.

We went thorough several more covered bridges and stopped at a park near one of them, where I took these pictures:

I really was there

This pic gives an idea of the number of bikes that were on the ride: 

When I finally got back to the fairgrounds I had ridden over 100 miles and was about as tired as I used to get after a 100 mile desert enduro.  That old bike is not easy to ride, plus there were periodic showers.  

I put the right mirror back on at the halfway gas stop.  While I was riding, Orv and the ladies were at the vintage tractor pull and Orv is worried they are going to want to do that every weekend (not).

We loaded the bikes back into the trailer to be stored overnight at the fairgrounds campground.  One gets a thumbs up for finishing, and the other a thumbs down for a dnf.

Saturday evening we had a nice dinner and I was hungry since I had had nothing to eat since an early breakfast.  Then a stroll around downtown Corvallis and a good night's sleep in a motel of Carolyn's choice (above my standards).

At the bike show the next day I found I would have to join the club if I wanted to show my bike, so I am again a member of a motorcycle club, the Oregon Vintage Motorcyclists.

We cleaned up the bikes from the road grime caused by the wet roads:

And then moved them to the display area:

As far as the contest was concerned, we were up against some pretty stiff competition.  There were professionally restored bikes and some pretty rare and valuable ones like that Vincent in the background.  The bikes were divided into categories of British, European, American, Asian, and the featured mark Honda.  Here are some pics of what I found to be the more interesting ones;

BMW sidehack rig for Ray 

Honda turbo.  Didn't sell well when new, very valuable now

Early Hodaka.  My old riding buddy Jim rode one of these when we first started riding enduros.

The crowd at the show

Neither one of us won anything, nor did we expect to, but it was a fun weekend.  After we got home, Orv quickly found the problem with his bike and guess what it was...........a loose wire in the ignition switch.  The same problem my bike had just a few days earlier.  

A Brace of Bonnies

Orv came by today on his Triumph and we decided to go for a "reliability run" on our Bonnevilles.  We are planning to go to a vintage bike meet and ride down in Corvalis, Oregon on the 21st and 22nd of this month, and even though we are going to trailer the bikes down there, they need to go the distance on the vintage bike ride.  So we decided to go to lunch in Cougar, which is about 20 miles from my house.  Everything was going well, and I was pleasantly surprised again by how well the Triumph handles in the curves.  Then, a problem.........my headlight fell out of the headlight shell.  Not a big problem since the wires kept the light attached to the bike and it did not destroy itself on the road.  All I needed was a screwdriver to put the headlight back in the shell, but I didn't have a single tool.  Fortunately, Orv did, and here he is after the repair putting his tool kit back on his bike:

Pretty dumb of me to ride an old Brit bike and not carry a tool kit.  It doesn't take many to do most work on the bike, but they will be needed.

Here are the bike in the restaurant parking lot; my bike in the foreground:

After lunch we decided to ride the long way back through Woodland, and had no further problems.  After Woodland, and on the way back to my house, we switched bikes to see just how similar they are.....and they are.  I felt that his was a little smoother and he felt that mine was a little "tighter" and stiffer, like a newer bike.  Power was essentially the same for both of them.

We took a break at the Cedar Creek gristmill and then parted ways.  Total ride distance was about 50 miles, the longest ride I have made on the Bonneville.

Test Ride On a New Triumph

Triumph still makes motorcycles.  It's not the same company, they just bought the name.  However, they just came out with one that is meant to re-create the look of the classic Triumph of the 60's, and they did a pretty good job of it.  I talked Orv and Ross into going to take a look at them at a local Triumph dealership (that mainly sells Harleys).  Turns out they even offered to let us go for a test ride.

We just took our pick of a couple off the showroom floor, they were not even demo models:

They rolled them out into the parking lot:

Orv picked the black one:

And I picked the silver one:

You can see the resemblance to my Bonneville, but these are thoroughly modern motorcycles, with disk brakes, fuel injection, ABS, Traction Control, tubles tires, and electronic ignition.  They also run about 10 grand out the door.

The guy with the beard (Bob) led us around on a short ride that included some freeway, so we got a chance to "open them up" a little.  They are nice bikes, no doubt about it, and I could get used to owning one.  However, when I got back on my CBR, it felt pretty good.  Mine certainly doesn't have the horsepower or torque of the new Triumph (they are about 900cc versus my 500cc), but my bike is smoother, fits me better, and has a better front brake.  Actually, it's pretty hard for any bike to beat the front brake of the CBR.  At least not any that I can afford.

Ross opted not to take a test ride.  I think he doubts his ability to say no to an impulse buy.

Triumph Tweaks

I just couldn't stand that skinny back tire.  When I found out I had a slow leak in it, I decided to bite the bullet and get one that would look better.  So I spent another $87 on top of the $105 for the first tire, plus a whole afternoon of work changing it, to end up with this difference:

Old Look

New Look

Worth the money and effort?  I think so, but sometimes I wish I wasn't such  perfectionist.  

I'm also trying to come up with an acceptable mirror arrangement.  I don't like riding without having a good view behind me.  I bought some modern levers that have a threaded hole for a mirror, and I like the way the mirror turned out, but the clutch lever doesn't have the same leverage as the stocker and the clutch pull is stiffer.  I'll have to ride it awhile to see if it is acceptable or not.  

I have a lever for the brake side, but haven't installed it yet.  To make the lever fit the stock cable ends I have to drill out the new levers, which probably makes them non-returnable, so I'm doing one step at a time.

Here are a couple more pics of the bike with the new tire: