Wisdom and Wonder » Concours

Get a green light at every stop

Grant — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 20:25:29 +0000

Last year I bought a greenlight trigger from Green Light Products. Installation was easy; I left it clamped overnight. Does it work? Yes, definitely. The only problem is at history has shown me, I don’t seen to actually use many intersections that utilize this approach for changing lights :).

Spring 2011 Oil Change

Grant — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 02:35:27 +0000

Doug helped me change the oil this Spring:

Change motor oil & filter
3L Shell Rotella T 15W40 JASO MA API SH
Fram CH6012
Odometer: 9987 miles

Japanese Kawasaki 1000GTR Club Site

Grant — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:59:16 +0000

Here.

(via Brock, via COG@micapeak)

Harry’s Concours (C10) Motorcycle Maintenance Excel spreadsheet

Grant — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:55:28 +0000

Thanks to Harry Martin for putting together this calculator spreadsheet for Concours motorcycle maintenance.

Local copy mirrored here: Harry’s Concours (C10) Motorcycle Maintenance Excel spreadsheet

Pending Backrest Cleanup

Grant — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:55:19 +0000

On my quest to rid my ride of rust I found the contaminants on the backrest mounts to be unacceptable. Take a look:

Sure it is not bad, but then again, it isn’t good, either.

I did replace all of the rusty bolts, however, the powdercoating seems to be eaten away and what is left remaining is a layer of rust.

Current investigating technical remediation for this that involve sandblasting and powdercoating.

New GenMar Riser Caps

Grant — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:24:27 +0000

It is hard to miss the rusty caps on these risers:

The guys at GenMar figure that they got cleaned with some corrosive cleaner. You can see that they are rusted out. The GenMar guys sent me replacement for free; thanks guys:

I removed the rust with diet-cola and tin-foil, elbow work, and a lot of patience (I forgot to take before photos of how the rust permeated the interior). It works really well; rinse afterwards:

Looks great:

What can I say… can’t wait for riding weather!

Trickle Charging

Grant — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 02:53:45 +0000

Due to scheduling difficulties (project deadlines, semester endings, family homecomings), I put off hooking up my battery to a trickle charger (which I’d yet to purchase). After letting her sit around in the teens and single-digits (in a garage) for the last month or so I was pleasantly surprised to find that my buddy had a charger to loan me, space to leave it in his basement, and finally that the battery only needed about 2m of charging for the charger to give it the thumbs up. Awesome!

Fall Madison Ride

Grant — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 01:15:52 +0000

On one of the last ride-able Fall days this year, on a very beautiful day, we rode over to Madison to visit some friends. My buddy snapped this picture which shows off the new Connie and Stich pretty well. That was a really fun day.

Battery drain hose location

Grant — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:41:49 +0000

While installing the power hookup for the Gerbings coat I managed to dislodge the battery drain hose by lifting up the battery (because I wanted to look at it).

Brooke explained that:

The battery vent/drain hose attaches on the right side (as you sit on the bike) and should go to the same place the gas tank filler neck drain hose and the fuel sender drain hose go to. There’s a bracket down near the right foot peg back in somewhere between/near the swing arm and frame. It should be easy to see with the right side panel off the bike.

He was right. Took off the one-screwed-on side panel and the bracket is right there along with the two other tubes. The drain now faces where it should… the ground.

(via C.O.G.)

Seat cleaning advice

Grant — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:20:35 +0000

Never clean your seat with Armor All; you will slip around all over on your seat.

I spent 5 hours experiencing this, and after 3 hours (ridden away from home of course) it started getting painful.

The guys on concourstech suggested 303 or F21 instead.