K is for Kansas Mud Kleanup

Okay, so I've finally gotten all of Kansas scrubbed out of the Beemer. Lemme tell you, it wasn't an easy job! The Dakar says, "You ever take me there again, I'll toss your sorry ass in the ditch and ride home alone."

The wife says I'm obsessive ... that I go to extremes. I don't know where she gets that impression.


Sure, most people just take a hose to their bike and call it good. You already know that I'm not most people!



Had to get everything out from around the rear shock, of course, and I wanted to lube all the swingarm bearings just in case any of that Bentonite crap worked its way past the seals. So the rear end had to come off.


Same for the steering head bearings (which I noticed in this tear down are starting to feel like they've developed a bit of a notch when the bars are centered: brand new bearings next tear down, I guess). So the front end also had to come off.


There was the usual pile of parts spread out on the garage floor.



And, of course, we got everything cleaned up beneath the countershaft sprocket cover.

Now all I have to do is put it all back together again...

Tire Talk

Regarding last night's blog entry about my "screwed" tire, someone emailed to ask what I would have done if that had been a fairly new tire -- rather than one at the end of its useful life -- and what tire mounting and balancing equipment I have. I thought my answers might serve more people if posted here, so...

While many -- perhaps even most -- motorcyclists toss punctured tires, I tend to be a bit more frugal ("cheap" is what most people actually call me). I once had a brand new tire pick up a roofing nail. This was on the ZZR back in '03, I think. The tire only had about 700 miles on it. There was no way I was going to throw away a practically new $130 tire! I pulled it from the wheel and patched the hole from the inside. The patch held just fine for the remaining life of the tire (another 3,000 miles). Did I worry about it the whole time? Nah, not at all; I'm not a worrier. I didn't even change my riding habits, exceeding 100-120 mph regularly. "Weren't you worried about a blowout?!?!" some incredulous riders (i.e., ones who worry) might ask. Nah. A small puncture in the tire isn't likely to cause it to come flying apart. If the patch didn't hold, I'd wind up with a deflating tire, same as any other puncture (which I could just as easily pick up the very next day from another nail).

I admit I might have been a bit more concerned had this been the front tire, because a front flat is a bit more difficult to ride out when compared to the rear. I do so hate tank-slappers! I'm also a bit less confident of the "plug type" repair method (where the hole is plugged from the outside, without removing the tire from the rim), although I've also heard of riders doing thousands of miles on plugged tires. Though I carry a plug kit on my street bikes, I've never had to use it and tend to categorize this as an emergency or temporary repair versus something I'm going to live with for the remaining life of the tire. Of course, "temporary" is relative to where you are and where you're traveling to at the time. In the middle of a trip to Alaska, a "temporary fix" might have to last hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles. My thinking about patching the hole from the inside is that the combination of tire pressure and centrifugal force isn't going to allow the patch to shift or come loose, whereas both those forces are actually working to shove a plug out of the hole.

"Your life isn't worth the price of a new tire!" some riders will say. Well, yeah, but if I thought like that, I wouldn't ride at all, would I? Motorcycles are inherently dangerous no matter how you slice it. I mean, is losing my life worth the 15-minutes of fun to and from work every day on a bike? Of course not. It's not even worth that great 10-day bike trip I recently made to Mexico and back, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit at home and watch Dr Phil instead. I evaluate the risks on a daily basis ... and then I ride. To my way of thinking, a patched rear tire still falls within the acceptable risk inherent in riding motorcycles. You're free to disagree, of course.

I should add that my thoughts here apply to tires with a clean puncture in the running surface of the tire. Not a punctured sidewall. Not a cut or tear or more serious damage. There's acceptable risk and then there's sheer stupidity. Draw your own line between the two.

As for tire changing and balancing equipment, excuse me while I roll on the floor and laugh hysterically for a minute. I've got some tire irons ... that's about it. If I don't bust a few knuckles and utilize my entire vocabulary of curse words, it's just not tire changing. I prop the wheel on a couple two-by-fours (to protect the brake discs) and subject it to a whole lot of jumping up and down, pounding with my fists, and threats. Occasionally, I get creative with something I find at hand. (I'll conclude with one of those creative techniques, just so you feel you've gotten something useful out of reading all this.) The practical side of doing it myself and doing it the hard way is that I know I can handle roadside repairs -- keeps me in practice, doncha know -- which is very important to a dualsport rider who might find himself a hundred miles out in the boonies with a flat tire.

What about balancing? My approach is simple: I don't do it. In the last four years, with five different street bikes and more tire changes than I can remember, I haven't had a problem. My reasoning is that tires are manufactured these days to fairly exacting standards and for the most part are true in and of themselves. The real variance lies in the wheels -- valve steam placement primarily -- which were originally balanced from the manufacturer/dealer when I bought the bike. If they were balanced correctly to begin with and haven't thrown off a weight or been damaged, they should remain balanced when mounting a new tire. I do take note of and use the tire manufacturer's balancing spot (generally a yellow dot of paint letting you know the lightest part of the tire; line it up with the valve steam on your wheel), but fewer and fewer manufacturers are even marking their tires these days, probably an indicator of what I said earlier, that today's tires are pretty well balanced right from the factory.

If I eventually have a problem, I'll either take that wheel-tire combo to a bike shop and pay to have it balanced or I'll build a simple balancing stand of my own (if you do some Googling, you'll find plans from other motorcyclists that have done this), but -- knock on wood -- I haven't had a significant problem in the last four years, even on my ZZR1200 which has been rock-steady all the way out to nearly 160 mph (actual mph as verified by GPS, not indicated) on tires that I mounted by hand.

For some reason, this time around, I did have a hell of a time breaking the bead on the ZZR's tires, especially the front. The new tires went on easy as you please, probably because of how long they'd been softening in the hot sun on my driveway, but getting the old shoes off was a bugger. (Here comes that tip I promised.) I eventually used a technique I picked up from other dualsport riders. I dragged the ZZR's wheel over to my BMW Dakar and used the Dakar's sidestand to break the bead. According to BMW, the Dakar weighs 425 pounds with a full tank of gas -- much more than my puny 170 pounds. Worked like a champ (you'd expect nothing less from a $9,000 bead breaker!), and I'll be sure to use this method again, especially if I find myself out on the trail with a flat sometime. Of course, this technique isn't possible if you're riding alone.

Over the years, I've heard of other crafty methods for breaking a bead: running over it with an auto, creating a fulcrum with a couple two-by-fours, C-clamps, etc. Got a clever tire-changing technique you'd like to share? Hit that comment link below...

"Sometimes You Get Lucky..."

So I'm prepping the Mighty ZZR (she prefers to be referred to in that manner: the Mighty ZZR) for the 3,500 or so miles I'll be doing soon: cleaning and oiling the air filter, changing the engine oil and filter, mounting new tires, checking over everything for anything not quite right, etc. As I remove the rear tire and give it a hearty bounce prefatory to rolling it over and wrestling off the retiring rubber, I notice it just doesn't feel right. The tire pressure must be off. But that's odd, I think, because I just rode this bike a couple days ago and it was fine. Then something gleaming from the surface of the tire catches my eye. Sumbitch! How fortunate that the tire was minutes away from the trash anyway, huh?

Sometimes you just get lucky...



Incidentally, the ZZR1200's new shoes are Avon Storms, the replacement for the Avon Azaros, which have performed very well for me. I expect the Storms to be even better. My buddy Greg even mounted Storms on his CBR, and I'll be doing the same soon, though I admit I've had reservations about putting an ST tire on a 160hp liter bike. Greg's tires performed great on his CBR in Arkansas, though. You just have to remember that they don't warm up nearly as fast as a sport tire.

With the Azaros on my ZZR, I was able to get 6,000 miles out of the rear ... versus less than 4,000 miles with anything else I tried. Some ZZR owners report higher mileage (they must not be a throttle monkey like yours truly). As they say, your mileage may vary.

"The Road Beckons..."

Seems the Beemer and I are always going through this ... What to take? What to leave behind? Is the bike ready? Am I? As usual, my pool table becomes a staging area.

The forecast calls for rain, both here in Oklahoma and in northwestern Arkansas. On a positive note, it appears we'll have much warmer weather than we usually have for the Hillbilly Dualsport Rally in Eureka Springs. Wasn't it just last year that I awoke to three or four inches of snow on the morning of departure? No snow in the forecast this year. In fact, the weathermen are predicting temps in the low seventies. Best to pack warm gear, though, even if I don't wind up needing it. Even without the threat of rain, there are a lot of water crossings in the Ozarks, and I get cold when I'm wet.

I'll be riding out with my friend Chris Marlow. He'll be on his DR-Z400, so our speeds won't be anything to brag about -- call it a nice, liesurely ride for my 650cc Dakar ... plenty of time to snap some pics and admire the scenery. Both of us are rehearsing for our Copper Canyon run just two weeks away. (We'll only have one weekend to turn around the bikes: oil changes, tires, air filters, any necessary repairs, etc.) Packing is especially critical for Chris because space is at a premium on the little DR-Z. I've got it much easier on the BMW. Even so, I'm carrying things I don't usually take, just to see how well I can pack the bike, things like spare clutch and throttle cables, spare levers, etc -- things that could leave me crippled on the side of the road in Mexico in the event of a failure, at the mercy of los banditos. I'd hoped to have a new battery installed by now, but the one I ordered is still on backorder, as are several trick components from Touratech (folding brake pedal, offroad chain guide, and an oil-type air filter to replace the BMW's paper cartridge). Maybe some of it will arrive before we leave for Mexico. At the very least, I'd like to get rid of the BMW's acid-type battery, which has already boiled over on me once.

Danny will meet us in Arkansas (after trailering up with his wife). He'll be going through the same sort of thing with his XR650L, making sure it's ready for Mexico. The final rider for our Copper Canyon adventure, Rich Desmond, won't be playing with us in Arkansas this time around. He's got something else going on down in Texas with his Concours-riding buddies.

The four of us have been planning this Mexico trip for a long time. I'm glad the departure date is nearly upon us.

But for now ... Arkansas, here we come. David Hemphill, the Kansas rider responsible for this rally, is predicting a record-breaking crowd. Last I heard, there were more than 50 rooms reserved at the primary hotel -- and some riders will undoubtedly choose different digs or camp out.

I look forward to meeting up with old dualsporting friends and making new ones.

"Are You Ready For This...?"

Pulling into my driveway when I came home from work today, I noticed all the pretty blossoms on our Japanese something-or-other tree and realized that "spring has sprung." The tree wasn't my only reminder, though; I'm beginning to see a lot more motorcycles on the road as all the seasonal riders uncover their steeds, blow off the cobwebs, and hit the mean streets. Though my own bikes get ridden year round, I realize not everyone is as hardcore as I am. Many bikes are forced to hibernate through the winter, sullenly slumbering through the drab brown months with their bellies full of stabilizer, their dreaming brains tickled by battery tenders, and their thickening lifeblood pooled morosely into sump pans. Grizzlies in waiting. Summer friends.

But now ... now here comes the sun and the green shoots of Bermuda thrust up through the dead heather of winter. Spring storms will soon inspire wildflowers to bloom. In southern states, women are revealing far more than they should in exchange for cheap plastic beads made in China ... All clear indicators of motorcycle-friendly weather!

Before you jump on that two-wheeled beauty, fire it up, and roar off through the neighborhood, however, make sure the bike's actually ready for the road. Check the tires for proper inflation and adequate tread. Check all the fluid levels (oil, coolant, brakes, battery, etc). Run a quick test of all the electrics: turn signals, horn, lights; in particular, make sure the brakelight comes on when you apply the brakes. Inspect fittings and hoses. Look for loose fasteners and inspect your chain: is the tension correct, does it need lubricated? Make sure your throttle and clutch cable move freely and smoothly; if not, lube them. How about your brakes; are the pads in good shape? Does your air filter need replaced or cleaned and oiled? Make sure no critters have taken up residence in the exhaust, air box, or even under the seat. When you saddle up for the first time, check the adjustment of your mirrors and take a moment to refamiliarize yourself with the controls; you don't want to be fumbling for the horn button when a careless driver, having gone all winter without worrying too much about motorcycles on the road, cuts into your lane.

You might also take some time to give your riding gear a quick once-over. If you haven't ridden in a few months, take it slow and easy at first; make sure you're not rusty. Find a vacant parking lot if necessary and chalk off some imaginary cones.

When your bike and you are ready, enjoy the ride!

And don't forget to return my wave when we pass.

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Have a suggestion or tip for prepping your bike in the spring? Please share it with the rest of us by using the comment feature below!

Stranded, "Like a Ship Out Of Water..."

I did exactly 500 miles my first day on the road, departing Oklahoma via the southeast corner, nipping a wee bit of Texas and Arkansas as I worked my way into northern Louisiana. The ZZR was running beautifully, the new chain and sprockets I'd installed last weekend humming along smoothly. (I'd been hearing and feeling quite a bit of crunching and grinding from the old hardware, but what do you expect after 25,000 miles on a sportbike that makes 160-something horsepower? I'd say I got my money's worth out of the original set.) Twilight found me pulling into a Super-8 somewhere along I-20.

I considered rolling the bike into my room, but it's quite a workout muscling the big ZZR through a standard-sized doorway. I settled for rolling it up on the sidewalk and parking it in front of my window. With the blinds partway open, I could keep an eye on it. If anyone messed with it in the middle of the night, I'd hear them. Wish I'd gone ahead and rolled it in the room, however, because my battery -- the original battery, now three and a half years old -- didn't care for the 28 degree low that night. When I tried to start the bike in the morning, I got nothing ... absolutely nothing, not even the clicking of a starter solenoid.

I wandered the parking lot of the hotel for the next hour until I finally found someone with jumper cables. The bike started easily enough using the juice from a good Samaritan's auto. See, cages are good for something after all!

Unfortunately, that was not to be the end of my woes. I blazed out I-20 (my first and only bit of Interstate for this trip), heading for Vicksburg. It had warmed up a bit. About 31 degrees, I think. My carbs were icing: the bike sputtering and stumbling any time I backed off the throttle or went to speed up for a pass. Just across the Mississippi River, I exited on Highway 61. The bike stuttered, tried to die a couple times. I was looking for a place to stop and let the carbs warm up. (To be honest, I kinda needed to warm up too.) There was some construction, and as I pulled in the clutch to downshift around some of those lovely orange cones that always haunt such areas, the bike stalled. Naturally, I immediately dumped the clutch to do a rolling restart. Nothing. I pulled in the clutch and hit the starter button. Nothing. Glanced down at my dash and absolutely nothing was lit, not even the digital clock.

I rolled to the side of the road. Battery again, I thought. The next five cars that came along -- when I waved at their drivers to flag them down and ask about cables and a jump -- sped up and passed me by. Thanks, folks! However, the next guy stopped. Charles didn't have cables, but offered to run down the road to a buddy's auto garage and borrow some for me. Definitely above and beyond! Charles confessed to being a rider himself. Said he had a Harley-Davidson, of course. I think he was getting a kick out of finding a rice-burner broken down alongside the road ("crotch rocket," I think he called it -- or that might have been the cop that came along later and was so concerned about me being stalled in the construction zone). Isn't it the Harleys we always expect to find?

We tried jumping the bike, but it wasn't getting any juice to the starter. I checked everything I knew, even the secret (not included in Kawasaki's wiring diagrams for the bike) 30 amp main fuse hidden down beside the battery well, but my troubleshooting was yielding nada damn thing. The cop wanted to have me towed out of his construction zone. I asked that they try calling any local bike shops, knowing from experience that they'd charge me a lot less than a tow company. They tried three bike shops: all of them were closed until after the first of the year. Crap!

Then Charles remembered an ATV and lawnmower dealership on 61 north of the Interstate. We called them and one of the guys agreed to come get me. He loaded my bike on a trailer and hauled it back to their shop, Magnolia Lawn and Tractor (1029 Hwy 61 North, Vicksburg, MS), where they helped me diagnose the problem. Turned out to be a blown fuse hidden in the connector for the starter solenoid. (Another fuse not shown in the wiring diagrams in Kawasaki's ZZR1200 service manual.) I'd obviously blown the fuse while jump-starting the bike. The bike had run just fine until it stalled, but of course, with the fuse blown it hadn't been charging the battery even when running. They happened to have a brand new battery in stock that fit my bike. The price was reasonable, so I bought it. They charged me just a half hour labor for working on the bike and installing the battery, even though I know I took up at least 2 hours of their time. And the guy who drove his own truck about 10 miles each way to pick me up off the side of the road wouldn't take a dime. Great folks! If you're ever in Vicksburg, stop in and say hello. If you live nearby and need a new mower or a Polaris ATV or work done on something, take your business to them. They certainly saved my bacon.

Having lost more than 3 hours out of my day, I skipped the sightseeing plans I had for the east bank of the Mississippi River. Maybe on the return trip. I pulled into my folks' driveway in Gulfport just shy of 5 p.m.

Gulfport hasn't changed much since my last visit. (For example, the tugboat pictured above is still beached near those railroad tracks, a LONG ways from the water.) Things are still in recovery mode here. Katrina still dominates the local news. Blue tarps still cover an inordinate number of rooves. FEMA trailer parks are still crowded. Insurance companies are doing their best to screw everyone they can. New Orleans gets all the national media attention (and, according to folks I talked to on the way down here, New Orleans gets most of the government money for rebuilding). The Highway 90 span over Bay St Louis is still down, although they have a ferry across the bay now -- something I think the ZZR and I will have to try. With my luck, though, the ferry will probably sink!

I'll write more as I get out and explore a bit.

"Necessity is the Mother of Invention..."

At least that's what they say.

With my rear tire sliding down the side of a steep railroad bed, loose gravel shifting out from under me, my front tire bouncing over the trestles within inches of being edge-trapped by the rail, I was beginning to think I should have stayed at home. Because he was still nursing a broken wrist, our ride leader had promised an easy ride, but easy for him on his DR-Z400 and easy for me on the heavier F650GS Dakar are two different things.

Railroad tracks in downtown OKC ... a hidden byway for dualsport motorcycles?

I thought I wasn't going to make this Saturday morning ride. The BMW had been sitting in my garage with its chain hanging off to one side for the last week. At a little over 10,000 miles, my chain and sprockets were totally shot, victims of a great deal of offroad fun. I'm pretty aggressive about chain maintenance, but they just don't last very long when constantly subjected to Oklahoma's abrasive sand and red dirt. I'd already installed the new sprockets, but I didn't have a chain-breaking tool to remove the old chain and size the new one. Nor did I have a link press to join the ends of the new chain. Running to the bike shop and buying the tools was a simple solution, but I'd never used them before, so I had taken up a friend on his offer to come over with his tools and show me how it was done.

The only problem was I didn't know when my friend would make it over, as he was tied up with family for Thanksgiving weekend. And I seriously wanted to join the gang for their Saturday morning urban dualsport outing in downtown Oklahoma City. James Pratt's urban rides are something of a revolution in dualsporting, putting knobby tires to use in an environment where at first glance they might seem out of place. Better to cruise the mean streets with a nice low-slung cruiser and your favorite lady's arms wrapped around your waist, right? Catch your reflection from the storefront windows before they open for the season's Christmas shopping mayhem, early in the morning before traffic demands all of your attention. Why on Earth would you need a dualsport motorcycle to ride downtown?

What's not at first obvious when you're downtown is the hidden world between the buildings and behind the storefronts ... shipping and freight yards, alleyways, drainage culverts, vacant lots, railways, construction sites ... the secret places under the spaghetti system of interstate exchanges ... places probably better known by our nation's homeless than by any motorcycle riders. Pratt has made a fine art of finding these secret byways. The riding is great fun and at times very challenging.

You never know what you'll encounter downtown...

The roof of a vacant parking garage makes for an excellent racetrack!

But there sits my Dakar, temporarily out of commission. What to do?

Surely not everyone in the world has fancy tools for this job? What would you use if you were stuck somewhere a hundred miles from the nearest bike shop? Or in a third world country in the middle of a ride around the world? Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

I used my Dremel tool to grind off the ends of the roller pins on a link of the old chain, then wedged a screwdriver into the link to break it apart. Tossing the old chain aside, I congratulated myself on completing half the job ... only problem: that was the easy half. I stretched out the new chain and counted links to get the size I wanted. The stock chain on the BMW is 112 links, but I was going up two teeth on the rear sprocket to change the gearing on the bike, so I needed a 114 link chain. The chain I'd bought was the standard 120 links.

When your sprocket looks like this (asymmetrical valley between the teeth and the tips of the teeth hooked over), it's definitely time for a replacement!

Again, I ground off a couple pins. Because I didn't want to damage the new chain, I couldn't wrestle it apart with a screwdriver the way I had the old one. Instead, I placed the chain on a block of soft pine in which I had drilled a hole just slightly larger than the pin. Then I used a hammer and a punch to carefully tap the roller pin out of the chain. Now to run the chain over the sprockets on the bike, being sure to route it correctly through the chain rollers and match up the end links on the rear sprocket.

I thoroughly greased the pins on the masterlink, put the o-rings in place, and joined the ends of the chain. Pressing on the sideplate would be tricky. Too tight and you risk crushing the o-rings. Too loose and you'll never get the masterlink clip to seat and stay in the retaining groves on the pins. I solved the problem by taking a spare sideplate, drilling the holes out slightly so that it would slip over the ends of the roller pins, then used it with a pair of channel-lock pliers to press the new sideplate in place. By keeping the pliers over the end of the pin, you won't crush the o-rings.

Using a spare sideplate and channel-locks to press a masterlink.

I used needle-nosed pliers to snap on the masterlink clip, closed end in the direction of travel. With a magnifying glass, I verified that the clip was indeed seated in the retaining groves on the pin. Most people lose their clip because it was never properly seated. Last thing, I put silicon sealant over the clip to help keep it in place.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a firm believer in having the right tools for the job. And if I'd had the right tools, I could have probably done this job in a third the time. But it's good to know that I could change out a motorcycle chain in just about any situation.

New chain and sprockets: ready to rock-n-roll!

With a new chain and sprockets, my reward is finding myself sideways on the steep bank of a railroad bed. My rear tire is slipping downhill as the gravel bank crumbles away. My front tire is parallel to the track, pointed the way I want to go, and I know proper technique here is to probably get up on the pegs and manage my throttle, trusting the rear of the bike to eventually climb the slope and fall in line with the front. But I'm worried about the front tire getting up against the eight inches of exposed train track, knowing it'll throw me down. Traction would be a huge help, but the rear tire just keeps slipping in the loose gravel.

I wound up easing the bike, still mostly sideways, for forty or fifty feet, walking it with one foot on the ground and nursing what little traction I could out of the rear wheel, fighting the great enemy Gravity. Not pretty at all, but at least the Dakar and I stayed vertical. When I finally got to the other side of the series of railroad tracks, sweating under my gear and feeling the euphoria of tired muscles and subsiding adrenaline, I found my riding partners waiting. Pratt had his camera out, evidently thinking he was going to get a shot of me on the ground. Fooled ya, buddy!

Once again, I've learned a bit more about riding. When necessity demands I cross similar terrain in the future, I'll have experience to draw on. When I face my next two-wheeled challenge, whether it be a maintenance procedure I've never tackled or a rugged stretch of landscape, I'll have the confidence to know I can figure it out.

Hope to see you on the road soon. Right now, I'm off to the bike shop to buy some new tools!