Gremlins appeased and thoughts on motorcycle commuting.

The electrical gremlins that have been keeping me from riding seem to have been appeased for now. I replaced the regulator/rectifier unit, and now the charging system works. I'm still breathing a sigh of relief every time I hit the starter button and the engine rumbles to life. I was riding the other day to Home Depot, and a fuse blew, but I managed to walk to a gas station and get a replacement set. I looked at the blown fuse when I got home, and it was just corroded because the case was cracked. It probably hadn't been replaced since the bike was manufactured.

That's the thing with old bikes. Mine's a 2002, and it's been stored outside for a significant portion of its service life. So I worry about things like corrosion on electrical leads, frayed insulation, dry rot on tires and belts, gaskets degrading. Rust. You live in Florida, you're gonna get rust.

There's a persistent oil leak from the head that I've been keeping track of, since I don't have time these days to take off the tank, remove the head cover, and poke around in the engine. Fortunately, I know where the leak's coming from, and I've done this kind of thing before. I'm not going to sell the bike until everything's fixed.

After a year of riding, both as a means of commuting and as a means of recreation, I can say this: a bike is not a car. If all you need to do is get yourself and very little cargo around, a bike is a great way to meet your needs. If you have to be on time anywhere during the rainy season, budget fifteen extra minutes and make sure you have rain gear. I have a full set (pants, jacket, boots) and I keep everything in my backpack in a set of waterproof camping bags. I've ridden from Palm Harbor to Tampa in a thunderstorm and stayed dry.

But if you need to (1) commute long distances, (2) carry more stuff than can fit into a backpack or pair of saddlebags, or (3) carry someone else, a motorcycle is not an ideal commuter vehicle. I've made it work, but your mileage will most certainly vary.

The most important tool in motorcycle maintenance

A notebook.

Fixing motorcycles is an exercise in deductive reasoning and hypothesis testing. Failure to carefully observe and record your observations can cost you hundreds of dollars and long periods of time without the comforting thrum of a motorcycle beneath you. Your moves are only as good as your observations, and recording your observations has a multiplier effect, since you can watch trends. This is particularly true for electrical work and compression tests.

For instance, I've been puzzling my way through a mysterious electrical issue on the Noble Savage, in which the battery would slowly drain out, which would leave me stranded at any number of gas stations in the Hillsborough County area until I could get a jump start. Very frustrating. Fortunately life right now is simple enough that I can ride a bicycle to all my engagements.

Electrical issues on motorcycles tend to involve the following components/systems (in increasing order of complexity/cost-to-fix/pain-in-the-ass):

1. frame grounds
2. battery
3. wire connections
4. regulator/rectifier
5. stator

And electrical problems don't necessarily have to restrict themselves to just one thing. My observations suggest that my issue is a combination of battery (appears to be damaged) and rectifier (one of the wire connectors is fused and probably shorting the system). So my first step is to order a new rectifier and load-test/replace the battery. Fortunately the latter is under warranty, and I save receipts.

The problem a lot of people have in maintaining their own motorcycles is lack of efficacy. Motorcycles are relatively complex machines, and for people not familiar with the principles of internal combustion, electricity, fluid dynamics, and chemistry, cracking open a motorcycle for the first time is a scary experience. You're afraid of screwing up. Understandable.

Safeguard against that by purchasing a good service manual for your exact year, make, and model of bike (for reference and step-by-step instruction), and record everything you do in a notebook. Most service manuals leave a few pages in back blank for note-taking anyways --- so there you go. Use them wisely, so that even if you do screw up, then you phone a knowledgeable friend, you can say something more substantial than 'OMG I SCREWED UP HELP ME'.

The regulator/rectifier is supposed to arrive in a few days. I'm going to (1) bypass the fused wire connector block to eliminate any possibility of a short at that point, (2) check my connections and grounds one more time, (3) replace the battery if it doesn't pass the load test, and (4) install the new rectifier. If none of that fixes my problem, then it's the alternator --- expensive and a pain in the ass to fix, but doable with the tools and time I have available.

Of oil slicks and overreaction

The past three weeks have been very trying, and I feel I've learned some serious lessons, chief among which is 'calm yo shit down, motherfucker!'

Yesterday I installed a new brake caliper on the Noble Savage. The brake pads were worn down to the metal backing plates, and fortunately, I caught the problem before it could do serious damage to my front brake rotor. Because if there's a procedure I'd rather perform on a motorcycle, it's replacing brake pads over replacing a brake rotor. For one, I don't have to take the front wheel off, and for another, I only have to remove four bolts, and not those four bolts plus those for the axle (at least one huge bolt) and rotor (about five of those suckers). And if there's any truth I can impart about motorcycles kept outdoors, is that you're gonna have frozen bolts.

Lesson #1: (more like a reminder) a little foresight saves a lot of time and frustration. If I caught the brake pads before they started to blacken my brake rotor and make weird skiffing noises when I tried to stop, I could have avoided damaging my old caliper in an attempt to change the pads, and I could have enjoyed some seriously awesome riding over the weekend, instead of being cooped up at home waiting for my parts to arrive via USPS.

Now to overreaction. My brakes work well. Very very well. I not only put fresh pads in, cleaned the rotor, but also bled the brake fluid and put all new fluid in the master cylinder. So now my front brake responds to input with considerable alacrity; it's way easier to stop a motorcycle with brake pads than without them.

Riding to Kaleisia today, I was caught in the usual five-o-clock weekday traffic snarl on Bruce B. Downs. The thing about traffic snarls is that they tend to deposit oil on the roads: thousands of cars an hour leaking a few drops here and there tends to leave wild purple-and-blue splashes of motor oil on wet roads, and the intersection of Bruce B. Downs and 131st was something out of Timothy Leary's wildest hallucinations.

No good, I thought, frowning underneath my helmet as I coasted towards the intersection. I cautiously applied my newly-functioning brakes on the rain-and-oil slick roads, and felt the bike lose control. The front wheel locked up, and I started skidding. Fortunately, I was only going about 10mph, and I could arrest the motion with my boots. If it happened at 70mph, I would be typing this from the emergency room. Because if there's one thing that gives motorcyclists nightmares, it's losing traction, particularly with the front wheel.

Source: hellforleathermagazine.com

Rear wheel traction loss is a relatively easily recoverable situation: just release the rear brake, apply a little throttle, and the bike sorts itself out. Failure on part of the bike to sort its own vector out usually results in a 'low-side' crash, in which the majority of damage occurs to the bike and the rider's extremities.

Front wheel traction loss, on the other hand, is really bad. The solution to this is to release the front brake, and hope to the gods that the bike sorts its shit out, because failure to do so results in a 'high-side' crash, in which the rider is thrown from the bike and goes skidding on the road. And if there's one place I don't want to end up, it's skidding on a rain-and-oil slick road in the middle of rush hour traffic, 350-pound bike skidding right behind me.

Lesson learned: with enough training, you can be remarkably calm in life-threatening situations. The worst damage I could have sustained from that crash is some seriously bruised legs and maybe a broken bone or two. The part of my brain prone to overreaction didn't have a chance to put its vote in before the polls closed: my training took over and its only goal was to regain traction. Ten feet later, the front wheel stopped castering wildly and I was back in full control of the motorcycle. My pulse didn't go above 85 until I rounded the corner and realized: I could have been seriously hurt back there.

This brings me to training: in emergencies, you almost never rise to superhuman levels of competence. Instead, you fall back on your training. Training interrupts the processes inherent in us to overreact. It instills in you a reflexive sort of reaction that builds off of the experiences and reflections of those who trained you. We practiced locking up our brakes in motorcycle training, and I've almost never had to fall back on that training, but I'm glad I can access that training when it's necessary.

So, consider this: think about a time recently when you overreacted, and think about how you can train yourself (or be trained by someone) to not overreact next time. For me, it's largely in social situations when I overreact, particularly in dating, where my usual response is to hang on tight, even well past the red-flag-bestrewn path to misery and mutual resentment. Or to not react at all, because I emotionally get off on aloofly disregarding signals. Both arise from the same egotistical defensiveness I'm trying to train out of myself, one day at a time. Because it's just like riding a motorcycle: sometimes it's wise to hit the brakes, and other times, you're better off trusting to ballistics and friction.

Ghetto exhaust gas analysis.

I bought the Noble Savage in February of last year, so I never had a chance to see how she performs in cold weather. So lately, I've been noticing massive clouds of white smoke from the exhaust when I start her up on cold mornings, particularly when I pull the choke. This, of course, worries me, but I figure it's just condensation from the exhaust baffles, since it starts emitting about thirty seconds after the engine starts up, and stops about a minute later, presumably when all the water vapor has been expelled from the exhaust system.

Ghetto exhaust gas analysis

Still, never can be too careful. I don't have an exhaust gas analyzer handy, but there's a quick, cheap, and easy way to rule out most major culprits of visibly large volumes of exhaust smoke. This also applies to cars and anything that has both an internal combustion engine and an exhaust pipe.

The only material you'll need other than that is a clean glass or Pyrex jar...

...and that's it. Collect the exhaust gases in the jar and see what condenses on the jar walls. In particular, you're looking for blue-ish oil droplets or black soot.

Blue droplets and burnt wire smell: motor oil in exhaust (not good)

Run a finger along the walls to make sure, and sniff the jar, too! Combusted motor oil has a distinctive smell, almost like burning wires. If the droplets have a slight blue-ish tinge to them, and you collect an oily film on your finger, then you probably have oil in the exhaust, which means you might have worn piston rings or valve guides. Those both are fairly expensive fixes, in that you probably don't want to do them yourself unless you really know what you're doing and are willing to undertake a full engine tear-down, but it won't fuck your engine if you wait a little bit. That's about the worst that can show up from this test.

Black soot and 'gas station' smell: partially-combusted fuel in exhaust (not so bad)

If there's black soot (particularly if your bike backfires a lot), that's probably partially uncombusted fuel, and you might want to jiggle with your air-fuel mixture. On most bikes, you can do that by adjusting a screw on the carburetor. That's not a big deal; you're just getting worse gas mileage and might be fouling up the spark plug(s), just as you would if you're getting oil in the combustion chamber, as would be so in the above case.

Water droplets andexhaust smell: water vapor in exhaust (just fine)

If all you have is droplets of water and the smell of fully-combusted exhaust, then breathe easy. It just means you live in Florida, and the temperature of the inside of a cold exhaust pipe is below the dew point.

By the way, bonus tip: always track your mileage. I use an app on my phone called (simply enough) 'Mileage', and the free version allows you to not only track average mileage, but amount of money spent on gas, best and worst mileage, number of miles between fill-ups, and tons of other nifty statistics that will be useful to you over time. Mileage is a fairly good indicator of engine health, as decreasing mileage could be a symptom of any number of things, most commonly loose valves.

Desmodromic

I ask the world:

Why did you send me?
She answers:
If you lay aside all your fears
And cut you own cords,
Then fighting will be like dancing!

My vision goes red.
My fists clench and I tremble.

She is beautiful.
She is. Beautiful!

I ask the world
Atop fire and steel,
Perched uneasy, hanging free.
She whispers:
If you went this moment
Beyond fate and fear,
Where would you go?

My heart skips.

I feel faint.

Where would I go?

Where would I go?

Oh shit moment

There are two kinds of 'oh shit' moments when it comes to motorcycles: the best are the kinds you get when the bike is in motion, and you almost die. My first such 'oh shit' moment was when I was taking my first curve at 60mph; I felt my bike creeping across the centerline of the road, and I thought I could do nothing about it but high-side into a ditch and die. Instead, my training took over, sharply relieved of its duties the part of my brain that feels fear, and ordered me to shove down on the right handlebar. I complied and got back into my lane, trembling, but alive as fuck!

Then there's the 'oh shit' moment you get when the bike's stationary, and you're wrenching. Zen riding only comes through Zen wrenching, but sometimes you do stupid shit when wrenching and you wonder if the bike will ever run under its own power again. It's like when you know you're on the out with your significant other, because she won't return your phone calls: is she just busy? Is she sleeping with another man? Is she dead? That uncertainty --- it's a killer.

Today was the latter. I was fiddling around with the Noble Savage. Objectives: check valve clearances, replace breather tube, put vacuum cap on vacuum port, check for leaks in fuel line after having installed the new manual petcock, and clean her up a bit. Easy peasy, and nothing I haven't done before.

So when you're doing valve clearance checks, you have to rotate the engine to top dead center on the compression stroke (hereinafter TDCC). This is so that both valve rocker arms have free play, which you need in order to slip a feeler gauge in between the tappets and valve seats. It's easier to rotate the engine if you take out the spark plug and put a straw in the spark plug port, so you can watch the cylinder rise and fall as you rotate it.

I didn't have a straw long enough, but I did have an ivory chopstick!

So I stuck the chopstick in the spark plug port, and started rotating the engine, when I heard the butthole-clenching sound of the chopstick snapping off inside the fucking cylinder. Foreign objects inside cylinder are bad bad news. They can clog oil passages, score cylinder walls, break valves, and really fuck your day up.

So after profanity, I remembered my breathing and thought of solutions. I wanted a cigarette, but it's been day six, and I'm not about to let a mere chopstick cause me to relapse into smoking. The only way out was through! So I tried the following: (1) compressed air to blow the pieces out (nope, didn't work), (2) coat-hanger-and-chewing-gum trick (only picked up carbon, no chopsticks), and (3) picking up the bike and shaking it upside down (I wish).

I even thought about ghetto-rigging a vacuum cleaner up to the spark plug port and sucking it out, but realized our vacuum sucks at sucking, and we didn't have an extension cord long enough to make it work. We'll pause here for a second and talk about risk-taking, but first, these words:

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

Over here at Sven Williams, we're not about avoiding risks; we're more about assessing the probability and potential for catastrophic damage from risks, and going ahead anyways knowing full well that what we're doing is a bad idea. It's better to take a foolish risk and be fully aware of the consequences, than it is to avoid a risk that you know little to nothing about. This is typical Sven reasoning, and it's most of the reason why I'm constantly slipping on snail trails.

So here's what I was thinking: A cylinder is made of steel and is subject to enormous thermal and physical stresses. That chopstick is made of ivory, a keratinous substance not unlike fingernails and hair, and is subject only to tons of sriracha sauce. Bitch-ass chopstick ain't got shit on a 652cc motorcycle engine!

Weighing the risks, I tightened everything up, put the gas tank back on, pulled the choke, and fired up the engine. Starter whirred and whined futilely, and the piece of chopstick clattered around inside, taunting me with visions of ruined valves and cylinder head scoring. I hit the starter button again, this time longer. You don't want to do that too much, or else you'll melt the starter, but dammit, I'm Sven and I live fast and die young! YOLO baby!

Ultimately, it took more than a couple of tries with the starter to get the engine running, and with every clattering sound made by the chopstick piece inside the combustion chamber, my butthole clenched until it was tight enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. Helium into carbon. Carbon into iron. Because of the fact that iron has the high binding energy of any element, it can't undergo nuclear fusion any further, so after the fifth or sixth time with the starter, my butthole was about to go supernova.

I am a Knight of Svendinavia, and will not be bested by a mere eating utensil! If I tank that engine, I'm taking the entire solar system out with it! I am Sven and I feast upon the corpses of the gods slain dead at my feet!

Finally, the engine turned over and started idling. My butthole relaxed, and the solar system was safe another day. There was a burnt hair smell wafting from the exhaust pipe, and it was overpowering, but if something catastrophic were to happen to the engine, it would happen in pretty quickly. I decided to let the bike idle high for about ten minutes to cook anything out, periodically going over and holding the throttle wide open for a few minutes, potentially pissing off some neighbors, but fuck 'em; the Noble Savage must live! I have never known love until I found motorcycles! Live dammit, LIVE!

She's fine now. I'll keep listening to the engine to make sure it doesn't crap out on me, but I'm putting at least a hundred miles on her this weekend with all the running around I'll be doing, so if something goes wrong, I'll find out fairly soon. Stay tuned for future episodes of Sven and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which I talk about how a tin can makes a good seal between the exhaust header and muffler, and other ghetto fixes!

Peace!

So you're thinking about getting a motorcycle

I've never owned a car, partly because I have very strong feelings about the degree to which American society has become dependent on the automobile, and partly because owning a car is expensive. So last Christmas, I took a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course, got a motorcycle endorsement, and purchased a 2002 Suzuki LS650 'Savage' from a friend. Since then, people have asked me lots of questions about the practicality, safety, and costs of owning a motorcycle, and so I write this as a response for anyone considering getting a motorcycle intending to use it as a form of transportation.

First off, most people buy motorcycles primarily for recreation, and most motorcycle shops cater to the weekend warriors and not the everyday commuters. This is relatively unusual globally, because at least in the United States, the downsides of commuting by motorcycle are perceived outweigh the advantages, while in most of the world, a significantly higher proportion personal motor transportation is by motorcycle (including scooters and mopeds). Before you make your decision to commute routinely by motorcycle, consider the following:

pro	con
initial purchase, titling, registration, fuel, maintenance, repair, tolls, and parking permits are almost always thousands of dollars a year less expensive	requires significant investment in protective gear to ride safely: ideally: full-face helmet, armored gloves, armored jacket, long pants, and boots, in a pinch: helmet and eye protection, full-finger gloves, long pants, closed shoes, minimum legal: sunglasses and a deathwish
able to out-accelerate and out-maneuver most non-motorcycle road traffic, making passing, merging, stopping, and lane-changing easier	smaller visual profile and relative rarity relative to cars makes it more difficult to be seen by other traffic
vastly better sensory awareness of surroundings, affording the rider a unique and visceral experience of the roads and enabling the rider to better avoid potentially dangerous situations	physically and mentally more demanding than driving, unsafe to ride in inclement weather (heavy rain, snow, high winds), and uncomfortable to ride in extreme heat or cold
most maintenance and repairs can (and should) be done yourself with a minimal mechanical aptitude and tools	requires more maintenance per passenger mile (especially oil and fluid changes), parts may be difficult to source, and requires special tools for some procedures
subjectively more fun than driving, and likely to improve your perceived attractiveness to your preferred sex/gender	significantly higher risk of severe injury and/or fatality through rider error or interaction with traffic; cannot legally or safely use a cellphone, eat, drink, shave, apply make-up, or receive sexual favors while riding
children wave at you and smile with beaming joy when you rev your engine for them, middle-aged suburbanites in land yachts eye you with blood-curdling envy, and Jawas point and say 'OOTINI' when you pass	minimal or non-existent provision for carrying cargo without backpacks or saddlebags, and difficult to carry passengers

I'm about done for today, but future installments of Sven and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will include topics such as:

1. how to choose, assess, and purchase your first motorcycle, including recommendations for specific types and models
2. how to commute by motorcycle and deal with inclement road and weather conditions without getting your ass killed
3. how to perform basic maintenance and repairs, and why you should do most of it yourself instead of handing it off to a mechanic
4. anthropological observations of motorcycle culture and interactions between motorcyclists and other traffic