SilveradoCA

Thanks; the FP is powered via the main fuse (and?) ignition fuse, which are OK. Can anyone pinpoint the location of the fuel pump relay for me? The word relay does not appear in the owner's manual, and the factory service manual indicates with a big arrow that it's someplace near the battery... not particularly helpful. I can't seem to spot it with the left side cover off where the FP is. Google and YT are thin on helpful info. TIA.

I haven't ridden the big girl much this year, nor the little one for that matter, because depression is a bitch. I think maybe I should just sell them. However, when I turn the ignition on, I don't hear the fuel pump clicking anymore like it always did, and the bike felt a little down on power at highway speed. Is there a procedure to test/diagnose an imminent fuel pump failure before I order parts? I don't feel right listing a bike with a known problem. It's a 2008 with 75,000Km on the clock. Thanks, you all have been so helpful in the past.

I use a pair of wireless Bluetooth earbuds made by Jabra. They stay in my ears well, make a good seal once I swapped out the left silicone mushroom for a different size. I've had them for about 2.5 years, and the batteries are almost gone - I also listen to them while working much of the time, so almost 3 years of daily use. I'll be replacing them this year with the newer model, which has active noise cancelling, so I suspect I'll be able to keep the volume a bit lower; Cherry's exhausts give a sustained throaty bellow at highway speed. I also cut the tags off mattresses. Call the black helicopters!

I switched from a factory sized 150 to a 130 last summer. This is how the bike should handle, IMO. It is a little more prone to wind shear, particularly when leaned over in a sweeper, but it's not so bad that it makes me regret the incredible improvement in low speed handling - both precision and lightness of feeling at the bars.

Mine stinks of gas in the garage too. I'm about to strip her naked and eviscerate her over the winter anyway, and carb work is on the list. However... are these carbs not vented to atmosphere? A little gas smell between rides is normal in my experience, though mine is more than that.

No duck bill for me, but I think my Shoei Neotec II is by far the best helmet I've ever owned. Comfy, quiet, super versatile, and high quality in every detail. It was hard to cough up nearly a thousand bones (Canadian) after tax, but the sting went away after about 2 kilometres.

I had the same problem on my little jughead (S40) earlier in the year. It was the starter solenoid, and it was cheap and easy to fix. Well, easy except the part about the position and location of the second mounting bolt. THAT was done by the design engineer as a joke, surely. If I meet him, his dentist is getting a new jet ski.

I've got a number of good n' cheap ideas here, thanks. You cool cats are all right.

The party is about to end up here; I've been smelling winter in the air for a month, and this week looks to be the end of the nice weather, so now we begin 6 months of freezing in the dark. Time to tear down Cherry and do all the work I've been talking about since I bought her in 2018. What do you guys use for exhaust hose to route your exhaust outside the garage in the winter? Commercial hoses sold for shops are comically expensive, and I'm clownishly cheap sometimes. This is one of those times.

Not a Strat, but I owned a 2001 Road Star. Like the Venture and all Yamaha bikes I've owned and loved, it was good looking, well built and well finished. That big engine was a gem; torque like a diesel, nice sound, low redline. The bike handled well for it's size, being quite low. Also like the Venture, it was not much for carving corners, but the floor boards made nice sparks. If you like the looks of the Strat and find one well kept, I don't think you'd be disappointed.

I appreciate the h/u on the finer points of 3D printing; it's not a process I'm familiar with. Lots of ways these could be made though; CNC, laser cut or water-jet come to mind. I have no idea how many would need to be done to make the price reasonable, unless a hobbyist were to take a swipe at it. It wouldn't be particularly hard to make one -gasp- by hand either, if a fella had the dimensions.

I haven't used one, so I have to ask why it would have to be made from metal? Would hard plastic not do the job?

Can someone on here 3D print a bunch of these? I'll buy one.

It's a great thing that dreams can be tweaked before pulling the trigger! The thing is... what resonates with me isn't just having a boat with sails, it's the whole package. The bluewater passages, live-aboard, circumnavigating the marble, all of it. I'm single, child free and have no real encumbrances, and live a pretty frugal lifestyle. The only thing stopping me today is dollars. But I'm not one to be well satisfied with severe compromises, mostly. I also feel a compulsion to do this before I get too old... and longevity doesn't feature strongly on the male side of my family tree. That requires a craft of a certain size. From what I've come to understand, it could be and has been done on boats as small as 27', but with a lot of compromises. The small-ish boats in the Golden Globe at 32-35' are getting closer, but not quite there. If you like watching sailors on YouTube, have a look for a fellow named Erik Anderaa. He sails single-handed in a Contessa 32' from his home in Norway all over the North Atlantic, in the winter! He's also a pretty good videographer and drone pilot, so his vids are thrilling to watch. The total opposite of all the beautiful couples cruising the Caribbean in their million dollar catamarans. Another good fellow is Patrick Laine; also on YT, he sails out of La Rochelle, France. Retired pilot I believe; totally competent and practical. I've also enjoyed learning from a guy in the PNW or CA called Christian Williams, again on YT. Some of these sailors also post on related web forums. If money were no object, I'd call up Hallberg-Rassey in Sweden and get them to build me one with all the automatic gizmos (to the tune of about , but I think (or it has been suggested to me) that a ketch under 45' could be single-handed well enough, and manageable for two quite easily. This at the expense of speed, of course. The fact that ketch rigs aren't popular anymore means I'm looking at boats in the 20-30 year old range. The systems part doesn't scare me at all; I'm a carpenter by trade and builder by profession, and consider myself a competent mechanic. I don't have a lot of experience working on boats, but I did spend a couple of weeks replacing part of the hull and deck on an old wooden former RCMP boat last year (though why the owner even wanted to do so was beyond me.. the thing had been parked on the bottom TWICE in it's life, though somehow still floated). But also because a nice ketch flying all her white canvas on a reach is unspeakably beautiful. If I can make it happen in the next couple of years, AND IF world travel is even possible in the 'new normal', I intend to at least get to tidewater and take a couple of courses for basic certification, then try to crew on boats headed to Mexico or Hawaii to get a deeper feel for it. I'm also going to get a HAM radio license this winter, though not only to learn about radios in marine applications, obviously. The cost of buying the boat is far less than the cost of buying a home, even if you factored in replacing all the rigging and systems. The last time I owned a house was almost 20 years ago, but I did live in my 117 square foot RV for almost 2 years! The marina fees are about the cost of property taxes here in Canada. Live-aboard slips are like unicorn hair, that is a fact...

Condor, I know this is a zombie thread, I found it at the bottom FlyinFool's thread on RC aircraft! My absolute dream is to sail around the world, including to some unconventional places like Iceland, Japan, Patagonia (with the necessary trip around Cape Horn), Antarctica, etc. Something about the high latitudes, both North and South, really calls to me. My dad had a windsurfer, and taught me the very basics of how sails work when I was 7 or 8. I got the chance to sail around the Straight of Georgia as a young teen, and it planted a seed. A few summers ago I spent a week cruising the Discovery Islands in my buddy's boat (a motor cruiser), and it lit a spark. Since then I've been reading, asking questions, and learning. I have never been so possessed by a singular notion in my life. Today my dream life would be living in a coastal city on my boat; a city with close proximity to good motorcycling, while I spend a few years getting familiar with the boat and the process. I think the progression would be to sail the calm (often becalmed LOL) sedate waters of the Salish Sea, Discovery Passage, maybe up to Haida Gwaii, etc., then to a Van Isle 360, then down to Mexico, out to Hawaii and back, and then head out on the wind to wherever. That boat would be something in the 40-45' range, a mono-hull ketch rig with two headsails, fairly heavy displacement, with a powerful auxiliary and big tankage. Full suite of electronics, wind vane, water maker, the works. If I actually had the money today, I'd be hard pressed to decide between a couple of models of yacht of that description. There are an awful lot of yachts on the market these days, priced about 60% of what they were even 2 years ago. Still well out of reach for me, so it's probably a lottery ticket pipe dream.

RC airplanes were my father's hobby too. He built all kinds: electric powered gliders with di- and poly-hedral wings and folding props (one of which had a wingspan of at least 8'), tons of high and low-wing gassers, and a really cool bi-plane that he built before I was born. Some of them were amphibious; floats with wheels in them, just like a bush plane. He started me off on a control-line flyer with a Cox .049 Black Widow on the front, and eventually even browbeat me into building a model Piper Cub. It was never really my thing though, since he plunked me down on a Honda Z50R when I was 5. The day he showed me how to make Immelmann turns was close though. One winter he built something similar to this, from scratch. It was a delta wing with a boat hull shaped into the bottom. Yeah, we spent our weekends at a lake, and he wanted to be able to take off and land sitting on the dock. The entire airframe was shaped from Styrofoam SM, covered with laid-up fibreglass, then filled, glazed and painted. The paint job was primo, because he was a Master Auto Body mechanic, owned his own shop, and was a lifelong hot-rodder. The oddest thing about this odd thing of his own design, was the huge 4-stroke (!) engine mounted at the top of the tail. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think it was backwards with a pusher prop. May have been though. Where else would you locate the motor on such a thing? It took him most of the winter, and I recall he said that it didn't fly for ****, but sure made a poor boat. LOL! He had far more creativity than I do, and I wish he had lived longer. Maybe some of it would have rubbed off; a lot of his other traits certainly did.

Rode the Highwood Pass - Kananaskis Trail loop from Calgary again today. If you live near or visit, this is probably the best day ride in Southern Alberta. The two main parts are Hwy 40 through what we call K-Country, and 541 along the Highwood River and into Longview. It's normally ridden by heading West out of Calgary on 1, then South on 40 and East on 541, back to 2 at the South end of Calgary. Being the 'other kind', I ride it in reverse. September is the BEST month of the year; best weather, least traffic. It's probably that way near your place too? I'm not much for stopping to snap pics, but it's about 300Km of mostly this: winding mountain roads, nothing too tight, speed limit of 90-100Km/h, which is easy to maintain unless it's summer, at which time part of the loop will be infested with rented RV's doing 30 under and dragging gravel into the lane on every right-hander. From Calgary this route gains about 3600' of elevation (reaching 7200'ish at the top of Highwood Pass.) This route is only open from June 15 to December 1 yearly. Had 4 near collisions; 1 with a yearling calf (cattle are free-ranged in parts of the park - lots of Texas gates across the highway), TWO with Bighorn Sheep (part of this loop traverses the Sheep River Provincial Park) which are ALL OVER this road at this time of year, and one with some clown in a Mazda who changed her mind 3 times about whether she was going to turn left in front of me to get to a trailhead parking area. When I say near collisions, I should clarify that none made my palms sweat. I saw them all coming with plenty of seconds to respond. I was almost finished my ride before it hit me... hunting season started this week, and the hills are crawling with hunters, so the animals are upset, and there's a 400m No Hunting zone on either side of the road allowance. Happens every year. No excuse for the Mazda though. I'm going to push my luck until the snow flies, but then Cherry is going to get a major tear-down. She needs a tune-up and valve check/adjust, but there are a number of other issues I want to dig into (primarily the fact that chubby girls like her ALWAYS skip leg day - the suspension really needs improving on this motorcycle). I also think that my fuel pump isn't working anymore. I never hear it clicking like it used to prior to startup, and she's a little reluctant to start for a couple of seconds, almost like the bowls aren't full? I've never had a bike with a fuel pump before, so I assume this one will run without? The bowls should gravity fill, and of course carbs function on vacuum, right? I think I will start a new thread about the work when the time comes, but that was today. I got my bike covered in dead bugs. You? Minor edit to add: if you love fishing, both the Sheep and Highwood rivers are full of HUGE trout, including Bull Trout that run to about 15lbs - that's a mountain trout the size of a decent salmon... Check the regs if you're going to go, but it's world class trout fishing.

I recently used my handheld impact driver to break loose 3 tiny screws on Taryn Manning's carburetor. Those little devils were insisting they'd rather strip their tiny heads than break loose with a screwdriver. I will admit that I was nervous about cracking the carb body, but a few judicious taps on each one broke the surly bonds of thread locker, and out they came. I gave the impact driver the MVP award on that one. They are incredibly useful.

I sure wish I knew how to weld. I could build you anything you want from wood, but joining metal with lightning is obviously sorcery of some sort.

Michelin Commander II, bow and stern. I'm totally happy with these tires. MUCH better than the E3/880 mismatched shoe combo she had when I bought her.

British North America Act > Articles of Confederation > Constitution. That's the basic progression of laws that formed today's Canada, more or less. The Queen is still our Monarch, though she has no legislative powers. The relationship is entirely honorific. The Governor General is the Queen's representative in Canadian government; he/she has almost no legislative powers, though the passage of a House of Commons or Senate bill into law still requires 'Royal Assent', which is given by the Governor General. Technically no law comes into force until this final step; it is a rubber stamp process. The office of the GG is notional, thougn a fairly expensive notion to maintain. Their consent is also 'required' to dissolve Parliament ahead of a general election. Our system of government is a Westminster Parliament system, as opposed to the Constitutional Republic enjoyed by our American cousins. You have an elected Congress of Members of the House of Representatives, and Senators. We have elected Members of Parliament who serve in the House of Commons, and Senators who are appointed for life by the Prime Minister. These are EXCLUSIVELY patronage appointments, as is that of the GG. We - in theory - do not elect our Prime Minister. He/She is the leader of the political party with the most seats in the HoC. They are elected leader by the membership of their political party. In practice, we more or less vote for a party and a leader, and do so by casting our vote for the often nameless nobody running under the flag of colour we prefer in our local riding. We also do not elect Judges at any level, nor law enforcement officials of any kind. This system works great if you're a small island in the North Atlantic with an ethnically and socially homogenous population. Maybe it works OK for a colony across the pond comprised of 99% English and French. It is an absolute disaster for a huge country populated mostly by immigrants from all over the world. If the root of your question cowpuc is whether or not Canada became an independent nation not until 1982, technically that is correct, though we celebrate the birth of our nation as the signing of the Articles of Confederation in 1867. The clue is in the name - at that time, we were the Dominion of Canada.

My pleasure, friend. It took me a long time to learn, and I'm pretty circumspect about the notion given that I'm basically a blue-collar wage slave, but I believe that sometimes what holds a fella down, preventing him from solving a problem, is the weight of his ass on his wallet. Don't always need to send lawyers, guns AND money. Sometimes just one will do LOL. Also, though my dad was a hot-rodder, race car driver and builder, and owned an auto shop in which I spent lots of time growing up, I consider myself only a competent mechanic, and honestly I hate turning wrenches. Anything that makes that experience easier is good by me. I just want to add: there are 4 bona fide and different ways to solve the access problem, given by 4 different riders, right here in one thread. That's a win.

GearWrench. This one happens to have a flex head, but a straight one will do as well. There is enough 'squish' in the passenger pad to get the sweep you need to ratchet the teeth and tighten the bolt. These are some of the most useful tools I own. I have them in long & stubby, metric and SAE. They're somewhat expensive at retail, but BIG value if you can get them on sale. As a fellow Canuck, look for Canadian Tire to have them at 60% off about twice a year. EDIT: I suppose this pic clearly shows that you could get on the bolt head with a plain 12-point box end wrench, but it would be a bit fiddly to place it over and over again.

If I were neighbours with you fellas it would be my Gen4 Glock 17 in a Crossbreed Supertuck IWB. I also have a Ruger SP101 in 38sp. that would do the job.

Here ya go @cowpuc... I think? Is this what you were dreaming of?