Snaggletooth

Well, did somebody get hit by lightning?

No worse than I am. My daughter has given up on asking me where I'm going. The one word answer drives her nuts. It's either North, South, East or West. Sometimes I'll throw her curveball and shoot her a South South East. I do send her a text now and then with my current location so at least she knows where I ended up at. Don't forget to pack the wet suits. Enjoy your ride. Mike

Hi Brian, I could guess your current seat is brown. It was a common problem with the brown seats on the older Ventures and Gold Wings as well that they eventually turned sticky. After a bit of research and talking to several shops that do recovers it seems the problem was caused by the dye in the material leeching out from exsposer. Not much you can do to fix it. It just is one of those things. I ended up finding both the seat and passenger back rest, in black on eBay for about $40.00 for the seat and $15.00 for the backrest. Compared to recovering, real cheap. There are other seats out there like the Corbin with a built in back rest but they are still holding a heavy price tag, and you may not like the feel of it. Some don't and say they feel hard or stiff. There are the aftermarket backrests for the bike that you can find on eBay once in a while but you need to be sure you find one for a MKI (83-85) with the right mounting brackets. If it don't have the the brackets, don't buy it. Might take a long while to find the right ones to match. Prices can run from $50.00 to $150.00 depending on how complete it is and condition. As far as making the stock seat more comfortable, the guy to talk to is Rick Butler here on the site. We call him the Butt Butler. He does magic making the seat fit your needs. I think he is on a bit of a break right now but you can touch base with him for more info on the mod. Search "Butt Butler" or "seat mod" and you can find more info also. Mike

Ok, I admit it. Some times I put things off a bit longer than I should. I installed new EBC pads front and rear about 18,000 miles ago. I've had to change out the front ones on both sides a couple of times due to caliper leaks and forks seals leaking so I've never worn a set down on the front. As for the back, I took them out and swapped sides about 8,000 miles ago to keep them wearing even. They looked pretty good back then. So.... I had bought new sets for the front and rear to install this spring and had them on hand. I had blown out another set of fork seals so I repaired that and held off on the new front pads until I was sure the new seals would hold. Needless to say the front pads were a lil slick with the oiled pads and I was depending on the rear brake all the time. Only took a couple of days to check the seals and then installed the new pads. I was going to install the rear pads when I mounted my new rear tire, which did not arrive as I had hoped so I put that off again for another week. Over the weekend I was cleaning the bike and had the bags off and looked at the caliper. I could see a lot of piston showing. Pulled the caliper off and dropped the pads. Yikes. Good thing I had swapped sides the last time. Both side were intact and evenly worn but shall we say, a lil thin. Rotor still looks great and still smooth. Good thing I live in the good ole flatlands. So all the new pads were on the day of the "Cager Club Sandwich" incident. At least that was good timing I guess. So one of the rears compared to a fairly new used pad from the front. Next time I'll be checking more often. Mike

When I lined my trunk I added a powered box with a switch and a LED light pod for lighting at night. Your power set up will probably be next to charge my cell, GPS and camera while on the road. Throw 'em in the truck, plug 'em in and be ready to go again. Won't be hard to patch into the wiring already done. Nice job.

I'm on a 1st gen but have played with this a lot. I run mine with zero pressure on the stand which shows about 3 lbs when on the ground. That works fine for me with 10wt oil in the forks. No bottoming out at all an only minimal dive under had braking. (no anti-dives, used Earls block offs) I have used the Progressive directions for the oil level at 5.5 inches from the top and had some issues when the pressure got knocked up to 21 lbs by accident. I had to redo the seals and dropped the oil level down to 6.5 inches from the top and no pressure on the forks. That was a smoother ride and works fine. I'm going to try the 20 wt oil at the 6.5 level and see how the forks respond with that set up. I'm a big guy at 280 lbs so I want to run zero pressure for a smooth ride and be able to tighten them up with a few lbs for better action in the twisties. My

Slow on the brakes ...... quick on the feet! Nice recovery!!!

Yikes!!! Anti-stoppie equipted!!

If your concern is in the wording of "Checking tire pressure cold" I wouldn't worry about the 2.7 miles to the station. Your tires won't be much more than warm in that distance. Now ..... if you had a 1/2 ride on the Interstate ..... that would make a difference. Go with the cold pressure and you should be fine. My Mike

I've always done business with SW Moto for my tires. The last purchase did not go so well. Only took a few days, three at most to get them to my door in the past. This time it took ten days to even get a response from them via e-mail and won't receive the tires until after Memorial Day. They were ordered on the 17th of May. Time to move on to a new supplier. When CS goes south, my business moves to the next guy. My

Ewww!! Bad image! Bad, bad image in my mind.

Notes! More like a file cabinet!!! Had to look twice at the pic. Small world eh? Hope to run into you someday but MD is not looking like a plan right now. Can't get away from the job ya know. Ride safe, Mike

Finally! Something else to blame it on! I burned the T-shirt with the bullseye on the back a long time ago. And I thought it was just me. Whew!!! What a relief!!

The "Out of sight, out of mind" works really well. Sometimes that isn't always possible when traveling with the bags packed. The GPS can always be slid into a crack somewhere, that lil sucker can disappear way to fast. The helmet, the locks are good, not so much that they stop the theft but the fact that they would more than likey have to cut the strap to remove it and that renders the helmet worthless. If it's a questionable area, I take it with me. Since I bought my new riding jacket and I hate carrying it around as it's pretty bulky, I found an old trick to secure it to the bike. I bought one of the rubber coated steel cables they sell for bicycle locks. I run it through the sleeves and can add another jacket as well if I have a passenger, the run it though the grab handles and lock it up. Mike

Who is that in pic# 8 with the blonde 1st gen? I like his taste in bikes. LOL! Mike BTW.....Nice looking FJR there my friend.

Speaking of dried bugs on the fork tubes ..... there was somebody here a while back making gators for the upper tubes. Who was that? Mike

I've been off work this week burning last of my vacation time for the year. As it's been a dreary week, cloudy and raining most the time I've spent a lot of time in the garage working on little things on the bike. Last of all a new set of pads all the way around. I'll post a couple of pics on that story later. LOL! Got my moneys worth out of the last set for sure. But I figured it was NOT raining today so a trip out to check the bike and seat the new pads would be a good thing. Almost ended up poorly. I rode for a few hours and stopped by my store to pickup my security keys for Monday. Stopped and BS'd for a while with some co-workers and they followed me outside when I was leaving to look at the bike. As we talked I was gearing up, armored jacket, leather gloves and the full face helmet and they were giving me static about all the gear, as usual. I just laughed it off and said "Parking lots are the most dangerous place for a biker." Not all that far off really ya know. I had just pulled away from them and as I turned into a lane through the lot I saw two sets of brake lights light up in two cars across from each other and as quick as the lights came on the backup lights lit up also. I hit the brakes and stopped as fast as I could. (YEA!! New pads!) Both cars shot out of their parking spots and met with a pretty good impact that crushed both rear quarters, folded the bumpers and sent pieces of taillight flying everywhere......all about 3 feet in front of where I sat. WoW! Cool! My co-workers came running over as I put down the side stand a waited for the cars to decide what they were going to do. All I could do was laugh and say, "See, what did I just tell ya!" Both drivers left their cars where they were and got out. A couple of Blue Hairs. You know... the ones that do 15 mph under the limit in a 25 mph zone. They had more speed backwards than they do going forward. They decided to exchange info before moving the cars out of the way. Now they are moving at the speed of mud as they do this. I'm just shaking my head and laughing. So the Cager Club Sandwich ..... Hold the Yamaha, makes sense now right? So where does the "Dip" come in? That would the three cars that pulled into the lane behind me, RIGHT behind me a felt the need to sit there and lay on the horns. Dips would be a nice term for them. I had a couple of other names for them but nobody would want that with a sandwich. I'm not a lil fella at 6'3" and dressed in full gear. I pulled my helmet off and walked back to each car and made my statment, "Ya'll back your a$$ up and go on your way. NOW!!" That worked, I love that Bambi in the headlights look, I really do. Some people say I have a nice smile. My daughter says it looks like I'm showing my teeth. Well, whatever, the effect works. LOL! So the lil old Blue Hairs both came over and asked me if I saw what happened. They both were fishing for a witness. "Yep, I did. And if either one of you contact me to be a witness I will gladly come to court and be a witness for the OTHER driver. You both screwed up!" So that sort of set the whole thing off and I was starting to see a remake of the famous Star Wars lightsaber fight with a couple of Yoda Blue Hairs and canes. Eww! So I rolled back and made my way out of the lot. Slowly. Safely. Back to the safe harbour of my garage. Ahh, Home. So folks, keep your eyes moving in the parking lots ok. Things happen fast in very little space. A few more feet and at best, I would have been rebuilding my front forks ....again. Ya see that Earl!!! Won't be needing anymore parts for a while! Ya'll ride safe, Mike

Good to hear from you. You got me hooked now and will be following your trip. Ya'll ride safe now. Mike

A friend of mine and his wife had a place just west of Stevensville. Nice cabin with a cliff behind it and up about 40 ft. above the cabin there was a ledge where he had his hot tub. We would sit up there for hours at night looking down into the valley. Best therapy in the world. The only problem I ever had up that way was everytime you said "hi" to anyone it turned into an hour long conversation. Folks up that way made you feel like an old friend. Now some of the local lawmen back then, not so much. I hope they rode off with their billfolds still intact.

Holy smokes! I know that hwy! I spent a lot of time in Stevensville long ago. Great riding up there. Wish I was tagging along on this one.

You can call off the posse Ruffy. I got an e-mail response today from SW Moto with a tracking number. Only 10 days after the order was comfirmed and paid for. They should be here....sigh.......next week. I guess the ole reliable is not what it used to be. And thanks scary. The phone numbers I chased down were from Yellow Pages so I figured that would be as close to current as I could get. I used that e-mail addy in the last request I sent and that was responded to by Erik. Only two days to get a reply to that one. Not all the huge of a deal as I figured to tires might have just been out of stock and it would take a bit longer. All I expected was to be kept informed of the situation, like they have done in the past. When I started finding disconnected numbers....that was making me nervous. Stuff like that is not a good presentation of the company. They need to update some things. Turned me off of doing business with them again. I sure hope there are no issues with the Avons when I get them. Don't want to go down that road with them at this point. But thanks to all for your responses and info. Mike

With the river levels on the rise around the Missouri, Elkhorn and Platte rivers the deer have been on the move to new ground. Finding them in places I have never seen them in before and making my evening rides a bit more interesting to say the least. Ride with all caution my friends. Mike

We have another one trying for the title here. We had one a year or so ago running 142 mph on West Dodge, our main run through the city, (in dress clothes) because he was late to work. This guy beat his speed on I-680 which runs through Omaha and in the middle of the day. We have had two riders die in the last week killed in single bike accidents on the Interstate in the city from losing control. I always look forward to being on the road with these folks. I got a kick out the the way the article states that he had been "lodged" at the DC jail. They left a light on for him. OMAHA, Neb. -- The Nebraska State Patrol said it has arrested a man who was riding a motorcycle 88 miles above the posted speed limit. Around 1 p.m. Thursday, authorities said, troopers were conducting traffic patrol near Interstate 680 and Maple Street when 27-year-old David Oien rode by going 148 mph. With the help of the patrol's aviation division, authorities found Oien had stopped near I-680 and Irvington Road. Troopers said he was taken into custody without incident. Officials said Oien was arrested and lodged in the Douglas County Jail on charges of felony flight to avoid arrest, willful reckless driving, driving under suspension, no registration and speeding.

I have what coy545boy showed also. The cruise on my '84 can be shall we say.....defiant......at times so I installed the cruise lock and added a Throttle Rocker to. It fits great around the controls and works very well. That's a pretty good price to. I think I paid about $36.00 for mine. Mike

Probably will end up doing that Jack. With the Memorial Day weekend rolling up not much will happen any way. It's just not what I expected from them considering their past performance. Usually have the tires within 48 hours of ordering. And when I've e-mailed them in the past I got a response the same day. Just kind of burned my butt with the bank account being debited within 24 hours of placing the order and then no info forthcoming even after two e-mails.......not good CS. And the disconnected fax# and the disconnected phone # kind of threw me for a loop. That isn't usually a good sign. Just one of those days I guess. Amazon is next on my list. I needed another (long story) ignition module for my Lincoln. At $240.00 bucks a crack I was looking for a better deal. I found one listed as NEW at $160.00 bucks so I jumped on that. When I got it the outer package was fine but the product box was crushed and Scotch taped shut. Long way from new looking and there were scratches around the screw holes so it had been mounted at some point. I had all the other work done to the car and all I needed was the module. I plugged it in and nuttin'. Went to NAPA and bought another one for $240.00, plugged it in and it fired right up. So the one they sent me is junk and waiting for them to respond with info on returning it for a refund. Ain't been my week.