What did you do to your Yamaha today?

@Simmy, you surely do build some pretty bikes, and keep them looking and running that way. I want to have your patience and attention to detail when I go up. Unlikely though at this late stage.

 

Thanks @Fuller56 I'm sure your antique Guzzi has presented a challenge or 2, never had a spaghetti bike.
Next up I need to fix the starter on my KTM then clean out the carb on my BSA.
And I have new tires chain and sprocket ready to install on my KLR daily rider.
Not sure if I'll get to installing the big block on my Turbo this summer.
I have just received #1 and 2 Turbo head pipes to install wide-band O2 sensors, now looking for AFR kits.
Good ones are about $250, Chinese are about $100, thinking it would be good to have an AFR gauge on 1 and 2.

 

I really dig the color, now I will have a few mints

 

Since it was raining off and on went and dumped my recycled oil and picked up an oil filter at O'Reillys makes it easy since I have the spin on oil filter conversion kit. Changed the oil and cleaned up a bit noticed the right muffler was not draing moisture, found the drain hole was plugged completely. Using my pick tool cleaned out hole now drains nice the temp was in mid 50's so just enough for moisture to form . Bike is ready for summer now if temp would stay warm , but it is supposed to rain all week .

 

Decided bike was getting hard to start cold unless it just came off tender . So removed the AGM battery from my other Seca , starts much easier, the battery I pulled out was a Chinesium no name AGM battery it is a couple riding seasons old .

 

So what did I do to my XJ today? Pulled the carb rack and set the levels again and while I had them off pulled the intake boots and checked for leaks. It didn't look like they were leaking but I smeared the gaskets with some Permatex and did the bolts up with anti-seize along with the spark plugs.

I then moved to forking around with the front end, my cat gave his disapproval and I changed out the fork oil.

Left had maybe 100cc and the right side a dribble so I cheated filling them up using a syringe after removing the Schrader. Six plus another 4cc of 20W and they're much better. Not exactly to the book but it worked.

I then set the handlebars to fit me and bled the front brakes as a follow up, not a bubble from the bleeders.
Now it's wrestling with the airbox boots and setting the cables, weather is changing for the better Thursday and I'm going to roll some miles on the clock.
All the work was done with the proper supervision

 

Brhatweed
I have always wondered if that is an acceptable way to change fork oil. I'll be curious to hear from others on the approval or disapproval.
What did you use to get the right angle to dump the oil in that way?
I don't mind pulling my bars though to come in from the top.

 

I'm not sure how many bikes had the air valve on the side, but not connected between both forks. Just the 750 Seca? It would leave a half teaspoon of oil inside the ring, but that's probably a good thing for the health of the o-rings. Just don't do it if your forks are connected for common pressure! And he was properly supervised by disapproving furballs, so it seems correct.

 

That's a good question, maybe Chacal could better answer the question of the fork air valves as I can't find much of anything in the factory manual. It appears that only the 650 & 750 SECA has these. So what I did was load up the syringe with a measured amount of oil then screw it into the port and push it in then pull back the plunger to equalize the air pressure, doing this five time plus an add'l 4cc brought it to the factory spec of 304cc. I did blow out the forks with compressed air before filling so the overall level *should* be factory spec.
This is how I checked and set the floats. Clear tubing and #12 solid wire for supports and they're all set to the "higher" side of the factory spec, doing it this way gives me a much better picture overall of where things are at, I have two old intake boots bolted down that are angled to duplicate the real world on the bike. I was way off on my last settings doing them on the bench individually.


Today's shakedown run.
Bike overall had a much better and more "confidant" feel, I wrestled the carbs on last night after a final blow level check and took it out on the loop raw meaning they are still on the previous balance & pilot settings and I only had to add a little idle speed. Start-up was easy with only a 1/3 enrichment lever and it settled right down without hunting, I normally give my motors 5 minutes to get some heat on the jugs and this gives me time to get into my road gear. I'm in a small town that give me both real street and highway riding and starting out the motor felt a little soft on a light launch, definitely rich on idle and transition, balance & pilot will smooth this out. Made my way up and around the local airport and did a "sane" run thru the gears shifting around 5000. Felt smooth and confidant despite a full-on 30MPH head wind, where the bike shined was in the front end, that road is like a corncob and I didn't get the secondary bounce feeling. Braking gets the anti-dive right away so I'm going to reset that, 1/2 brake I can feel the valves click in unison so they're working. Made my way down and round to county road 6 which has some good turns but had to back off with the cross winds. Even at the lower speeds the front was far more predictable. The county road ends at MN Hwy 47 and this I went south. The highway was completely repaved making it very smooth, there are several open areas where one can see all the driveways & roads and this is where I went hard through the gears shifting at 9000. Turbine Smooth is the best way to describe this. The motor really pulled hard from about 6500 on up to the shift but it still feels slightly lean over 3/4 twist, not flat by any means but it had more "bite" backing off to about the 1/2 twist point and this is where it felt the strongest going to the century mark. No slip from the clutch or other hiccups, the motor sounded very "clean" all the way up. The run down 47 is a measured 8.2 miles to the stop sign and this is where the anti-dive saved my bacon. Ogilvie schools were letting out and the student parking lot is on this intersection, kids don't know to look for bikes and I had one girl pull right out in front of me despite hitting her with the high beam and me having the right-of-way. The bike stopped on a dime. After this it's east on MN 23 back to town and from my door to my door on this loop it's a measured 30 miles even. Do a lookup of the roads around Mora MN to get a feel for what I have.

...and a little about me
Overall it was a good run that gave me a better idea of what I have here, I'm no stranger to bikes having spent my youth on 2-wheels blowin' 2-stroke oil but things are far different in the dirt. My last real street bike was a 1980 Honda CBX and that pulled like a truck but it was heavy and was better on straight roads. I got stupid in the late-90's racing a rice-rocket on a private industrial road that was supposed to be vacant and instead we encountered a tractor-trailer and had to lay them down. The CBX crankcase & cylinder cases were smashed and my buddy went head first into the trailer wheels and was paralyzed, he died six years later.
From that point I gave up riding and fell into a depression after being traded in for a younger model, took me over a decade to climb out of the funk and this is where the two fat kitties come in. The black & white one is Buddy Cat who really live up to his name and the dark gray one is my little girl Mattie Cat. Both are rescues that I adopted, Buddy was from the local trailer park and suffered two BB shots one of them in his right eye... I had words with the guilty party, at my size I get my point across. Mattie came from a hoarder whos teenage son used to terrorize the cats with his yelling, took me almost a year to earn her trust. Now they're my kids and reason for staying clean, I actually live at a pet rescue called Kitty Krusaders and I'm the Chief Petting Officer who interacts with them Check them out on facebook if you want to see what we work with, sometimes it takes all my strength to keep myself together.
Both Buddy & Mattie will inspect the what I'm working on and do their Cat Scans, Mattie takes on the supervisory role while Buddy expresses his opinion flicking his tail. They are my life so I have to make sure the bike is safe, someone has to scratch their butts and put food in the bowls. Tomorrow gets the carbs sync'd & balanced on the gauges then the relay mod for a 100 watt halogen in the lower headlight.

 

Cat Scans .

 

Spent the wee hours running wires and configuring a Bosch relay for the lower fog light, power is via #14AWG from the battery via 10 amp fuse then to a 30 amp cube relay and feeding a 130 watt H3 bulb. I had to pull apart the RH controls and physically repair the light switch, one lead came off and the contacts were jazzed so it was 45 minutes of surgery. Might add a flasher function to the fog as an attention-getter and add a select switch where the blank plate is on the hand control.
Thursday afternoon was spent sync'in & balancing carbs getting things dialed in then a good jaunt. Felt better off the line, confidant and controlled while the midrange remained just as strong... 1981 Yamaha SECA 750=1
Crusty Older Honda V4 sport bike=0
No mercy spankin' this one up and down hwy 47 several time.
Tonight is all about anti-seize on the exhaust studs and ordering up some Heli-Coils for the cam cover bolts as two have pulled the threads on the ends and is now weeping a little oil. Going to make a drill & tap alignment block to keep everything straight this weekend

 

Okay so question for the group; has anyone ever actually verified the accuracy of their electronic tachometer to a known accurate source? I did just this and here are the results of my tachometer on an 81 SECA 750 after it had been re-capped & resoldered. For some reason my handwritten page won't rotate despite formatting before I uploaded it.



I also watched the input current using a Motorola R1011B high current power supply and compared this with the resulting spark, the RMS current remained constant at just over 5 amps but the spark itself began to get weaker around 110hz and got stronger past 130Hz staying fat & strong to the roll off point of about 215Hz where it stopped completely. No buzz from the coils so I suspect this is the limit of the TCI itself.

Overall this is a very strong ignition system (ask me how I know) that will function down to about 10.5 volts for a reliable spark, the TCI dropped out at 6.5 volts and the turn-on threshold was found to be just under 7 volts. A good 1/2 inch spark with plenty of bite!

I was properly supervised for the duration of the test.

 

130W bulb!!!

 

Yeah, if they can't see it then they are blind.

 

True, but I'll bet that many accidents are not caused by a lack of seeing, it's caused because "they" aren't even looking........besides at the latest tik-tac video on their toy phone.

 

And that is the problem... possibly addressed with a set of stainless brake lines, what's the total for the two long & anti-dive lines?

 

So firstly, no, I had no idea verifying the accuracy of the tach to a known source was even a thing....but it's minutiae like this that I appreciate. Everybody has their own reasons for enjoying an antique hunk of steel, aluminum and rubber bits, and these odd and arguably unnecessary procedures that suit me. Now I'll waste time scrolling ebay for a function generator....

Also, the clipped bulb picture made me think Hella's slogan should be "Come Hella high watta..."

 

Just sent you that info in a private message........

 

Chacal: I got your PM, thanks for the info.

So... today. Another 200 miles on the SECA doing a round trip to Brainerd and back with an average speed of just over 52 MPH and only got 34 MPG and this brings me to my question: does the pilot adjustment screw affect only the idle or all the mixtures entirely? Floats are set on the high side of the book spec, #122 main jets and #42 pilots. The motor is "breaking up" at full throttle above 6000 but if I back off to say 2/3 it really pulls hard passing the century mark in 4th and keeps pulling hard thru 5th. It "feels" lean at full twist and the breakup reinforces this but before I drop in a set of #124's I'd like to know more about that pilot adjustment as the factory book gives nothing more than "optimized for emissions & performance" which to me spells compromise.
Carbs have been balanced & sync'd with 2-3/4 turns on the fine thread pilot screws and the idle is smooth with good pickup on the throttle, no hunting or sputters.
Ran all day with the 130 watt fog going, put the bike on the center stand running with the light on and took a look for myself a hundred feet back in my car. A big gain in the visibility factor so it's going to remain on during the day.

My 81 SECA at my tower site east of Brainerd MN

 

Yes the idle mixture screws contribute at all throttle openings, but I would suggest the effect is tiny, given the size of the jets etc.

 

That's what I thought as well. Pulled the plugs out and found they're still running lean despite the floats at spec so it's a jump to #124 for the mains, running #122s now and the pilots set rich for the off-idle transition.
This weekend is the fork seals, both leaked oil out and down into the brakes. Our local cycle shop had them in stock so I'm about to get medieval with the front end.

 

Started the workbench construction to aid in the revival of the Midnight while sorting and waiting on shims that count?

 

Oh sweet bike! I really dig the contrast.

 

Spent the day fixing all the stripped out holes. Fun with HeliCoils.

 

Got a stubborn tire that won't give up the bead? I used a small vacuum pump and it took less than 15 seconds to pull the sidewalls and... schhoopp! sucked them right in. Took me less than 20 minutes to swap out the rear tire. That 130 tire leaves only 15 millimeters of minimum clearance to the swingarm.

 

Spent the day going back to my old ways of making my own jets and tuning them, used to do this with my Yamaha YZ250. A little solder and a handful of wire size drills, got rid of the flat spot at 6500 and it stays crisp to the redline.

 

I wouldn't worry, it's 14mm more than you need.

 

I will say the change to the 130 tire made a world of difference, wow does this thing ride nice!

 

Attempted a seat recovering today. I won't call it a professional job, but maybe a sight better than the duct tape massacre it replaced.

 

I could park my fat... on that seat all day. Very nice job.

So I've been working on my SECA for the past few nights, last night was the speedometer and the damage caused by the death scream as the bushing was burning up. It turned a pile of shavings up the shaft and locked everything up and destroyed the wheel drive, I found a good used one but USPS decided to send my package on a US tour and it ended up getting stuck in Connecticut. It's a govt operation what can I say?
The big thing I'm waiting for are the correct fork seals. Our local Yamaha dealership sold the wrong ones so I went with K & S after confirming both the part number and dimensions. They're set to arrive via UPS today and once the wheel drive arrives the work will begin.
The last run of the bike seemed right on with the mixture, no flat spot or breakup but I'm only getting 38 mpg. Going to swap the #122 mains back in and stuff a small camera in the airbox to record the slide movement as the engine transitions across the power band, my goal is to see where the slide is sitting at 6000 RPM and how it relates to the needle taper in real time & load. If anyone is interested I will post the complete video with sound. My hypothesis is the flat spot is near where the taper becomes more pronounced and steeper.
It's been raining here since monday evening and so far picked up 1.37" in a coffee can with a 30+ mph east wind, great weather for focused work on the bike.

 

You're not alone, make sure you don't skip the last sentence.......


SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES:

04/08/2024 SPECIAL NOTE FOR ALL CUSTOMERS: as of today, and until further notice, due to problems with the postal service, we are only offering shipping services via the private carrier UPS. We will begin offering shipping via USPS as soon as they can get their act together…….and prove it, not just offering weak, lame, avoiding-the-issue “assurances”!



03/21/2024 UPDATE: just today it was announced that an Official US Congressional Investigation is being opened into this matter........so, expect nothing to improve until the proper palms are greased and the various pay-offs made.......

https://www.gpb.org/news/2024/03/21...emand-answers-us-postal-service-delays-across



02/29/2024 LATEST UPDATE FOR ALL CUSTOMERS:

Beginning a few months ago, performance through the Postal Service (USPS) in the Southeast USA (and, anecdotally, other areas within the USA) have deteriorated significantly. In the Atlanta area, a new main routing hub was opened late in 2023 which consolidated some of the smaller, older hubs:

https://www.costar.com/article/2030...opens-new-breed-of-mail-processing-facilities

…..and the transition has NOT gone smoothly. Both packages and letter mail have seen significant delays on occasion, and it’s hard to predict which shipments are going to be affected. Many packages sail thru “just fine” while others can linger, and linger, and linger on and on.

Eventually, all packages seem to find their way out of this new hub (state-of-the-art, highly automated) and onto their destinations, but some will appear to get “stuck” there for extended periods of time (1-3 weeks or even much longer….).

Letter mail is a whole different situation....things go in and may never come out. So just be aware (or beware.....).

Since Atlanta is a major hub for postal shipments, the problems here can “fan out” across the country into seemingly un-involved areas. For instance, a shipment from Texas to New York may be routed thru Atlanta by the Post Office for efficiency reasons. It’s the whole “hub-and-spoke” system of distribution that many industries (trucking, airlines, and other private carriers) use for routing (even the entire internet works on this principle, although it tends to have ways to quickly by-pass any “electronic hubs” that are having difficulties…….with physical items, this isn’t so easy, as doing so will quickly just overload other hubs).

We hope this situation will resolve quickly, but……we’ve been hoping that for almost 4 months now, and it’s been getting worse rather than better. So…..just be aware of this situation and take it into account when selecting your carrier option.

And if you live in some of the other areas that will have a similar type of “consolidation” occurring later this year and into 2025…… see the list at the bottom of the above article …..then we suggest you prepare yourself for what could be a very disruptive experience.

 

Regarding USPS shipments, I've noticed more frequently over the past few years that the tracking updates will just stop at some point and it says "Moving through network". Which I guess is a catch all phrase for "Hey...quit asking! We got your package somewhere...maybe!". The expected delivery date doesn't change, but once that date is a week in the past it becomes less believable.

 

What have I done to my 1980 XJ650 Maxim lately? Just finished what I suspect is (at 8300 miles) its first valve adjustment. Had to buy five shims from Len; my only mistake was sending payment (a money order) via US postal service. A first-class letter will make it anywhere in the lower 48 in one to three days... except Atlanta, where it's more like one to three weeks; nineteen days in particular. Parts then got here in another two days, are now in the bike and all eight valves are spot-on.

While waiting for my payment to make it to Georgia, I did a bunch of other things. Let's start with the intentional misuse of Harley parts:



The obvious one is the sissy bar/luggage rack, brought over by a neighbor who said he found it in his garage; his wife bought it when she owned a (since sold) Sportster, did I want it? Sure, anything can be made to fit anything, right? And the Maxim is remarkably similar in a lot of measurements to a 1980 Sportster. A couple hours of quality time with the drill, tap, carbide wheel, file, hammer, vise, etc., and it bolted right on. I made one new threaded hole in that very stout grab rail, and re-used the frame hole (which also attaches the rear of the grab rail), and found a spacer of the correct length in my collection of odd hardware. In a short putt around the neighborhood, the wife pronounced the backrest "good." The sissy bar may or may not stay in the long term--at some point we may add a trunk, and most trunks have built-in backrests, so I might end up with just the rack, with a trunk on top.

The other misused Harley parts are the Progressive Suspension 412-series rear shocks, 13" items intended for a Harley Sportster. Same spring rate as Progressive's fitment chart shows for the Maxim, and a lot of people have used Harley take-offs on the XJs. They are returned items from the Amazon warehouse, clearly never installed or used as the hardware kit was still in its sealed plastic bag. The supplied bushings are the wrong size for a Maxim (1/2" vs. 14mm inside diameter), but my son-in-law has a drill press, so we drilled them out while I was visiting him to watch the eclipse last week.

On to electrical stuff... I installed a set of LED turn signals with white "halo" running lights on the front of the bike:



These were a bit of work. I wanted the white running lights that would go out when the yellow turn signals were blinking. These, too, are intentionally misused "Harley" parts, in that they are sold as being for Harley touring bikes with the 3-1/4" pancake-style turn signals. The Maxim's signals are about 3-1/8" in diameter and not as deep as the Harley units, but after a little quality time with the Harbour Freight Imitation Dremel Tool, the LED units dropped right in:


Notice the notches around the edges; I could have ground off the little prongs in the signal housing, but those hold the gasket in place.

Of course, these LED units wouldn't work with the stock yellow lenses, but I found a set of smoked/clear lenses on Amazon (with very slow and erratic delivery). They are for an XS and are a tiny bit smaller than the XJ lenses, but with a little more HFIDT time they can be to look like they were intended for the XJ:



Finished product:



Connection was an adventure. The obvious thing would be to replace the stock single-filament (1156) sockets with dual-filament (1157) items, but that would be too easy... I initially assumed the circuitry was all in the LED "pancake" and so just cut off the simulated bulb-base and spliced the wires to the Maxim's pigtails. Bad idea, as it turns out the "switchback" circuitry (which causes the white halo to turn off while the yellow turn signal is blinking) is inside the bulb base. So, after laboriously re-connecting the wires to the bases, I then soldered the bike's wires to the contacts on the bulb base (fun fact: did you know the little raised contacts on the base of a signal bulb are in fact just blobs of solder?) and ran the wires back to the headlight shell. I grabbed power for the "halo" running lights from the instrument-light wires, because these were easy to reach.

Of course the LEDs don't offer enough load to make the flasher flash, but the assemblies came with a pair of load resistors. Since the Yamaha is not a CAN'tbus vehicle, I only needed one, spliced into the wire running from the flasher to the handlebar switch and grounded to the horn bracket:



I did not go with LEDs in the rear, as my main purpose in this project was to gain additional forward visibility from the "halo" running lights, but for consistency I did install a set of the smoked XS lenses and yellow bulbs in the back. By keeping the incandescent bulbs in the back, I also avoided the problem that people have encountered when installing LEDs both front and rear; namely, the single "turn signal" indicator on the dash turning blinkers into four-way flashers.

That left one more electrical project. All my bikes have voltmeters, because (a) I don't trust motorcycle charging systems, and (b) a failed regulator or alternator is one of the problems you can deal with gracefully if you are aware you have a problem (vs. finding out you've blown a regulator only when the battery goes dead and strands you by the side of the road). I had a nice little LED meter, and a spare set of gauges, so on a rainy morning I set to work. Figured that since I have a trip meter in the speedometer, it only made sense to install the LED voltmeter in the same place in the tach housing. Pretty easily done as the instrument cluster on this antique is actually designed to be taken apart and put back together. I started by taking the tach out, at which point I found I could easily pry out the plastic mask that frames the tach:



A few minutes with the imitation Dremel tool and a bit of JB Weld attached the voltmeter:



Then I put the whole thing back together...



+ and – leads to the voltmeter exit through the breather hole in the back of the tach housing...



The negative goes to the gauge illumination ground wire. Because I wanted the voltmeter to work even if the headlight wasn't on (Yamaha's clever Zener diode/relay setup that doesn't turn the headlight on until the motor's running), I ran the + wire down through the tubing and spliced it into the positive lead supplying the neutral and oil-level lights:



I figure this connection is inside the headlight shell and pretty well protected. Anyway, I used marine-grade shrink tubing, the stuff with a watertight sealant inside it.

BTW, remember I mentioned I got power for the "halo" running LEDs from the gauge lights? That's the two blue wires you see in this picture.

Here's the finished product:



The voltmeter is actually a lot easier to read than it appears in this picture, which was shot in the garage with a phone camera that likes to emphasize reflections. I tried taking pictures outside in the sunshine (and with the motor running and the meter showing 14.4 volts), but it turns out the meter actually only lights one digit at a time, so if your not in a dim environment where the camera takes a long-ish exposure, you end up with a photo showing only one lit digit.

And that's what I've done to my Yamaha lately. Coming next: new front rotor, new right fork seal, and further ergonomic improvements, all to be done (I hope) in time for the Slimy Crud Run on May 5th.

 

That is what I call well done. Tasteful & functional but not overdone, definitely rocks in my world. I did a perimeter of warm white LEDs in my Atari cluster and replaced the signal lights with LEDs. It's bright but not annoyingly at night, I reworked the signal LEDs last night, used cheap chinesiums to start with and they lasted only a few weeks so this time it's CREE all the way.
The reason for the one digit at a time in your voltmeter is how the little microprocessor multiplexes the digits together to make it appear as a continuous display to the eye, the CCD in the camera time slices the exposure according to the average light so outside it is shorter and catches only one numeral. Cheaper processors strobe the digits while others hold them on steady which takes more power. You did a real nice job integrating the voltmeter.

The other thing I did was "comb" out and de-tangle all the wiring inside the headlight bucket. Everything now "flows" without getting bunched up. I'm a retired 2-way radio technician and my biggest pet peeve has always been balled up rats nests of wiring, I've been known to spend hours making art of a wiring harness. The diode pack got stuck to the top with double sided tape and now everything is modularized.

My K&L 15-6126 fork seals arrived today thanks to Tom our UPS driver, my caliper measures the correct 36x48x11 and I brought them and the wrong ones back to our local Yamaha dealer to show and they gave me my money back. Going to start this wrestling match tonight. According to USPS tracking the speedometer drive has arrived back at the mail sort center in St. Paul and is "in transit" to the Mora post office... we'll see.

I did read the XJ4Ever note regarding shipping, our St. Paul mail center is one in the postal congressional "investigation" but honestly I don't see anything positive coming out of this. One of my biggest customers was the USPS Postal Inspectors (mail cops) and I have spent countless hours inside St. Paul, Minneapolis (downtown) and the Air Mail facility at MSP airport. The one thing that stands out above all is the level of bureaucratic arrogance. I don't see how anything gets done around there outside of the machines, a govt job with low expectations and a guaranteed paycheck they have no incentive to do much of anything. Now that they're under investigation I can see a future of retaliation against the people for complaining about their lackluster performance, this gormless jackwagon of a postmaster general wants to whine about budgets then he can stop wasting the money and start streamlining... a word that has NEVER been used by a govt bureaucrat. If they want the money then they can earn it.

All of my eBay purchases come with a message to the seller: In light of the recent issues with USPS please ship via UPS, I will cover the cost differential if you include in the total amount due. If this is a problem please cancel the sale.

 

The specific "halo" lights were not my first choice. My Harley and my Himalayan are using a different, and I think better, set of LED lights:



Same "switchback" function, but the lit-up area is bigger in both running-light and turn-signal mode. And a sharp-eyed observer might notice I have put them into a spare set of Maxim housings. They do fit... kinda. But the electronics package is thicker and the integrated lenses are just a tiny bit bigger than the housings, so they stick out just a bit:



On the "WTF?" styled Himalayan, this is not an issue, but on the somewhat more stylish Maxim I thought I'd go with something a bit nicer. Time will tell if I stick with it or ultimately go with function over style...

BTW, getting those smoked lenses was... interesting. The first set I ordered (for the front) came in about two weeks, only a day or two later than promised by Amazon. The second set took only four or five days, a week less than the estimate. The third set I ordered (for a different project) has been missing in action for almost three weeks now, and Amazon says they have no idea when it will be delivered. Yes, if I recall correctly the first two sets did arrive in a USPS box...

 

Yep.

Yep.

Oh contraire, Pierre. What I'm talking about is LIGHT-YEARS away from mere everyday, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill lackluster performance.....this has been building up for 2-3 months into basically a TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF MAIL SERVICE in or out of that facility, which services not just Atlanta but most of Georgia and other portions of the southeastern USA. Nothing (well maybe a trickle, let's say 2-3% of normal mail.) And note: if you google this subject, let's say you use the phrase "Atlanta post office delays" or "Atlanta mail delay", you'll come up with a lot of local new stories about this issue stretching back to late Feb / early March, and ALL of them are a whitewash ("some residents are reporting delays" and "postal officials assure Channel 5 that swift actions are being taken" and all sorts of other BS).

So the media.....powerful institution that they are.......are following the first rule of "Fight Club" (the first rule is: you don't talk about fight club): you don't talk about the failings of other powerful institutions, lest they might retaliate against you someday----let's just all get along and ride our respective gravy trains in silence and harmony.

And the funny thing is......these new centers are --- if/when they get fully operational ---- ARE very automated and streamlined (akin to what UPS and Fed-Ex does in their distro hubs). But there are "plans" and then there is reality, and this time they certainly were "ships passing in the night'......"

So when I recommend that people who are served by these other soon-to-be-implemented hubs:

Houston, TX
Portland, OR
Sandston, VA
Santa Clarita, CA
Sacramento, CA
West Columbia, SC
Jersey City, NJ
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Boston, MA
Pittsburgh, PA
Cleveland, OH
Detroit, MI
Louisville, KY
Billings, MT
Boise, ID

to be prepared, because non-stop pain-in-your-assness might be coming soon to a town near you.........

 

I have respect for the hogs and have the same attitude; it's my bike and I'm going to make it the way I like it. Personally I'm more for the amber lenses giving the front some detail and distinction, I looked into some aftermarket signals but they didn't really keep with the bikes' 80's square theme so I ditched them, cracked open another 'Dew and made the factory pieces work again but pulled them in slightly only because the plastic retainers were cracked.

Tonight it's all about the forkin' around... you should have seen the mess I found in the tubes around the anti-dive assy. Yeah tasty. Will post some pix when I get a moment.

 

First time using a Metzler, since that's what I took off. The old ME88 was dry and crusty. Had to Sawzall the bead to remove it. The current ME888 is an impressively beefy tire, heavier than most I've installed, and a bit more difficult to mount.

 

Spent the evening wiring the bike up with a camera & mic to do a realtime capture of the carburetor slides on the road. First attempt was with a GoPro but that turned out to be a NoGo, the problem with these is the rolling shutter and how they attempt to sync themselves to what they see and in this case the local vibrations. The other issue was with the raw size so I ditched the GoPro and went old-school. At one time in my life I was a video technician and technical director, ever wonder how they *used* to get those amazing shots from vehicles? I was one of those dweebs. (still am)
First order of business was lighting so I made a small LED headlight using what was supposed to be 3200K sources, not even close. A total of six on a chunk of perfboard secured with double sided tape. The camera itself is a cheap Ansice CMOS job from Amazon that was $15.00, I use those with my old-school security system in lieu of networked gizmos. They're far more stable and don't crash or hang-up the WiFi, they're also very sensitive and tolerant of most environments. With a tested resolution of 350 horizontal lines NTSC they're about as good as the old analog broadcast.
So the camera was secured to a neodymium magnet and from there an "L" bracket mounted inside the air filter and wired to the outside world. The lighting and position gives a good view of the #3 carburetor slide. After this I attached a shure stereo microphone just above the cam cover for live sound, the original intent was to run two recorders with two cameras doing an A/B roll with another camera on the tach & speedo but I have only one working BetacamSP deck at the moment and went DVCAM instead. We're all Yamaha owners and know the sound of our engines in relation to RPM's. Didn't think anyone wanted to hear me making motor sounds.
Don't know when I will hit the launchpad, issue right now is our uncooperative weather that is not exactly bike friendly. Rained monday night into wednesday morning and now it's just damn cold & windy. Once I get the capture I will post it on YouTube as a raw however they do their file format conversions.
I posted the images here as thumbnails for your entertainment.

 

Neat set-up. Hopefully you'll do this on the XJ750, we don't have any Hitachi vac piston-in-action videos yet!






Note that the carbs will likely be spitting fuel back at the camera due to all the turbulence.

 

Yes this is my XJ750 SECA that I'm going to do this video of with the stock HSC32 carbs running my filled & drilled 1.25mm jets, they can reversion spit all they want.
Going to do the captures of EZ street acceleration at first then full-out to 9500+ 2nd gear up to get the slides moving. After this it will be a highway run 5th gear at 70 mph with a 5/4/3 downshifts depending on traffic.
At some point in the near future a wideband O2 will get mounted to the collector, the header and muffler have a date with the sandblast cabinet and VHT satin black.

 

This entire experiment is awesome! I can picture somebody seeing you out on the road with all the gear bungeed to the bike and asking what you're doing, "Well, duh...I'm filming my carb slides!"

Looking forward to seeing the results!.

 

Most around here except the unexpected from me

 

Then we'll want the audio too.............!

 

Looks a whole lot better than my current "Flying Buttrest":



The original seat on my '80 Maxim is actually in remarkably good condition--only one small patch, made with some kind of "liquid vinyl repair" product. My problem is being six feet tall with a 34" inseam and a fake hip. With the low "cruiser" style seat, it's hard to pick my right foot off the ground and put it on the peg when I leave a stop. Hence the "booster seat," made from a foam duck blind cushion and several layers of closed-cell foam that used to be part of a "Type IV PFD" boat cushion. My goal is to produce a relatively flat seating surface at the height of the passenger seat. I have a vinyl cover and a couple more layers of rebonded foam (from a thoroughly silly "solo" seat that was in the box o' junk and spares that came with the bike), and hope to sew/glue this to the "booster" so people won't look at it and instantly assume I grew up in a trailer park (actually, I did grow up in a trailer park, but that's another story). I wish I could do an upholstery job half as nifty as the one you did!

 

Well to be clear, I didn't sew this thing up. It's just a pre made cover, although I'd like to attempt making one from scratch someday. I've been wanting to try using one of the gel pads, but under the upholstery, and that would require a custom fit sort of like your PFD.

I can empathize with your hip struggles. Do you normally stop with both feet down? Or do you shift to first after stopping, so left foot is up and right is down?

 

Ah. On my Himalayan I have a Seat Concepts "tall" kit, with foam that's firmer, flatter and about 1.5" thicker than the stock item and a new, pre-sewn vinyl cover. Very nice. I wish they made something like that for the Maxim, but I guess there's not much of a market for tall-seat kits for a 40-year-old Japanese cruiser...

I normally put my left foot down first when I stop, so I can keep my foot on the brake pedal if needed. Then, if I'm going to be there a while, I put my right foot down and shift into neutral. Then I shift into first to take off.

Couple years ago I took a Zero electric bike for a demo ride. One of the nice things about the electric was that I never had to take my right foot off the peg, which was nice because it was pretty tight and lifting my foot onto the peg was pretty uncomfortable. Back in January, I was on vacation in Puerto Rico and rented a scooter with a CVT (and, of all things, the rear brake on the left handlebar, where a normal bike would have a clutch lever). It was kinda nice to just leave my foot up on the floorboard all the time. Makes me wonder if there's an electric or maybe one of those DCT Hondas in my future...

In the meantime, in addition to the booster seat lifting me up an inch or two, I've figured out how to fabricate a ~1.5" lower footpeg mount from the spare rider and passenger peg bracketry that was also in the big box o' stuff. Pictures to follow once my friend who does welding gets back from vacation.

 

Soo... someone wanted sound with their video? Yeah we got that. Did a short take this afternoon and loaded it up on YouTube

Had to give up early because it was so damn cold. Take a look at it and tell me what you think despite the clutch slipping out, the bike really wanted to pull hard and I max'd out at 93 MPH on the headwind.

If time allows I will do another longer capture tomorrow provided nobody makes plans for my sunday afternoon. Everything was captured in analog BetacamSP... the sound is incredible on good speakers. If I get ambitious I may do a 4-channel sound as I do have this capability, SECA in surround?

 

Very nice, great sound........how did you eliminate all the wind noise? Maybe on the next run you can illuminate the carb a bit better, it's a little dark.....or, it just struck me, are you filming this thru the airbox and the airbox boots? I think you are.....wow!

By the way, for those that are new to the subject-----understanding what is going on here (and why) is the key to understanding CV carbs.