What did you do to your Yamaha today?

Luckily, I do have a heated garage - I mean I turn on the heat to work. Can't afford to heat it all the time.

 

That's Minneapolis... I'm near Mora where it's gonna get even colder.

 

Heat wave on Monday!

Too bad those aren't them there ferrin' Celsius temps, that would keep you so much warmer.

Pro-tip:

Fahrenheit (sounds German, doesn't it? Pronounce with a real guttural "oomph" if you wish...) is named after the German-Dutch physicist Daniel Fahrenheit (1724) who developed it primarily for use in industrial and climate purposes. A single degree F is about the lowest perceivable difference in temperature that a human can detect accurately.

Centigrade (now posing as "Celsius") was developed by the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius in 1742 (about 20 years after the Fahrenheit scale was developed), and if the word reminds you of the metric system (i.e. centimeters), well that's because it divides the measurements into a more "human"-relatable scale ---- a hundred evenly-spaced units since freezing (0* C) and boiling water (100* C) are easier to remember and relate to.

Prior to these measurement scales, there was no standard for temperatures, and the only measurement which devices could tell you was whether the current temperature was hotter or colder than a previously measured temperature. Most relied on the expansion characteristics or air and/or water (or both, since they both expand or contract in volume as things get hotter or colder) and thus a relative level of "hottness" or "coolness" was possible, but no universal "actual temperatures" existed....although, as long as the exact same instrument was being used by a person, then they could develop their own private "scale" of measurement......think of an old-style glass thermometer (the ones filled with mercury that you would stick under your tongue, or shove straight up your ******** for even better accuracy....) but without any defined measurement scale engraved into it: "Well, look, the measurement is way down thar', better bring the cows into the barn tonight".....

 

'Snot exactly tropical here in the Windy City either:



My garage is not heated. When I added 15 feet to the end as a separate "motorcycle shop" thirty years ago, I thought about insulating and heating the addition... but the budget was a bit tight and we'd had a string of warm-ish winters, so I figured it wasn't worth the expense. Oops...

I brew beer (well, not right now--I do it on the porch and the hoses would freeze up in minutes today), and that history of ºF and ºC got me to thinking about how brewers made beer (a very temperature sensitive process) before thermometers. I suspect it's got to do with each brewery having two reliable temperatures: their ground water, which should be consistent year round, and boiling. So, while you might have no idea about the numbers, after some trial and error a brewer would find that if he mixed this many gallons of boiling water with this many gallons of ground water, let it sit for a half hour, then put a third of it into a pot and boiled it for twenty minutes before stirring it all together and letting it sit for another half hour... he'd end up with a good beer.

Anyway, back to Yamahas... carbs are still in cold storage in the garage. I was looking at some photos I took when cleaning/rebuilding them a couple years ago, and realize I probably need to re-set the float levels. I had a photo in which the fuel level in the plastic tube looked right... until I realized the camera was tilted a bit. When I straightened the photo and drew a line from the base of the carb body, I found that I probably set them high:



Level with the carb body bottom rather than 3mm below. Oh well, another project for if/when it ever warms up.

Meanwhile, to give myself something to do during a cold snap that looks like it will end sometime around July, I brought the seat inside for further surgery. I found a sheet of black vinyl on Amazon, sold as a generic motorcycle seat cover, that's big enough to cover the whole seat and the "booster cushion" I made to lift the rider portion up to the same level as the passenger portion. I think I'm going to see if I can just staple this vinyl over everything else, so that if I (or some future owner of this bike) want to lower the rider seat back to stock level, they can.

I also kinda suspect that's not necessary. If and when I try to sell this bike, I'm just going to have to accept that Maxim 650s are a dime a dozen in the used market. I look on FB Marketplace and see a dozen XJs being offered between $750 and $1500 for every KZ650... and the Kaw's seller is asking upwards of $4000. Kinda funny, because when I dug up the old Cycle World review of the Maxim, it said the Yamaha was the better bike--lighter, faster, better equipped (cast/tubeless wheels, shaft drive) than the KZ. Go figure.

 

This morning just before sunrise, car did not want to start... forgot how Norwegian the driver can be about such things and it eventually fired.

 

reverse engineered the engine bracket for my XJ550 project this morning. Now to see it the sheet metal guys will quote it or if I'm going to make some excessively fancy brackets tomorrow.

 

Kwaks are the Nikons of the bike world.
Sure, well built and reliable, but always attract extra money.