Old Car and Bike rambling

An interesting thought popped into my head while shopping for a new tire stem valve on the Internet. (I found a very nice set of 83 degree valve stems for my cb750  https://www.jpcycles.com/product/zz21730/k-l-supply-co-right-angle-valve-stem?v=2 ) In browsing the vast selection of tire stem valves, I thought about the government folks talking about providing tax breaks to companies so they could generate jobs and stimulate the economy. This is considered supply side economics and might also be known as "trickle down economics" in another era. The basic idea is you enable a company to have the money to buy, build, and hire... eventually stimulating the economy. All the politicians preaching this surely must know something I don't, but I can't help wondering why a store or company would keep manufacturing if no one is buying. These days, the more likely scenario is the company manufactures in China, sells their goods here at a hefty profit, pocket the tax breaks ...

I witnessed a friend take a high side around a curve last week during a ride in the curvy mountain roads about 30 minutes from work during a lunch time ride. We weren't traveling super fast and I'm still not quite sure how it happened but the repurcussions of that 1 second crash are still being felt 1 week later. I was the 3rd and last rider in our group on my cb750, the 2nd rider borrowed my wife's 2009 Kawasaki Vulcan 500 and the 1st rider was on his Yamaha FZ6. Over the last week all 3 of us reviewed the accident in our minds many hundreds of times. We failed to properly manage the risk on an activity that is already risky. he was riding an unfamiliar bike the injured rider did not wear a jacket or gloves he was on an unfamiliar road it was his first ride of the season he was the youngest of the 3 riders Although the bike was totalled and my friend was badly injured, he luckily will heal in a few months and can already walk around. It could have been much worse because h...

My gixxer carbs are pretty much sorted out. During the spring I thought I would use some prefilters (made from my son's old tShirt) over the pods to create additional restriction to increase vacuum and increase slide lift. Unfortunately this needed to be removed once the weather warmed up because the bike started to run a bit too rich and I was stalling coming to a stop. No flat spots. Easy cold starts. Significant performance improvement and I'm still seeing approximately 41mpg. The old girl runs real nice now and the only things I need to address are the windshield angle, fuel line routing, front fork seal leaking (even though I've replaced it 2 times already.) I replaced the rear wheel bearing a few weeks ago and had trouble doing the swap. The factory service manual states to fully seat the bearings, but for my 750, I discovered that the drum side bearing cannot be fully seated inorder to get everything properly installed on the other side of the wheel. Pictures of the...

My 1991 Audi 200Q 20v is about as rare as a Porsche Carrera GT with around 1-2,000 ever made in the whole world. Unfortunately it doesn't have the same desireability as the 2 corvettes (late 50s and late 60s by the look of the sillouhette under the moldy covers) slowly rotting around the corner from where I live. My center muffler rotted out last month and I went looking around for someone who could bypass the muffler for me because I didn't want to spend the money on it while I try to drive it into the ground. Stopped by my old mechanic who refused to work on her roughly 8 years ago because he didn't like tying up his bay waiting for parts. He drives an 89 200 Quattro. Stopped by my current mechanic and his son is finished with the ersatz S2 engine transplant and is now taking the engine from a 94 S4 and putting it into an Audi 4000 Quattro. He drives a 94 S4 also. During this time I also had a guy come and buy a set of old Ronal wheels off me and he had 3 200 20vs all in ...

Over the previous several weeks, I removed the old carb rack from my cb750 (not an easy task) and also removed the airbox which I discovered to be a fascinating piece of engineering. 2 crankcase breather hoses attach to the airbox and shoot any solid particles (water/oil) to the back of the airbox where any condensate drains down to the catch tank. Remaining oily air/fuel mixture is then sucked back into the engine for burning. (I wonder how this recycled mixture affects octane rating or if the claims that this mixtures adds to carbon build up in the intake tract has any merit). Picked up a heater hose from the local auto store and cut it into 2.5" straight sections to connect the new carbs to the engine (3" would be better to allow space for cuts). Since the carbs do not line up perfectly with the engine you must make some angled cuts on the connectors to get them to mate up with the carbs. My #2 connector was a little short and I will need to go back and make another o...

I came into some cash after selling some items I didn't want on ebay. I had enough money to order a few parts that were missing from the rack of carburetors that I bought on ebay. 4 jet needles, 1 diaphragm spring, 3 throttle springs, and 4 float gaskets cost me about $100 after shipping. Yikes! big bucks for a handful of junk. This would have hurt alot more if I actually had to pay for these things with my hard earned cash, but the ebay funds makes it a bit easier to swallow the cost for this carburetor upgrade. I also ordered some o-rings ( http://www.oringsusa.com/ ) and some stainless allen head screws ( http://myworld.ebay.com/ebaymotors/stainlesscycle ) for roughly $20 more. One of the caps had a broken vacuum port so rather than buy a new cap, I just bought a small aluminum spacer from the hardware section at Lowes home improvement. In re-assembling the carb pieces, I discovered the choke mechanism was not engaging the #4 enrichening circuit becuase t...

As an owner of an early 80s cb750, it quickly becomes obvious that the CV carburetors on these old motorcycles require the original airbox to run properly. It would seem like a minor price to pay for the reliability and dependability that we get with the design since no jetting changes are needed as we change altititude or swap exhausts. The constant vacuum (CV) design automatically compensates for the difference and keeps the bike running happily. Just don't change the airbox or use anything other than the original style airfilter. I got my bike running perfectly so I'm either a glutton for punishment or just a dumb geek who can't leave stuff alone. "If it aint broke, fix it until it is" might be my motto. People tell me I wouldn't be happy with a new bike because there would be nothing to fix. Maybe it's just a way for me to keep my mind busy so I don't have to think how much I hate my job. I started noticing some posts from people on cb1100f...