Carrying spare gas on the Ural?

Recent rides with the boys and with James of the PBTF ride have led me to rethink the cargo area usage within the sidecar.  Once you've a passenger, things you normally carried within the sidecar need to find someplace else go to!

Typically, the normal Ural Sidecar Rig owner mounts his/her spare gas can in the OEM gas can and carrier which typically gets mounted on the left rear side of their sidecar.

Ural Sahara model

Another spot Uralisti mount the gas can is to the right or left of the sidecar's nose

photo source: sovietsteeds.com

I don't have the option anymore of mounting it in the same spot as the first picture, there's battery cables emanating from the sidecar since I run a Total Loss Electrical System, and I didn't like the looks of the rig with the gas can up front.

I'd been shopping online for a version of a fender rack similar to the one sold by Ural but which is rather expensive and hard to find in black (no, I don't want the chrome version).

Rear Fender Rack from Ural

photo source IMWA

 The thought had been to mount the rack and use it as an anchor point for my Kolpin Gas Can carrier I'd bought for the 1150RT way back.  Well, now Maria is gone and I'd been carrying the Kolpin gas can inside the sidecar rig as I rarely had a passenger with me.

As I was looking at Natasha today after work, it suddenly dawned on me that since the Ural spare tire cargo rack (see above pics) is mounted using the locking hub that holds the spare tire onto the sidecar's spare tire mounting point; why not do the same with the Kolpin Gas Can carrier?

A one inch hole drilled into the metal carrier and voila, it was nice and secured onto the top of the spare wheel:

I will try the above setup during this weekend's riding and see how it all works out.  I may change the orientation of the carrier so the gas can is closer to the right side of the sidecar, so if gas spills it has no chance of hitting the hot exhaust pipe on the right side of the tug.  I'll probably also orient the can so the spout it to the rear of the sidecar as well.

The Kolpin Gas Carrier is designed primarily for the rough and tumble ride of an ATV so I figure it's secure enough for my purposes.  My only concern is the strength of the spare wheel securing hardware, I guess I'll find out!

Freezing Rain Commute

The Denver Metro area was under a Winter Storm Warning starting at 3:00PM today.  The weather guessers were right for once, it started raining right at 3:00PM on the eastern side of town where I now work.  The rain quickly turned to freezing rain, thunder and lightning.  It was a very heavy rain too, I watched the cars and poor Natasha get soaked out there and gradually get covered in mushy ice.

Mushy you see because the temperatures were still above freezing at this point.  I got out of work close to 5:00 PM after the heaviest of the freezing rain had passed to the east.  It was just mildly raining, almost snowing as I got to Natasha and took this picture of her in the parking lot.

Yep, that white stuff is ice but it wasn't frozen hard....kinda mushy if you know what I mean.

I rode on home down the usual backroads, there was mushy ice particles/pellets (kind of like a soft hail if you will) collecting on the roads but preceding cars had cleared channels in the parts where it counted so no major concerns.  That is except the one time I allowed my pusher to touch the ice-covered centerline of my lane, then I experienced a momentary wiggle which got my attention!  But that's it for the exciting part; the rest of the ride was without incident.

The only major issue was keeping my visor clear of the ice which would fall out of the sky and just stick to the visor.  Had to keep wiping the stuff off to the side of the helmet, so my gloves were quite wet by the end of the 12 mile commute.  My ATV grip covers?  Well, I'd left them on, they got rained on for at least an hour, so were soaked through and unusable as they wouldn't hold their shape to allow me to slip my hands in and out as I worked the controls; I had to take them off.

Got home safe and on even more positive note, the modification I'd done to the Ural's air box apparently works to keep water out of the air filter.  This is a known issue with Urals of the 90s where air is sucked in from an opening in the top of the air box.  Succeeding models had the hole in the air box on the bottom to try and alleviate this issue but it still exists.  Here's what I did:

Basically, it's adding a second top lid in place of the small "top hat" that my air box comes with.  The OEM "top hat" is only a bit bigger than the opening into the air box and so water apparently gets sucked in during heavy rains, saturating the air filter and causing combustion issues due to lack of air.

Of course, I also had the K&N oiled air filter inside so the test was not as thorough as I'd wanted.  Sure, I'd gotten a heavy rain hitting the rig, rode in rain and everything went fine but I want to try this with a plain paper filter as well to make sure.  More testing to follow.

Here's a belated shot of my sidecar's trunk, now containing two deep cycle batteries hooked up in parallel, giving me 250 amp hrs of electrical power.  So far, it roughly translate to a range of roughly 400 miles with the headlight on, about 700 with the headlight off.  More than enough for a day's ride on the Ural.  Not much for a Beemer but then again....it ain't a Beemer!

Looking in from the right of the sidecar, the batteries are currently on the charger being topped off

Yeah, using a Total Loss Electrical System (TLES) is somewhat limiting but there's hope for a better alternator solution.  I saw the below pics on sovietsteeds.com, and I am hopeful a commercial application will be available someday:

Basically, a car alternator is mounted on top of the engine, and slots are cut to allow a belt that drives the alternator to spin on the flywheel of the engine. 

A side view of the car alternator, driven by a belt spun by the flywheel

Presently on Urals, the alternator has a gear which is driven from the timing gears under the front cover of the engine. On older versions like mine, the gear tends to shear off and destroy the timing gears as well.  On the newer versions with a Nippon Denso Alternator, the bearings tend to dry out and of course destroy themselves, requiring a new adapter for the alternator if you're lucky, a new alternator if you're not lucky; and those Nippon Densos are not cheap! 

So until the above solution is available to me or something as reliable, I'll be using my TLES.

Beemer farkle for Natasha

Beautifully sunny day today here in the Denver Metro area, so just a short post about the beemer farkle I installed on Natasha this morning.

FARKLE:  The term is well known in the sport touring community.  (source)

An enthusiast may be in the process of "farkling". The completed motorcycle would be all "farkled up". Radar detectors, Global Positioning System receivers, heated grips, and satellite radios are some of those farkles. Other accessories could be aftermarket seats, side and/or top cases or bar risers, which make the motorcycle more suitable for long miles.

F.A.R.K.L.E. -- Fancy Accessory Really Kool Likely Expensive 

In terms of the above definition, the farkle I installed today was not fancy, is functional cool and not very expensive.  Close enough!

 

From myural.com, the stock brake adjusting nut 

that URALs come with from Russia

You need a 12mm wrench to adjust its position on the brake actuating rod.

 

 I replaced the stock brake adjustment nut with Beemer Airhead wingnuts

easier to adjust and no tools required.

 

 The sidecar wheel's drum brake adjustment nut

Took Natasha out for a spin and the brakes worked great.  I even managed to get a small brake squeal when I did a practice "panic stop".  First time I'd been able to achieve that with the URAL's drum brakes.  I look forward to the Tech Day this spring when I hope to see one of my fellow Uralisti demo the correct procedure to "adjust" drum brakes.

Update: I took Brigitta, my '87 R80 out riding in the afternoon.  Temperatures were in the mid 40s and partly cloudy so not too bad.  It would get steadily more and more overcast as I headed south towards Franktown and then past the town to the vicinity of Castlewood Canyon State Park.

 

 Along Inspiration Drive, looking at Mount Evans

Brigitta with Pikes Peak in the background

Panorama of Castlewood Canyon

I really had to play with the exposure and color settings of the photos of Brigitta to compensate for the haze and overcast skies making it difficult to get some good definition on the distant mountains.  Hope you like what I ended up with.

Snow tomorrow, it'll be Natasha's turn to go out again.  Hope you got a ride in today!

EOM Mileages: Natasha: 14,937 Km  Brigitta: 83,525 Miles

A relay for Natasha's heated grips

This cold snap that's finally leaving us behind here in Colorado highlighted to me the need to install a relay on my heated grips to prevent the accidental "leaving them turned on" when parking the motorcycle.

Background: On Natasha, my 1996 Ural Sportsman Sidecar Rig, my alternator failed and caused me much grief. More details on that here: LINK.

To get around the fact that I was leery of putting in the same model alternator that had failed so disastrously, and the additional fact that upgraded alternators were back ordered for the foreseeable future, I installed a Total Loss Electrical System to power the electric needs of my Ural: LINK.

For cold weather riding, I installed some heated grips I got on Ebay directly inline with my Ural's OEM battery, a small motorcycle battery. Regular usage shows that a day's commute of 25 miles/1 hr uses up about .8 volts so hooking it up to the trickle charger at night is somewhat akin to keeping it charged the regular way with an onboard alternator.

Trouble is, the lazy way I had initially hooked it up, if you left the heated grip control switch in the ON position, it was draining the battery, whether you were enjoying the benefits of the heat or not! I thought I was smart enough to turn it off when parking the motorcycle but this past Monday proved me wrong. I left the switch on, drained the spare battery, had no heat for the ride home. That experience was not a lot of fun since it was below freezing!

Tonight, I got a 30 amp relay from the auto parts store and after blowing several fuses because I thought I could figure it out on my own; found instructions in the form of a diagram off the offroaders.com website. Once I wired things up correctly, I then had heated grips that were only powered when the motorcycle's ignition is on.

Source: www.offroaders.com

I used a wire to connect to Natasha's rear tailight circuit to act as the "switched power" source that connects to connector 86 above. Connector 85 I hooked up to Natasha's main battery ground wire. Connector 87 went to the heated grips' control switch and finally connector 30 was hooked inline with a 5 amp fuse(that came with the wires for the heated grips) to the positive terminal on my spare battery. I get heat with the ignition on, no more blown fuses, and no more inadvertent draining of my spare battery because of carelessness on my part.

Going LED on Natasha's lights - The Beginning

Prior posts detailed how I installed a TLES or Total Loss Electrical System in order to be able to run Natasha, my 1996 Ural Sportsman without her stock alternator which had self-destructed.

A Ural motorcycle uses about 8 amps/hr of electricity while the engine is running, and my 125 amp/hr deep cycle marine battery was estimated to give me about 17 hrs of running time before it ran out of juice and my engine would quit because there was no electricity to run the ignition coil.

As some other Ural owners before have done, I sought to extend that run time by replacing the incandescent bulbs on Natasha with LED bulbs which consume radically less electricity and thereby amperage.

Tonight I finished replacing both brakelights, the right taillight and the sidecar's front driving light with LED bulbs that I got from autolumination.com. You can't, with the Ural's weird wiring for the motorcycle's brake light/taillight, just use LED bulbs from your local auto parts store. Oh no, those wily russkies wired those two lights to be Positive ground, while leaving all the other lights negative ground! Why? I have no idea.

Autolumination was one of two places that had one type of LED bulb wired so that it could be hooked up to positive OR negative ground type 1156 sockets. For any Ural owners reading this, it's their 60 LED SMT Tower bulb for $30. Pricey, yes but it works on the dang Ural motorcycle brake light housing lights and you don't have to cut wires or replace the whole thing with a trailer's brake light housing or whatever!

Source: Autolumination.com

Some further notes for Ural owners, the tug's brake light/taillight bulb are type 1156 or single circuit (positive ground). The brake light/taillight (negative ground) on the sidecar is a type 1157 or dual circuit. I failed to realize this when ordering bulbs and had to do two orders with the ensuing delays.

The picture above is with the incandescent brake lights in the ON position, that's my son Miles helping out by activating the brake lever

The above pictures is the LED brake lights in the ON position, as you can see, just as bright if not a bit brighter than the stock incandescent bulbs!

Here's pictures of the driving light on the front/outboard side of the sidecar. It's purpose is to act as a running light of sorts to alert folks at night that there's something hanging off my right side!

Incandescent bulb above, LED bulb below

I used a type 1156 6W Bayonet LED bulb for the driving light

So now, I've reduced my cruising lights current draw by 12 watts (right taillight and sidecar driving light), that's 1 amp less being used per hour. When I had incandescent bulbs in the brake lights, their current draw was 42 watts when they're on (two 21w bulbs). Now I won't worry about having my brake lights on all the time while stopped since their current draw when lit has gone from 42 watts (3.5 amps) to less than 1 amp due to the LED bulbs.

Next, once I find the right relay, I'll replace all the turn signal incandescent bulbs with yellow LED bulbs. The savings there is estimated to be 42 watts per side to less than 1/2 per side. I hope this will get me a few more hours of riding time from the battery.

Sure, turn signals are only on intermittently while riding so the savings there won't be much, but now I'll have the "luxury" of leaving them on while waiting for the light to turn green instead of remembering to turn them off once a car has stopped behind me at the light.

Yeah, this leaves that 6014 Sealed Beam headlight and its 60 watt current draw to deal with. The tentative plan here is bright 15 LED Superbright driving lights (once I figure out how to mount them securely) and if they're bright enough, use them as driving lights during daytime and shutting off the 6024 Halogen lamp with the cutoff switch. If it all works out, that'd be about 5 amps/hr savings! In fact, the guys who run TLES systems, run their rigs without the headlight when off road and get much longer running times from their batteries!

In fact, I am tempted to run my headlight on high beam and its additional 5W/hr cost since I have cut down my wattage by 12W while riding! I will do this on my next charge cycle with the battery. I don't want to change too many variables at once in the middle of a run cycle!

Hey, if you're a Ural owner who was seeking an LED solution and you end up buying this stuff from autolumination.com, tell them you read about their product here please!

Update: 09NOV09: Ended up putting a 12.8w Incandescent in place of the 6W LED driving light on the sidecar. It just proved not bright enough for my needs. So, am back up to about 6.8amps/hr just in the "always on" lights.

Update:16NOV09: The 15LED driving lights arrived, not bright enough to replace the headlamp's output. Instead, used one of them for now to replace the sidecar's 12w incandescent bulb. Seems brighter, we'll see.

Update 20NOV09: So, my rear turn signals are now LED, leaving the front turn signals at 21W. Not going to pursue more LEDs on turn signals....they're on so little really. It's the lights that are on all the time that I have to work on. Tonight, I replaced my sealed beam 6024 which had a rather "warm, yellowish" narrow beam light pattern with a Sylvania SilverStar 6024 headlight because I though the high beam bulb had burned out. Well, it turned out to be the switch instead but now I've a better "whiter" light with wider beam spread and a nice high beam spread as well. It uses 65w at high and 55w at low. So now, at high beam and adding 10w for my incandescent taillight, I'll be using 6.5 amps/hr, at low beam I'll be using 5.4 amps/hr.....I think I'll ride in daylight with high beam on and see what kind of mileage I get out of the battery.

Update:04JAN2010: Have swapped the headlamp with the stock Russian lamp with the P45T base 45/40w bulb and 4w parking light. On high beam, it uses 45w or 3.75 amps/hr vice the Sylvania's 60w on high beam or 5amps/hr. A savings of about 1amp/hr when you add in the 4watt parking light bulb. I can cut out the P45t bulb and just run with the parking light as well, the cops don't seem to care either ways.

Update: 08JAN10: Received and installed the 60W P45T base bulb into the headlamp assembly for Natasha. Also replaced the 4W bulb with a 5 LED BA9 base bulb. It's really bright. I will wait till daylight tomorrow to judge whether its bright enough to use in daytime without activating the 60w bulb when in right driving environs. The 60W bulb should be brighter than the 45W bulb when riding at night.

A cheap way to measure your jugs' temperatures?

I figure with this title, I will catch Mr Riepe's attention. : )

But seriously, I was cruising the online forums today seeing how folks measure the heat put out by their boxer engine cylinder heads while the engine is running.

The usual solutions were trotted out:

• Thermocouple attachments under the spark plugs with wires leading to a meter.
• Touchless Infrared Thermometers one points at each jug for a realtime measurement.
• A dipstick with a thermometer at the top.

Prices ranged from not too bad ($40-100) to high (>$200). Those who read this blog, know my tendency to go cheap (usually to my regret later). So of course, I kept looking.

Then, on the sovietsteeds.com site, this guy posted a picture of how he'd just used a plain old meat thermometer and rigged it onto his engine's jug. Simplicity itself!

I rode to the local grocery store, picked up two for $5.00 each. (If I'd paid attention, I could have bought three for the price of two). They come apart easily enough, I discard the aluminum/tin frame that came with them and carefully pried the cover off:

A couple of small holes to match the holes in the metal strap and the leftover screw size

I used lock washers to hopefully keep the screws in place in spite of engine vibration

In case you've ever wondered what causes the needle to move with temperature changes

Mounted, looks good there to me, the metal strap I just bent and curved around the tappet cylinders

So there you have it, a bit of metal strapping, some leftover screws/nuts and it even looks like it belongs there on the jugs! We'll see how long they last with the engine vibrations and such but for now.....

If they work out, I might do the same for my R80 Beemer's jugs.

Update: 26OCT09: The thermometers were apparently poorly placed to register heat from the jugs, their needles did not move the entire commute home tonight. Back to the drawing board.

Update: 16NOV09: This concept is still a bust.

New Farkles for Natasha

My motorcycles have always had a tachometer, it's good to know at what RPMs your motorcycle engine seems to be happiest at. On my R80, she cruises nice and smooth at 4000 RPM, below 3000 RPM in third gear or above, she's not happy.

I also needed, with the Total Loss Electrical System (TLES) on Natasha, I needed a way to track the hours the engine has been on to establish a baseline/history of how long the deep cycle battery lasts.

Some searching on the Internet, I ended up on Ebay as usual. I searched for hourmeter and found this:

The price was right, $20 and $4 shipping I think. A few days later, it was here and it took me all of ten minutes to mount it to my Ural's handlebar:

The 0.0 is the hourmeter when engine is off

Easy to install, hardest was figuring out a way to ziptie it onto the handlebar securely until I come up with a more permanent solution. The white wire goes to a grounding point on the motorcycle, I used one of the mounting bolts on the dead alternator. The other wire you wrap around the nearest spark plug cable. It "senses" the spark I believe and uses the count to calculate your RPMs.

It works as advertised, I am now learning what she does at idle and at speed. Natasha appears to idle at around 900 RPM, and likes to cruise around 4200 RPM apparently. Only drawback? It's not backlit, so you can't see it at night!

No problem, I rigged a $7 flashlight from Ace Hardware with a flexible neck holding the light, I just aim it at the tach and off I go. When the engine is on, you get Tachometer, when it's off you get hourmeter. Two farkles in one!

Tool Farkle for my motorcycles

Well, it's mainly for use on Natasha, my 1996 Ural Sportsman. One of the regularly scheduled things you're supposed to do on all motorcycles, but specially on Urals, is the checking of nuts and bolts for tightness.

I've had a couple of fasteners "dissapear" on me already so I spent some time this morning checking over every nut and bolt I could find and reach. There's a bunch! Not only that but as a bonus, I basically had to use every size in my metric set from 10mm to 19mm! What a PITA.

My beemer on the hand, requires about five sizes of metric wrenches. Sigh. Not only that but things don't tend to fall off the beemer in my experience.

So, to better and more smoothly do these checks in the future, I ordered this today from amazon.com via expeditiontools.com


It's called the HK1 Hydrokinetic Adjustable wrench, here's more information and photos of this beastie: LINK
One wrench, and I can tighten bolts/nuts from 7mm to 19mm. It'll save so much time I hope in searching for the right wrench.

I plan to also supplement the pot metal toolkit that came with the Ural with a Harbor Freight Metric Tool set. Perhaps a small jack as well to thrown in the sidecar trunk. Nice to have when fixing a tire and it'll function as ballast! It's all good.

Update: The tool, much as I tried to like it, is not really much of a help....

A Trunk Lock for Natasha

Ural Sidecar Motorcycles come with spacious trunks in the sidecar for storage of tools, supplies and whatever else comes to mind when riding such vehicles.

The trunks however, do not come with a lock. These vehicles are descendants of Russian military motorcycles after all and locks could be a bother when trying to access the ammunition stored in the sidecar's trunk in the middle of a fire fight!

Since I can't have a Russian Army Private guarding my stuff when I park Natasha away from home, I decided to install a lock. I've always lived in big cities and sometimes temptation makes thieves out of marginally honest people. Locks keep the honest people honest I was once told.

I found this link on the russianiron.com site. Pretty simple: LINK


I emailed them on Sunday, no response by today so I just went to the local hardware store and cobbled the components together. Worked out pretty good too. My youngest son rode in the sidecar with me, and the employees who saw us park were much entertained.

Here's the final results. Note, measure carefully, I have two holes in the trunk where one would have been enough. Oh well.

The area circle in red is the hook which engages the trunk lid latches, the area in yellow is the handle which rotates the hook out of the way.

As you can see, with the lock in place, the handle cannot rotate up and move the hook away from the trunk lid latches. It's WWID security but should be "good enough". If someone wants in badly enough, they'll get in.

Long Distance Farkle: Kolpin Gas Can + Bracket

One of the things that my 2004 R1150Rt, Maria, does well is eat up miles and miles with apparently little effort and at the same time providing me with a comfortable ride.

There's been times though when the gas station I expected to be there was closed, or out of business and then it was some nervous riding on my part till I got to the next gas station. I've only run out of gas one time, and that was on Brigitta, my 1987 R80 Beemer. She was quite the pain to push the last 200 feet or so to the gas station. I can't imagine what fun it'd be to push Maria, who weighs at least 200 lbs more!

I know what you're thinking, why doesn't he just stop each time the odometer or fuel gauge indicates you're at half tank? Yeah, I could do that, but then you lose valuable riding time! That, or there's no gas station at this magical half tank mark or you just don't want to stop since the highway sign says the next one is just x number of miles away and you know you can make it!

Whatever the reason, I tend to tank up closer to the 170-180 mile mark. I know that Maria will go 200 miles no sweat without the "low fuel" warning light coming on. I also know that when the "low fuel" light comes on, I've less than a 1/2 gallon (if that) of gas left.

Yesterday, the final pieces from Kolpin came for the external plastic gas can mounting bracket that I'd bought via Ebay. The kit I bought was the wrong one for the can I already had you see, but the good folks at Kolpin comp'ed me the required pieces. Great service on their part!

A little drilling, the use of a tire iron as a support bar for now until I figure out something else and voila the gas can and bracket were mounted.

The mounting screws you see ended up being one inch further to the front of the bike

I took Maria out for a test ride of about 12 miles and everything stayed in place just fine. I carried water instead of gas for this trial run and there was evidence of a few drops of water on the side of the can and on the pillion seat when I got home.

I think getting a suitable sized O-ring and really tightening the cap should do the trick in terms of keeping stuff inside. I plan to, when carrying gasoline to only carry a bit over 1 gallon even though the capacity is 1.5 gallons. This to allow for expansion and avoid spillage.

I plan to ride with the gas can mounted for the next hundred miles or so, just to make sure things are secure. Then I'll carry gas and ride Maria till the "low fuel" warning light comes on to see how far I can go before she runs out of gas.

Wiring up Brigitta for Heated Gear

There have been times when I am out and about on Brigitta, my 1987 R80 Airhead Beemer that I'd wished I'd had my electric vest on. Weather being what it is here in Colorado, what can start as a nice sunny day can quickly change into heavy overcast and cold.

So, once I added an S fairing to Brigitta, along with it came a voltmeter to help me gauge the drain on the battery. I had bought, early on when I bought Brigitta, a cable sold by easterbeaver.com to provide me with a "hot" SAE connection directly to the battery:

SAE to Battery

I used the above arrangement to easily hook up Brigitta to my battery tender at night. Worked great.

Then I got a cigar outlet adapter to hook to the SAE connector so I could power my electronics when doing long distance rides. All my stuff would go in the tank bag and one hookup powered it all from the motorcycle:

SAE to Cigar Outlet

So, getting back to my original thread, I found myself on Brigitta and getting chilled in spite of the layers I was wearing. I had packed my electric vest and I was congratulating myself for doing so at a stop. However, I went to connect it and realized it used a BMW type male connector and all I had was a cigar type female outlet adapter! Arrgh!

So this week I took receipt, again from easternbeaver, a female BMW outlet to SAE adapter. I'll be ready the next time!

SAE to BMW Outlet

All these items are from easternbeaver.com: LINK

It's a one man company, James lives in Japan but ships promptly and his prices are very reasonable along with the products being very well made. For instance, I use the two horn relay kit from him and its top notch!

I've no affiliation with James and his company except as a satisfied customer. All images are from easternbeaver.com's website.

For the next time I'm caught out riding in snow

So the other day found me riding home with thick snow flurries coming down and wet looking roads. Turned out, once I got home safe after some "worrying" that the road surfaces had indeed been too warm yet to freeze over and cause issues.

I found this out by taking my Raytek non-contact infrared thermometer from the tool chest and getting some readings from the street surfaces near my home. They'd come back in the low to mid 40s in terms of temperature so I was not in danger really.

So I bought myself a very inexpensive and small non-contact thermometer that I can afford to just carry with me in the inside pocket of my riding jacket's liner.



It's smaller than my first infrared thermometer so its more portable. Next time I am caught in snow, I'll at least be able to quickly measure the temperature of the road when stopped and perhaps not worry as much about it being cold enough to freeze.

I bought it at a local computer electronics store, Microcenter, for $12. It's available online as well at harborfreight.com. The company that makes it, ipsgproducts.com does not even list it in their website. Go figure!

Cruise Control for my Airhead

Did some initial testing of the throttle friction screw from BMW, it provides tension on the throttle handgrip so one can lock the throttle in position while doing a carburetor sync during tuneups and such. You can also use it to "rest" one's throttle hand on the long rides, though I am sure BMW does not advertise that as a function.

It's promising and works on same principle as the Kaoko "cruise control" I use on Maria.

It's not that easy to get to while moving, so you have to be careful

Both pics from Google

I've been trying it out on long straightaways with no traffic around me and while it's not "easy" to adjust it on the fly; it's doable. Just get it where it's barely slowing the throttle grip's spring assisted return to idle while at a stop, then when you want to adjust it, it's slow enough that you can tighten it more while moving.

After that, its just a matter of putting the throttle where you want it, and tighten it down a bit more till it holds the throttle in the position/speed you want. Make damn sure you've not tightened it so much that you can force the throttle to idle with your hand! Both this and the Kaoko Cruise Control I use on Maria allow me to cut the throttle easily.

Remember to loosen this screw when in city/heavy traffic or you'll be expending more effort than usual actuating the throttle. Not to mention, if you have a get off, the dang throttle will be held open which could it make it interesting trying to engage the kill switch on a bike that's spinning around on its jug because the rear wheel is still spinning!

Read here for snowbum's story and warnings re using this and other similar devices! LINK

Tailbag Gone, Trying a Tankbag on the R80

I had recently removed the tailbag which I'd installed earlier on Brigitta, my 1987 R80 Beemer. Part of its fastenings had torn loose when I was struggling with the motorcycle when I got stuck in mud during my last ride of 2008.

As I looked under it to see about re-securing it, I noted that the bottom of the tailbag had rubbed against the paint on the motorcycle's body. Not good. Some hand polishing got rid of most of the damage but I did not elect to put the tailbag back on on Brigitta.

I carried on without it, using my system cases to carry my camera but it was getting banged around a bit; not to mention it being a pain to open/shut the system case each time I stopped to take pictures.

I saw that newenough.com was having a closeout sale on tankbags, amongst other things and got the Rapid Transit Bradley tank bag for a mere $15, total came to less than $22 with shipping. Such a deal.

The bag arrived today and here's some photos of it installed on Brigitta. I had to cobble an anchor point for the rear strap for now. In the process of doing this, discovered one of the two rubber straps holding down my battery had broken! Damn.

The weird looking striping on the sides of the bag are a function of my camera, the bag is plain black nylon material.

Not too bad looking and doesn't seem to spoil her lines as much as the tailbag seemed to do. I'll see how it works out, I just have to detach the rear fastener to access the gas tank cap so that shouldn't be a problem either.

The light blue thing underneath the tank bag is a microfiber cloth, even though the tank bag came with "protective" material underneath it, not taking any chances.

Just ordered myself a New Helmet

Not sure why I dithered so long after seeing the results published by the British version of DOT. They'd issued an initial list of flip-front helmets, only ones to do so in the world as far as I know, and my current helmet had come in as 1 of 5! Not good. LINK

I wrote an email to KBC, the makers of my current helmet and so far, no answer. I guess they did not want to defend themselves. I wonder if all this has any relation to the fact the price of the KBC FFR has dropped so rapidly since my insurance company paid to replace mine.

Today, I re-read the review on Webbikeworld.com (LINK) and given the current favorable currency exchange rates; I decided to buy a silver version of the Caberg TRIP flip-front helmet as my Christmas present to myself.

In Europe, it's called the Rhyno, in GB where I bought it from it's the TRIP

The sun shade moved up and down as needed

All Photos from Seller or Manufacturer's websites

I hope it fits me well, I used the measurement guides on the seller's site and came up with a size L. They've a return policy if it does not fit of course but still, I'd be out the shipping which was $35. The helmet is not available here, and is not DOT certified yet. However, it meets the more stringent ECE requirements so it'll be fine. Colorado, where I live, does not even require a helmet for riders so I doubt a police officer with be checking my helmet for a DOT sticker! It scored 5 out of 5 in the SHARP tests vice my KBC's score of 1 out of 5!

It's got a different securing mechanism for a chin strap but I'm sure I'll get used to it. It's lighter, comes with a built-in sun shade which will be really nice and got a nice review from webbikeworld.com who has a great reputation when it comes to gear reviews. I would have preferred white but the silver color will do fine I am sure.