bike motorcycle magazine

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Attack of the U.F.M.

Attack of the U.F.M.

It all started on a sleepy autumn morning. I rode to work early, usually getting up around 4:30 – 4:40 am and left around 5:00 – 5:10 am. Needless to say I’m usually only partially awake at that time in the morning. I don my leathers and head out to the garage.

I opened the garage door and backed Mistress, my V-Star1100 Classic, out and got the rest of my gear on, gloves, face mask, clear riding glasses, and half helmet. I tucked my lunch inside my right saddlebag. It was cold enough outside that I had trouble keeping the glasses from fogging up when I breathed out my nose. I closed the garage door and proceeded to start the bike.

First I turned the ignition key all the way on. I made sure the choke, (fuel enrichment knob), was turned all the way on. Then, I made sure the fuel cut off valve was turned down to the on position remembering that if I do not turn the fuel knob back on, I will not make it out of my neighborhood with out running out of fuel and stalling the bike. Don’t ask me how I know. I pressed the cut of switch to the run position and hit the start button.

Mistress’s 1100 V-Twin roared to life. With the Cobra exhaust, you can bet my neighbors know when I leave in the morning. I slid the fuel enrichment knob, (works like a choke), over to idle her down some and headed carefully out of my driveway onto the dark, damp streets.

It was a cold, dark and foggy Monday morning. I turned out of my neighbor hood and headed eastbound on Cheek Sparger Road. I straightened out from the turn and started to accelerate. Just then, I caught some movement just barely visible at the far reaches of the headlamp and riding lights off the side of the road. At first I didn’t pay to much attention to it, thinking it’s probably just a rabbit on the side of the road hopping around.

Then I noticed the anomaly is headed perpendicularly to my track on the road and will cross right in front of me. That’s when I spotted the glowing white beady eyes of this creature fixated on my Mistress and myself, reflected from the lights. As I got closer I could make out its size. It was larger than an alley cat and more like the size of a small dog. Now I could make out some large teeth and huge fangs in a pointy snout and large whiskers with foam trailing out the corners of its mouth.

Just then I realized what the Unidentified Flying Marsupial was. It was a very angry opossum running at full gallop across the road and headed straight for me. It looked like it was out for blood. For all I knew it could be rabid. I raised the angle on my right wrist and Mistress responded by slowing down some, both of us hoping to throw the attackers timing off. I just new it was going to either try to get up underneath my front tire and knock me off my bike or just jump straight up for a death grip on my throat.

My change in speed to throw off the timing ploy did not work. My next tactic was to aim my V-Star 1100 right at it. Mistress nodded in agreement. The logic in this approach was that, if I tried to hit a moving target, more than likely I would fail. The gargantuan opossum was at a full out run and just fixing to spring at me, its claws glistened in the riding lamps, when its head hit my front tire. It made a hollow thump type sound.

At this point neither one of us could adjust the momentum we had built up. The killer slid underneath the path of the bike. I could feel the rear of the bike lift up as the rear tire ran over the marsupials head. I knew it was its head because if it had been its body the back end of the motorcycle would have bounced up a lot higher.

In a flash it was over. Mistress and I had thwarted a deadly attack from a killer opossum and barely survived. I tried to glance back behind me and saw nothing on the roadway. But it was foggy and dark so I might not have been able to see it. I called my wife when I got to work and asked her if she had seen anything in the road, she leaves for work right after me, she had not. I looked closely again at the scene of the assault on my way home and saw nothing. The Attacker had made a clean get away.

Opossums are the other brown meat and tastes like chicken, I would imagine. Otherwise, they can be just another large, rodent looking, Unidentified Flying Marsupial obstacle in the road. Most of the time, you only get to see them with their little feet sticking up stiffly. Yep, they are just another obstacle you have to watch out for while riding a motorcycle in the Texas suburbs.

What is the moral of this story? Be prepared at any time, any place, and any conditions to react to changes in road conditions or obstacles in your path. Also remember, not all obstacles hold still for you. Sometimes obstacles have a mind of their own.

Ride on,
Torch

Monday, March 16, 2009

Don't disturb... A pre-war Triumph Speed Twin man at work

Not FIA but FIO = For Insiders Only

Don't disturb a pre-war Triumph Speed Twin man at work!

My pre-war Triumph Speed Twin 5T 500 cc 1939.

Het vordert gestaag...

Het amaranth-red spuitwerk is gedaan...

"Tri cles"= "spaans" voor Extra Sterk!
het zadel stevig (for Big Boys only!) door John gelast...
met Lex de Girderfork-rubbers vervangen.
Tjonge...jongen, dat moet straks wel strak door de bocht gaan!?

Maar ik ben er nog niet...

De "waslijn" hangt nu vol... het is immers Maandag "wasdag"!

Dan de spatborden effe goudbiezen...

Vervolgens "stoeien" met commandant,
schuursponsjes en/of evt. staalwolletjes.

Met "racy" tankrubbers...voor nog meer grip!

Zo gaat ie best goed...

Weer aan het opbouwen,
een grote slag geslagen...
Het wordt vast wel wat!

Nog verder opbouwen...

Tenslotte nog wat restwerk, poetsen, finetunen

en dan is ie weer klaar

voor de volgende 10 jaar!

THE PINK PANTHER WILL STRIKE AGAIN!

Trouwens...

Hoever ben jij dan al met je "brommertje" ?

Anyway

Leave it all behind on a Triumph thirty-nine!

1939 -2009 = 70 years old!

1999 -2009 - 10 years owner!

Motoring George Spauwen

Sponsored by
Victrace Sitebuilding

Saturday, March 14, 2009

A Tale Of Two Batteries

A Tale of Two Batteries

Mistress, my ’03 V-Star was whispering in my ear. Not literally of course, but she had been getting a little slower to crank in the morning. Being in the automotive industry I recognized the symptoms. The battery was getting weak. Being the professional procrastinator that I am, I ignored her. I did start plugging her into the Battery Tender Jr. on the weekends to make sure she would start for Monday morning commutes.

Then finally it happened one day after work. It went down on a day a cold front had blown in. I went out, hopped on her and hit the start button. Nothing happened. She whispered, “I told you...” I pondered my predicament a few minutes and called my wife to send one of the boys to come pick me up in our ’98 Ford Explorer. That was embarrassing. All leathered up and my bike just wouldn’t budge. I could have jumped her off but it was just much easier to call for a ride.

The next morning I grabbed an extension cord and my Battery Tender and had my wife drop me off. Fortunately, my workplace was on her way anyway. I connected her up to let the battery be tended to and came back on lunch break to see if she would start. She did. I left the tender on until I got off work. After work the mighty 100 V-Twin roared to life and I was headed home.

OK, here is the dumb part. Any smart individual would have checked the electrical system out and/or replaced the battery then. I have never claimed to be smart. I just left it on the Battery Tender all the time at home now. I milked that old battery along like that for another month to a month and a half. I had no idea how old that battery was or how long it had been in my V-Star.

Then it happened again. It was my night to work late and a cold one at that. I got bundled up to go home and, “Click”, nothing. Another phone call and another ride home in a cage.
The next morning I repeated the battery tender procedure and rode her home. I was determined to get another battery this time.

The first place I referenced about V-Star 1100 batteries was the V-Star 1100 Riders Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base has a wealth of information and answers to just about any question V-Star related, including some questions that haven’t even been asked yet. It had a whole section on batteries. I read you could get a larger size battery that would fit. The stock battery on a V-Star is the YT14-B4 rated at 12 Amp Hours and 135 Cold Cranking Amps. A good replacement for it is the YT14-BS rated at 12 Amp Hours and 200 Cold Cranking Amps and is only 11/16” wider. That sounded like what I wanted, so I started searching for one. Somehow I overlooked the, “Batteries Plus (local source) - $49.99 -Charlottesville, Va on 2/6/06”, Partly because I had never heard of them.

I found what I was looking for at CBXMAN Motorcycles. It was a Binetto YTX14-BS High Performance AGM ATV/Motorcycle Battery. I ordered it and a balaclava and waited patiently. CBXMAN shipped my order right out and I was able to watch the shipping progress online at the shipping companies web site.

The order arrived a week later and I opened the package and removed the instructions for the battery. The Binetto battery came with very vague and sparse directions. What’s a guy to do with out pictures? They ship the battery dry and you have to install the acid and charge the battery before use. I decided to wait until Saturday afternoon to install the battery. I was scheduled to work a half day and would do it after lunch.

Saturday afternoon came around and I figured out how to open all the battery acid vials and pour them simultaneously into the six separate openings. When all the acid was in I hooked it up to my Battery Tender Jr. After it had charged for a while I topped it off with a little water. This turned out to be a mistake later on. I know, I know, you are supposed to use distilled water anyway. When the Battery Tender’s light turned green I knew it was time to install it on the bike.

Battery replacement on a V-Star is fairly simple. Remove the battery cover by unscrewing it’s hex bolt, unfasten the rubber strap that holds the battery in from the bottom, disconnect the negative battery cable and any other grounding cables attached to the negative post, then remove the positive cable and any other power cables attached to the positive post.

Installation is the exact reverse. I noticed that the Binetto battery posts were not that great of quality. The posts set too low in the battery. This made it hard to install round terminals on the front side of the post without distorting or bending the eyelets. The battery did fit fine into the battery opening space on the bike. However, the battery on a V-Star does not fit level; it sets at an angle with the right side, the negative side, higher than the left. This is where the topping off of the battery became a problem. All the excess acid when the battery was tilted came out he vent hole. I had to keep hosing it off the bike with the garden hose to keep the acid off the bike.

I got the motorcycle all put back together and tested the battery by starting the bike and it started up with no squabbles. I gave her a quick bath and ran her down to the gas station for a quick feeding. It started and ran fine for one week and then the dreaded no crank happened once again, this time in the morning before my ride to work. On top of that one of my garage door hinges had broken and I had to leave her outside until I could repair the garage door.

A few days later I went back the V-Star 1100 Riders Knowledge Base and printed out the PDF files on how to check the rectifier-regulator and stator in the charging system. I did al the checks and everything on the motorcycle passed the tests. I came to the conclusion that my new Binetto battery was defective. A coworker and fellow rider, Danny heard of my predicament and suggested a store near his home called Batteries Plus.

I called a local Interstate battery store and they had one but it was another one that you had to add the acid too, or “acis” as the typo on there website says. The Interstate battery was pretty pricey also and I believe it only came with a six month warranty.

Next I called Batteries Plus on Davis Boulevard in North Richland Hills Texas. I spoke with Robert, a helpful and knowledgeable counter person, who checked to see if they had an Xtreme battery in stock the size I needed. They did not have one but they would have a stock order of them in a couple of days. I asked if they were a sealed battery and he said they were. Then Robert checked to see if they had an X2-14 Xtreme battery the size I wanted in stock. They did have one. However, they did cost a little more. He explained that the X2 battery comes with a two year warranty instead of just one. I told him I would be by after work to pick one up. Browsing around their website I found a ten percent off coupon.

I also fired off an email inquiry to Yamaha Suzuki of Texas in Hurst from their website about the cost and availability of a battery, which they have not responded to, to this day.

After work I headed straight to Batteries Plus and met Robert. He grabbed the battery off the shelf for me, it was on display, put it back in its box making sure all of the hardware was there. It came with two height adapters and two spacers and bolts for side mount cable installations. I presented my 10% off coupon and Robert said they have a 20% off coupon that comes out in the paper and he would give that to me. I was not just pleasantly surprised; I was shocked at the offer and his dedication to customer service. Trust me; I will refer anyone looking for a battery for anything to check out Batteries Plus. If you live in the D/FW area, see Robert at the North Richland Hills location.

Here is the X2-14 Xtreme Battery description from the Batteries Plus website:

Choose an X2 battery to keep you powered. Designed for the vibration in an ATV and the endurance of a touring bike. X2 batteries offer the best features; fully sealed - maintenance free, pure calcium-lead plate design for increased power, easy to install with front mount threaded terminals and extended reserve power for more accessories. Backed by a full 24 month warranty, the X2 is the perfomance battery you have been seeking. The X2-14 has specific dimensions of 5.88" x 3.44" x 5.75".

I went home and installed it that evening. (The Binetto battery would not even crank the V-Star over after being on the Battery Tender for nearly a week now.) The installation of the X2 was much easier. The whole battery had a more professional fit and finish. The posts had plenty of clearance for the terminals and the height adapters, spacers and bolts were not needed on the V-Star installation. I did not even have to charge the battery to start the bike, it came fully charged.

The failure of the Binetto battery may have been caused by me and its lack of clear directions, I do not know. It was an expensive lesson to learn. There are some things that it is just better to purchase locally rather than online. And, you get what you pay for; some things are inexpensive for a reason. My Mistress has not been complaining to me since the X2 Xtreme Battery was put in several weeks ago and she has been starting every time I ask. On a scale of 1-10, Torch gives the X2 a M.M.M. Rating of 9.5.

Ride on,
Torch