Honda 599 New to Now

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#431 Unread post by **Sev** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:47 pm

Mine are black.

Shorts · #432 Unread post by **Shorts** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:17 pm

Sevulturus wrote:Mine are black.

Honto? What brand? Sorry, I didn't think they were. Yours are a lighter colored black than mine

#433 Unread post by **Sev** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:00 am

Ahahaha, playing hooky again. All done my work orders for the day and nothing to do. I just pulled apart and rebuilt a starter motor off a 1973 GS550. It was in surprisingly good condition, but then again the fact it has sat in storage for 20 odd years probably means it hasn't seen much wear.

#434 Unread post by **Sev** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:25 pm

Soooo, where to start. Last week was reading week so I "had time off to study." The concept of which is a complete lie. A friend and I left town at about 10:30am on Friday and ended up in Edmonton about 6 hours later. With my bike in the back of his truck, that's right my bike is safely home tucked away in the garage and waiting for me to come release it onto the streets again.

Things were pretty uneventful for the most part, there was a thing at the bar on Sunday that we went to. Tuesday I had a dental cleaning and we set up an app't for Wed to get a tooth I managed to crack. The only time all week I could get in was noon. This was a major major issue as I had a meeting at 2:00 across town to meet my new boss Paul over at Echo Cycle.

It's upsetting because that meant I might be late for this meeting and that's not the kind of person I am, or the kind of person I want to appear to be. I'm that guy who shows up for every shift 10 minutes early and doesn't leave until the job is done. I impressed this upon the dentist through subtle yet effective means (this did not involve threats or a hammer as some of you may suspect hehe) and was fortunately out of there with some time to spare.

I got to Echo Cycle with about 15 minutes to spare, and the whole left side of my face still frozen from the dentist... I don't think I slobbered on myself, but I definately had a funny accent the whole time I was there. Paul took me on a tour through the shop, pointed out some of the potential problems with the way things are happening at the shop (space being used inefficiently and garbage piling up), then left me in the hands of the shop foreman who took me on a tour of the work areas, dyno room, the custom paint guys booth, and the machine/tuners shop.

That's right, the dealership I'm going to be working is the only one in Edmonton with a Dyno, the only one that does in house turbos/nitrous and one of the few with an in-house airbrusher (is that the right terminology?) As you can probably tell I'm really excited to be working there. I was given the standard, "you'll have to work hard and you'll do well speech," which has never really been a problem for me, so things get fired up in a couple of weeks.

Finally, something exciting arrived in the mail today

A set of Pazzo levers that I ordered a long time ago (when I actually had money). And finally finally arrived, of course my bike is in Edmonton, and I'm in Fairview so they're basically worthless, but they sure are pretty. First thing I'm going to do when I get home is fit them.

Most people spend money on their bike to make it go faster, apparently I'm spending money to make it stop faster. Braided lines, better levers... weird I suppose, but I'm liking what's happening with my bike up here. Looks a lot cleaner now.

#435 Unread post by **Skier** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:44 pm

Well, you're doing things in the right order. In order to go fast you need to be able to stop fast, too.

How do the levers improve braking, thought? I've never put on aftermarket levers so I have no experience with 'em. I just know the 599 stops plenty well for me, and will be even better when I replace those 4 year old rubber lines sometime this season.

#436 Unread post by **Sev** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 7:02 pm

Through the use of the built in flux capacitor

!

Really they don't do a lot other then being a little lighter (cnc machined aluminum), and looking way cooler (anodized black)... oh and they've got a lever flip system that makes them adjustable to 6 different clearances from the handlebars meaning I can set them to whatever is most comfortable - brake and clutch which may not statically improve my braking or clutch work, but will make it easier for me to do. Just allows me a little more adjustment, and with that comes more control.

www.pazzoracing.com

Can't wait to get them fitted.

mandyedwards · Tue Feb 27, 2007 8:01 am

Hey Sev,
Nice to catch up on your blog. Glad to hear you'll be back home soon and working out of Echo. My dad bought his Triumph there last year and loves it. Sorry I missed you when you were up but keep me in the loop with the goingson. Younggun has left for afgan as of last week so he'll be gone for summer riding season...the good news is we won't be fighting over who gets to take the bike this year! It's all me baby!
See you soon!
Mandy

#438 Unread post by **Sev** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:37 am

Mandy, let younggun know we miss him, and he should keep himself safe. Oh, and we're going to paint the bandit bright pink!

How do you turn a 1/2 hours worth of work into two hours? You try to rush through it and screw yourself over hard.

We're doing practical tests this week - precision measuring (to the 1000th of a millimeter), manual reading (You know that one thing you can never find in the damn manual? I need to be able to find it.), charging system check (Do you know what your alternator output is? I do), and finally a tire change on a front dirtbike tire (tube type). The charnging system and tire change are both timed tests rated on a bell curve

I was all on par to get it done in good time, wheel off and on correctly, all wires routed correctly, brake adjusted everything when I found out that my tire wasn't holding pressure anymore. That's right, somewhere in the course of getting the darn thing off... or on as the case may be I managed to put a small hole into the tube totally ruining its integrity.

So haul it back off, then pull the tube out, find the hole(s) that's right there were two pinprick sized holes that I managed to put in it because I was in a rush. Patch them both and reinstall the tire. During beading I managed to pull back the edge on one of my patches, so take the tire apart again and apply another patch on top. Put the whole thing back together, bolt onto the bike, torque the axle and pinch bolts, pump the brake, make sure the cables are routed correctly and get myself punched out. Two hours and six minutes for a job that shouldn't have taken more then 45minutes. Talk about learning to take your time the hard way.

Fortunately I'll only lose marks on the timing part of the whole ordeal, so I still came out with an 80% on the tire change, and the bike is roadworthy haha. All in all it could have been a lot worse, but it was a stressfull day none-the-less.

Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:56 am

I feel your pain on the dirt bike tire. I popped my rear tube on the XR... patched the tube, put new holes in the tube when installing, got new tube, holled that one and finally got it on the next tube and $25 later. What kind of bike was it?

#440 Unread post by **Sev** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 1:53 pm

Wow, time passes quickly. Rest assured I've not yet kicked the bucket, though thoughts of ending my pain are becoming more and more common. It's starting to melt up here in Fairview, and my bike is still in Edmonton. And ALL I want to do is go riding. I can't sit still for more then a couple of minutes, and video games just "pee" me off. The sooner I get two wheels rolling under me the better.

In the meantime, I've almost finished rebuilding my CG125 engine. As soon as I get two more nuts I'll be able to put the whole thing back together and shove it back into the frame.

I spent about 3/4 of the rebuild freaking out because I had an extra dowel pin floating around. A dowel pin is exactly what it sounds like, a hollow roll of soft metal that allows oil to flow through certain sections of the engine between pieces. 2 go in the right side, 2 in the left 2 under the cylinder and 2 under the cylinder head. I got the right side bolted into place, put the cylinder on, then the cylinder head. I was doing the left side and found 3 pins left over.... 3 dowel pins cluck!. This means I gotta pull it apart and find out where it went. Go back and carefully check under the cylinder head that I hadn't bolted into place yet. I'm sure sure sure sure sure sure that I put two in the right side. There's 2 under the cylinder and the head. So I still have an extra dowel pin. puck!

Whatever, I'll undo the right side after I get the rest of the engine toge.... at about this point I realized that I should be putting two dowel pins into the rocker arm holder assembly. One was still inside the assembly, while the other was my loose floating pin. THANK YOU GOD! All that freaking out for nothing, I just hadn't made it far enough to figure out where that particular pin went.

Relief.