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...and now....?

blues2cruise wrote:...and now....?

Now spring is coming and I'm waiting on Chaparral to send my new tires.

Maybe once I'm on the bike again I'll get inspired and write some more

So yeah I got new tires mounted on the bike last week. I called every shop in town and they all wanted $40+ per wheel to mount the tires, even when I carried in the wheels myself.

So I ended up taking the wheels off and trying to replace them myself. Well... holy crap in a can. Motorcycle tires are way harder to get off than lawn tractor tires

I ended up getting the front tire partially off... the using a cutting tool to saw the tire in half because I didn't want to bring it to a shop with the tire half off and begging them to fix what I messed up

I ended up taking it to this place Seymour's. When I picked up the tires the next day, they only charged me $40 for the whole deal which was pretty awesome. I went straight home, put them on the bike, and rode the rest of the afternoon. When my GF got home from work she jumped on the back and we went out riding for about an hour.

Felt awesome to be back on the bike. The next day I called in sick and spent the day riding. Then the weather got very cold and very rainy. I finally gave up and said screw the weather and went riding again last night in 35 degrees. Brrr. Kinda got it out of my system a little bit though.

In between, I hiked up the saddlebags so they don't rub the rear tire anymore when leaned over, but I had to remove the helmet lock. Still not sure where I'm going to put that. I also fixed the faulty electric reserve switch so now I can actually use my reserve fuel.

Right now I'm looking into replacing the faux tank/air filter cover with a "real" tank from a later model XV535. No one seems to know if it will physically fit. I'll find out as soon as I find a tank. Right now the range is a pathetic 72-75 miles on the paltry 2.3 gallon (0.5g reserve) underseat fuel tank. The upper tank would get me another 1.3 gallons bringing my range before reserve up to about 130 miles.

I'm also thinking about drilling a hole in the exhaust's expansion chamber. This apparently gives the bike a very nice, throaty sound. I'm kinda nervous about doing this (what if I mess it up?) but the sound is just killer.

If anyone has done or attempted either of these, let me know

You could just use a carabiner to hook your helmet to your saddle bag....unless you actually need it to lock....

A cable you can run through the helmets and jacket sleeves can be locked to the bike.

blues2cruise wrote:You could just use a carabiner to hook your helmet to your saddle bag....unless you actually need it to lock....

That's a good idea. I might just do that or hang the helmet by the chin strap over the mirror when I need to. I'd be worried leaving it out all day on the street while I'm at work, but that can be easily resolved by carrying the helmet inside.

Still haven't put the helmet lock back on, but I guess I will now. We have several days of beautiful weather coming up and the bike is parked on the back porch til a new stator comes in.


Yesterday was so nice, I ended up going home from work and riding the bike back. Gorgeous sunny 60 degree day. Rode it home, picked up the GF, and rode to the local shop so she could look for some new gloves.

They didn't have any, so we tried to leave.

Tried being the key word.

Bike wouldn't start. Just a buzz from the starter and a noticeably dim headlight. Dead battery? How is that possible? I've been driving it around all day..... I got a jump, bike worked, but died right at the edge of the parking lot.

The charging system I spent so much time fixing last fall was haunting me again. I took the (now very dead) battery out of the bike and called a buddy to pick us up. Went home, let the battery sit on the charger a couple hours, then drove myself back (with a voltmeter) to ride it the 10 minutes home, hoping the charge was good enough for it. Voltmeter shows 12.6 volts across the battery before starting and 11.8 volts after.

Unplugged the stator leads to check the stator. I'm supposed to have about .4 ohms resistance between each lead. Well, one of them shows infinite resistance to the other two leads. Bad stator.

As you'll remember, I had a new stator in my possession before I realized that the problem was in fact the regulator/rectifier.

Suckiest part is that *that* stator - which of course I resold as unnecessary - was under $70. The one I just ordered from eBay was $125.

Lesson? Hold onto every part you come across for such an old, rare bike, whether you think you'll need it or not