Total Motorcycle Community Forums

INTRO: So I decided to start a blog. Let me be the first to say, I'm a terrible speller, and I'm lazy when it comes to spellchecking, so be prepared for some retardation in that department.

I've thought about making a blog for sometime, but just like with everything else, I wanted to make it myself. Like, make the website the blog is on myself. You see, I'm a web developer, and every time I see something on the internet, I want to integrate it into one of my websites, or re-engineer it and make it my own, or or or....but in reality, I have WAYYY too many projects going on now, and well, I find myself on this site a lot, so this seemed to make sense. Maybe at some point I'll move it to my own site.

Brief History of -Holiday :
Here's a list of some of the things I am:

-29 (30 in a few months..AHHHHH!!!)

- A Web Developer - thats my current incarnation. I used to be an accountant, a banker, among other things. I went to Temple University, duel major, History/Criminal Justice, but then I ended up with an acounting degree? Accounting sucks btw, it didnt take me long to figure that out. I quit doing it after 3 jobs and two years, went back to school for Programming, then ended up here. I could go into more detail on that, but this is a motorcycle site, so who cares

- a Weekend Gearhead/tinkerer - I've always had broken vehicles to contend with, and sometimes no money to fix them. My first vehicle at 16 was a Jeep Cj-5. I went to go buy it by myself, did all the research myself, took the bus to a very seedy part off north philly to pick it up myself. I bought it from one of those car sales places that look like they can pack up shop and move to another city within 5 minutes. They probably did.
Anyway, I handed over my 3 grand (wayyy too much), and attempted to drive the jeep the 50 miles home. It made it about 10 miles and died. Had to have it towed home. I think the EGR valve was shot , so when it would heat up it would die. Anyway, that set the tone for the rest of the time I had that vehicle, which was a long time. Everything broke. Being 16 I couldnt afford to pay to have it fixed, so I did it myself. Changed the clutch over a weekend, rebuild the power steering pump, rebuilt axles, swapped trannies, etc etc. Jeeps turned into my first obsession, and in some ways still are. I currently own a 80ish CJ-7 that can be seen on various pages of one of my websites, http://www.bustedjeep.com. There are a bunch of writeups there about different things myself, and two of my friends have done to our CJ's.

So that vehicle is what got me into tinkering with things.

- a lover of anything with two wheels - so when I was about 20 or so, I made a friend who had an old UJM of some sort. He got his bike out of storage that year and it wouldnt start. He assumed (and I let him) that I'd know how to fix it since I knew how to work on jeeps. So he dropped the bike off at my place. Well, it turned out the battery was just bad, so I charged it up and was able to get the bike started. Now, having never been on a bike (besides on the back of my fathers when i was a kid), i stood alone in my parents driveway, a bike idling next to me. I jumped on, had a rough idea of what controls did what, and drove it down the driveway, dropping it at the end into a drainage ditch. I was hooked. Sinice then i've owned several bikes. Some were projects, some were commuter bikes, some were just for fun. I'll go into more detail on that in a later post.
Oh and, when I say two wheels, that means bikes/mopeds/scooters too. I've toured a good part of the country of biycles and own several different ones. But that is for another post.

I live in Philadelphia PA with my girlfriend, who is becoming a bit of a gearead herself. She is into vintage Vespa's and is currently rebuilding the engine in her 125cc (kitted to 177) Vespa. Her and I both have poor impulse control when it comes to buying things, so you can imagine what our basement/garage look like .

So, I guess to sum up this intro, I'll post up some pics.


my CJ!
( i have a "projects" website found at http://www.brian-payne.com . some of my toys can be found there)


Bike pics to come soon! I'm actually selling my commuter bike (84 Cb650sc) this week and picking up an 86 FJ1200. Cant wait!

I have some more time, so I'm going to give some more history of my . uhm, crap.

My first bike was a 78 or 79 Honda CX500 Custom.


This is not the bike, but it looks just like it minus the cargo rack. I purchased this bike while in college for $400 and I used it for commuting. I was living in downtown Philadelphia, where parking was a nightmare, so I would put it on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. The bike made a bit of noise at idle, and always seemed like it was going to die, but it never did. I drove the bike for about a year, then sold it for what I bought it for so i could purchase a Nissan 300zx:



super fun car, 6cyl, weighed about 4 pounds, rear wheel drive, t tops. I would power slide it around every corner. I cant believe I still had a license after owning that car. Eventually it died and I bought a 96 mitsubishi eclipse:



i drove this care for 5 years, but it mets its end with a bang about a month after I paid it off. I was on the 2nd or third date with my current gf, and we decided to drive down to Baltimore, which is about 90 miles away. I let her drive, which is very unlike me. The short story is, there was a freak storm in the middle of the day which greatly effected road visibility, and we ended up in a 90 car pileup on i95. We hit a mini cooper, then someone hit us, then an 18 wheeler just missed us, and took out a jeep grand cherokee behind us.
The car was driveable afterwards, although the insurance company totaled it. Unbelievable, in all the 90 cars involved in the accident, no one was killed.
So after that I got a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I have now. I wont post a pic of that as all you have to do it drive home, and you'll see 100 of them . I basically use it for hauling things like groceries, motorcycles, furniture, things like that.

Somewhere in the middle of all that I purchased a wrecked 93 CBR 1000f:


I ended up replacing the motor in it, buying a bunch of very expensive plastic for it, then selling it for my current CJ before I ever even drove it

So that brings me to my CJ, which i've posted before:



everything on it has been replaced, upgraded, then beat to death, then replaced again. More details on it can been seen here http://www.bustedgroove.com/machine/cj.asp . I wont post more about it here because it would take up an entire page. Unfortuantly, these days motorcycles take up more of my time, are more practical, and easier to store. I've been bringing myself to terms with selling my CJ sometime in the fairly near future, but im not ready quite yet.

I picked up a 76 Honda Cb360T last fall for very cheap, and i've been slowly getting it back to roadworthy:



it will be a backup city bike, and my gf will probably tour on it occationally. Right now I just need to locate a decent front caliper and it should be ready to drive and get insured.

I've also got a 76 Vespa Rally 200.:

my gf tends to ride it more then i do. Its actually eally fast, wheelies very easily, and goes up to 75 mph. Its a load of fun! My gf also has several of these, and we're fairly active in our local scooter community. OH and in that pic is my 84 Honda Nighthawk which i've been commuting on the past year, but gets sold this week to make room for an FJ1200.


recently i've picked up a Puch Magnum MKII 40cc Moped:



that one is not mine, but looks just like it. They are a blast to drive around town, super easy to work on, and you can kit them up to 70cc and make them go 60 mph or so. I admittedly look rediculous on it being 6'3", but you have to have a sense of humor to own some of the bikes I do. This particular moped is actually fairly sought after and I've been offered more then I paid for it several times, so I dont know how long it will be around

i also have several bikes. I had a titanium frame Litespeed roadbike, but I didnt ride it much anymore after I got this:

its a recumbent bike. You may or may not be familiar with it, but if you've ever toured on an upright bike, 8 hours a day, after 5 days or so, no matter who you are, your butt is killing you. On this bike, I can ride all day and get to camp at night and be ready to party. I've ridden this bike from Montreal - Philly, Chicago-Philly, Philly to Virginia beach and Back. I normaly ride with my father (who is the one that got me into these bikes) and we load them all up with camping gear and just ride for a few weeks at a time. Its one of the most challenging, and favorite things I've done. One day when we both have the vacation time we'll take a month off and ride to California.

I guess thats it for now!

noice. That CJ is frikken hot. As much as i like dirtbiking offroad, a good jeep ride is really fun.

I likey the CJ, I bet it's a lot of fun!

Your gf is a cutie too!

Nice various vehicles. That's really cool that you've ridden that far on a bicycle.

real men <3 toys. looks like you have quite a few nice ones.

ok, just got the new rear tire mounted and a new battery. Just got back from my first ride. HOLY CRAP!!
1200CCs!!!!!

Gotta go, more later!

wow, i kinda suck at keeping this blog updated


FJ
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ANyway, I did get the tires mounted, road the bike to work for two days, then one day, coming home from work, it stalled out. It wouldnt start again. I waited on the side of the road, as i stared a the bike in an effort to get it to comply. A guy on a Triumph stopped by and asked if i needed help. I only lived about 1 mile away so I said i'd be ok.

Eventually, i got the bike to start, but it didnt run well. It was getting starved of fuel. It had a full tank.

So i got the bike home, and did some fooling aroun with it. Turns out these bikes have electronic fuel petcocks. Never saw that before. It turned out the electronic portion of it was getting confussed as to weather to let the carbs have gas or not. So i unplugged it and now the bike runs great.

I drove it to work yesterday. I'm still gettng used to how much it weighs, and i've yet to have it on the highway. I've only put 60 miles on it. However, there is an FJ rally in North carolina in 2 weeks, 550 miles away, so I'm considering driving to it. I just have to make sure my fuel issue really is fixed and nothing else crops up. I found a great yahoo group for FJ's and those guys were really helpful when I was trying to troubleshoot my problem. One of them is going to the rally from vermont and he actually invited me to meet up with him and offered to trailer my bike down to the rally! How nice, especally of someone I've never met. I'm not sure if im going to take him up on it yet, as I was really starting to get into the idea of driving down......we'll see.

Vespa
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So this past weekend, my girlfriend and I went to a Scooter Rally in Baltimore. Jenn (my gf) couldnt get her Vespa ready in time (she spent all week tryin to rebuild her engine on the floor of our garage. She got it all back together by 2am friday morning, then found out the clutch wouldnt engage and gave up ), so she ended up riding down in a car with friends. I rode the Rally 200 the 90 miles down to baltimore. I rode with another friend who was on his Stella Scooter.

We took rt 1, which is a 45mph road for most of the way. The scooter tops out at 70 mph or so, and we hauled some butt going down there. It must have looked hilarious seeing two bik guys on little scooters, wearing all motorcycle gear, completely hunched over, tucked into the bike, flying down the highway going 70mph.
It was a blast.
this isnt from the ride down, but here are a few pics from the group ride we did when we got down there:









my girlfriends helmet on the right:


saw this thing on the ride home:



there were probably about 60 bikes or so at the rally, a few motorcycles too.



overall it was a great weekend. I even won a helmet at the raffle and my gf won a fuggetaboutit lock for her bike.

The ride in today.

So, there is this city wide crackdown on parking going on right now. There really is no legal parking for motorcycles downtown, but there are a few spots where people get away with parking on the sidewalk. One of them is this block where a bunch of cops park thier personal bikes. Civilians end up parking there too since its hard to tell which bikes belong to cops and which dont. Thats where I normally park.

So yesterday, after work, I come out to get on my bike and leave. There are about 30 bikes parked there, and all of them had warning flyers on them saying that if they continue to park there, they will be ticketed. Well, I work like right downtown philly, and there is no other parking. Even metered parking for cars is very scarce. The only choices really are to pay upwards of $15 a day to park in a garage. Eff That.

So today, I decide to bring the Vespa into work because I've gotten away with parking it at bike racks before, and I know a rather secluded one that I plan to test out today. I'll have to put an update as to how that went.

Aside from that, the drive in today, was crazy! My commute is about 6-7 miles, and about 5 miles of that is a very scenic road next to a river. During nice weather there are boat races there all the time, and when they have them they detour that road. That happened today. So that adds about 5 extra minutes.
Then, as I'm getting back onto the main road, I hit a really big pothole, and suddenly the bike dies. This is nothing new, and I know exactly what it was. (Joys of owning an vintage vespa). I pull over, take the cowl off, to find the wiring harness that attaches to the coil came apart. You see, the engine on a vespa and the rear wheel are all one peice. So basically, when the suspention travels, so does the entire unit. If the movement is drastic enough it slowly pulls the wireing harness apart and the bike suddenly dies.
So anyway, 1 minute fix and i'm back on my way. I road curves around, past the Philadelphia Museum of Art, down Ben Franklin BLVD, right into downtown Philly. Well the streets around where I work are in the process of being ripped to shreds so they can be repaved. Apparently this process takes about one bamillion hours to do, because they've been at it for 3 weeks or so.Traffic is horrible. Its time to take advantage of being on a bike that weighs 150 pounds and fits in between cars. I filter through stopped traffic. I decide to take an alley i've never taken before because it looks like it would go where I was trying to get. Well, it took me 2 blocks too far, and the road is met up with went to wrong direction. Hmm, I drove over to the sidewalk, turned the bike off, and easily pushed it down the sidewalk until I got to a road that went my direction. I did this several times when traffic got so bad we werent moving and there was no room to filter. Eventually, I made it to my secret bike rack parking spot near city hall, locked up the bike, and went on my way.
Nothing like an adventure first thing in the morning. Just another day in the city I guess.

One of these day's i'm going to take pics of what my NORMAL commute is, because its really pretty.

I hope my bike is still there when I leave work today

took the fj on a 200 miles shakedown run through the country today and it did great! Well, except that the key flew out of the ignition at some point and is lost forever. I was able to get it working again with a flat head screwdriver and a hammer, but needless to say I think I need a new ignition, key, and fuel lock

aside from tha the ride was great, although wet at times. I'm starting to get used to how this beast handles. I have to say , riding a 550 pound, 1200cc torque monster in the rain, on new tires was rather unnerving at first..