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I have read many complaints about how difficult it is to remove the carb from the Super Sherpa. Let me help you with that.

To begin with, lift or remove the fuel tank so that you have some room to work. Then remove the rear throttle cable, the front throttle cable, and then the choke cable. Remove most of the hoses from the carb. This will make it easier to remove.

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Loosen the two hose clamps that hold the intake boots in place and push the rear one to the back of the boot near the airbox.

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Procure a large flat-bladed screwdriver and insert it into the rear boot, prying it backwards and off of the carb funnel. Push the boot to the middle of the carb funnel.

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Remove the screwdriver and reinsert it from the rear. Lever the boot over the far side of the carb funnel and push the carb toward you.

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The carb will free itself neatly and pop out of the front boot.

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Pull the carb out of the bike and you are home free. Installation is the reverse of removal.

Every summer, some rider crashes without gear and gets shredded. Pictures get posted. Stories get told. Wounds begin to heal.

I cannot imagine not wearing all of my gear when I get on one of my bikes. I mean, who wouldn’t want to look this cute?

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I admit, wearing leathers to work is fun(ny). What few other riders there are see me and some shake their heads, others ooooh and aaaaah and tweak me for it, knowing that they would do the same if they actually rode to work. Of course, they probably wouldn’t look like a giant pink and white Peep. The non-riders pretty much scatter, which I don’t get, because I’m hardly intimidating. But maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s the aggression that leathers in general signify in American culture. Really, though. Pink and white leathers are not aggressive. I promise. It’s only a motorcycle. It’s not going to hurt you as long as it’s off.

Truth is, I have lots of nice, well-fitting, decent-looking gear. The suit above is my riding-while-beautiful suit. It’s not the heaviest-duty suit I own, but it’s a tonne more protection than jeans and a tshirt. It also helps to have nice big side boxes to pack work clothes and shoes into and so on. If you’re a new rider on a little CBR with only a backpack, your options are more limited. And the looks I get when I roll into work in leathers. You’d think aliens had landed. Imagine being a new rider, showing up looking like Bibendum or SpiderMan, and having to answer for it. I’m old enough to just look down my nose over my glasses and say “I like looking this good” and mean it. But I’d hate to go through my first year of riding again and have to answer all those questions again. Especially as a teenager.

No one should ever be ashamed of gearing up or how they look with gear on. It’s a badge, kind of like a scar that you can take off. A reminder to yourself that you want to always be able to take your scars off at will, that none will be permanent. At least, none of the riding scars.

So don’t you want to look cute, too? Go ATTGATT. Wear your leathers. Ride while beautiful.

I’ve babbled quite a bit in the past about my low bike. It’s been so good to me – I’ve never been afraid to ride it or worried about losing it at a stop. Not that I haven’t (I have dumped it a couple of times), but I’ve never worried, because not only could I flatfoot it, there was close to 1.25″ of space under my butt when I stood up over the seat. As I’ve grown as a rider, I’ve become less satisfied with the lowness and realized that I don’t feel super stable at stops because my knees are bent. And standing over the bike isn’t really all that stable either. Add to this that I’ve had some really good experiences on bikes that I was really just barely flatfooting, and I decided to take the plunge and raise my GS to stock normal height.

The FSM bless BMW, they make it easy on a rider who needs to grow into their bike. A four-bit component swap and it’s done and over with, all with stock parts purchased from another bike.

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Unless you’re an F650GS pro, it’s visually challenging to differentiate between normal and low bikes, but the difference is like going from a cruiser to a standard for me. I had ridden with the optional OEM Dakar seat for a few months – a plush (seriously, it’s the only word to describe this seat) confection that my back just does not love. In fact, I ended up in PT for four months thanks to it. Yuck. Amazing what an inch of foam can do to you. It does not add height, per se, but does open up the ergos a bit. Just enough to freak my body out, apparently. I did like the reduced butt clearance when standing, but found that I sank into the seat quite a bit a when riding, and that just kind of weirded me out. I think seat changes are best left for new-to-me bikes.

I popped the old low seat (recognizable by the tear over the gas tank :grrr:) on and put my leg over. Unsettled, I had one foot down and one ball of the foot down. I wasn’t sure what to expect for settling, but this was not bad at all. In fact, ball of my foot doesn’t really cover it. I had about 1cm tops under my heel, and when I put my touring boots on, that almost disappeared.

I pushed it out into the driveway to warm it up after its all-too-long winter nap, grabbed my gear, and took it out in the neighborhood for a spin. As I rode, I could feel it relaxing into its new normal. I stopped at home to grab my purse and put the boxes on, and then went out for a full shakedown. By the time I got home, it had settled a solid centimeter, and not only are my feet on the ground again, but I have a bit of space under my butt. This is not surprising – it has a very wide seat and due to how humans are shaped, this almost forces a bit of air under there. Two babies did not spread my hips that much! My legs are very slightly bent at stops and nicely extended. I can one foot it with far more grace and ease now. It’s exactly the right height.

My next step with this project will be to start playing with the preload. The preload is at full soft right now, and while it technically does not raise the bike, it does affect the sag. I’m hoping that this shock will have less sag than the short one did, because even at full hard, it sagged quite a bit. Nearly an inch, by my estimation, and with all 135# of me on there (in fat mode), that’s a lot. I know BMW designed this bike for commuting and for smaller riders, but it seems to me that I should not be sagging that much! I will spend some time researching the topic and work to get it dialed in over the summer.

In sum, what was I waiting for? I love this bike to bits, and now it’s really where I need it to be. The ergos are completely unchanged – especially with going back to my low seat – and the height is great. I feel even more comfortable on it. Have I mentioned that I love this bike?!?

I’ve commented in the past about my low GS. It’s now a thing of the past. The low part, not the baby GS part.

Christmas this year brought me one of those über-cool Santa gifts – a set of used normal height stock suspension to replace my stock low suspension with. Fork tubes, center stand, sidestand, and rear shock for the princely sum of $700 from a trusted parts guy. Of course, the fork tubes are US spec, and have the ugly reflectors, but I will live.

What was important to me up front was to understand the various differences between the two suspension sets. On the low setup with preload fully hard, I had close to 1.25″ of space between my butt and the seat when standing over the bike. I never measured sag, but it was at least an inch or so. My knees were bent when sitting at a stop and I felt that I missed some stability due to that. For some reason, I feel more comfortable with my legs extended and less bent when stopped.

First, the centerstand. When modifying suspension up, one needs a stable means of holding the bike up. As the swingarm will have to be moved around a bunch, a centerstand is quite useful. So it is replaced first and the bike pulled up onto it. In my case, the new centerstand is one inch or 25mm longer than the old one. I realize now that this is a terrible picture, but you can get an idea of the difference.

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Next are the fork tubes. The fork tubes are also longer by an inch on the slider end. This is effected by using a different size spacer inside of the fork for each set. The actual lowers and sliders (and springs and so on) are all the same. This is actually very cool on BMW’s part because the suspension behaviour does not change very much from low to normal. Once the fork tubes are in, the bike is now at “full” height from centerstand forward.

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The rear shock exchange requires lifting the rear frame and gas tank. This requires removing the exhaust. I swear, everything substantive on this bike requires removing the exhaust! But it’s relatively easy to do and gives me a chance to clean up any mud or other dirt under there. The shocks are not as different, although too late I realize that the preload settings were completely opposite. I need to let the preload off of the short one and eventually remeasure. The shocks are about 0.5″ different, which results in roughly an inch of difference in the bike due to the geometry of the swingarm.

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Lastly, the sidestand is replaced. What a PITA, BMW. Even with a new bolt, the new sidestand is just as wiggly as the old one. The new switch clip is more interesting to install, also. But on it all goes, and now I can get on and off the bike. The sidestand is also one inch longer.

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All in all, I think I have about four hours of effort in. The centerstand took about fifteen minutes, the forks about fifteen minutes, the sidestand about a half hour due to fussy springs, and the rear shock took the rest of it, which included much cleaning and scrubbing time. To do it again, I think three hours tops, closer to two.

So, what is the final verdict? Suspension swaps are pretty simple tasks. I’ll write about riding on the new suspension in a separate post. Here’s the result.

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It’s taken me a while to get my head wrapped around this, but finally, here it is: why the US fails at zipper merges. Surprise, it’s not entirely the fault of our poorly-trained drivers.

I noticed this when I was living in Germany – the zipper merge (all traffic uses both lanes prior to the merge point and lanes take turns merging) is smooth and seamless (ha ha) over there. It just works. In the US, you find two behaviours – either the drivers merge into one lane long before the merge point and drivers are incensed at those who use the free lane, or the drivers use both lanes, but do not take turns. Both behaviours are wrong and at best slow traffic, at worst lead to road rage and/or accidents.

However, I’m not in a hurry to blame America’s drivers for this one. Instead, I’m going to blame our traffic engineers. Let’s have a look at the typical road markings for merge lanes in both the EU and the US. Lane 1 is at the top, and the merging lane is at the bottom.

In the EU, well, Germany at least, the merging lane is full-width until the merge point, at which it very abruptly ends. The drivers are reminded to think about merging by a few arrows painted in the lane. The lane reduction zone is usually around 5m long, so not much time to think about it – you just take turns and move on with life. The dotted line between the merging lane and the through lane is usually about five to ten car-lengths long.

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In the US, the merge lane gradually narrows over (usually about) a quarter mile, gently nudging cars over. The dotted line often disappears when the merging lane is less than half of a normal lane width, further complicating the marking. This can create additional confusion about when particular vehicles should actually complete the merge.

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The difference between the two is that the EU markings clearly indicate that the lane is ending at a fixed point, while the US markings allow the lane to continue to exist for various lengths depending on vehicle width. This confuses the issue of when exactly to merge, because let’s face it, if you are smart, you don’t merge until you have to. The confusing lane markings mean SUVs have to merge before motorcycles do, and most drivers will posit that that is hardly fair! On the other hand, if you’re one of those early mergers, you don’t even realize that you could use the whole lane, because it disappears in such a tricky manner and you want to avoid that ambiguity at all costs. Which you do by merging early and blocking up traffic for everyone. The worst cases are those drivers who are sadly so confused that they opt to drive in both lanes (halfsies!) and block both of them to forward progress.

Although I’ve drawn the roads as entrance ramps, this exact setup works (in both cases) the same for regular lane reductions due to construction, road use, etc.

The Federal DOT could do us all a favor and modify their guidelines for merge lane markings. The clearer EU setup not only promotes the zipper merge through logical markings, but also subtly discourages lane straddling.  Coupled with a bit of driver education, this change could zip up one of the most annoying road issues we have to face today.

 

The bike runs now. Actually, it ran last week. The magic ingredient? The fuel tank.

I tested out my newly refreshed CDI box on a second bike, and it ran fine. The CDI refresh was done by Carmo in the Netherlands, seemingly the only place in the world doing this work. Came home and no luck. So… What was different? The only difference between the two bikes was that the other one had the tank mounted and hooked up. Something so simple……

This is important because attached to the fuel tank is a vacuum petcock, and the hoses that operate it.

While I’d been careful to close off the vacuum port on the side of the intake that opens the petcock, I hadn’t closed off the fuel feed line to the carb. So I was either running out of vacuum, or running out of vacuum. The Mikuni carb is a constant-vacuum type and requires militant fastidiousness when it comes to policing the vacuum lines. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this. Even my poor old Passat will fire and run with some vac lines open, being a modern Bosch innovation. My Rabbit would run with most of the intake missing, and it was merely K-Jet. Perfection, I tell you!

Since getting it running, I’ve also rejetted the carb, going up one size each on the main and pilot jets to #130 and #20 from #127.5 and #19. I’ve found references to this pair, and also to simply moving the pilot jet up to a #30 while keeping the stock #127.5 for the main. I expect my summer to involve a fair amount of carb tuning and experimentation – which will be great because it will put me in a much better position to handle little Japanese bikes in the future, and hopefully prepare me for a future life of Bing.

Yeah. I’m going there. Two Bings, to be exact.

I find a lot of people who don’t like guacamole, but then eat gobs of the guac I make. So, here is my dirty, secret recipe.

2-3 mostly ripe avacados
2T dehydrated chopped onions (I prefer the McCormick ones)
1.5oz lemon juice
salt to taste, ~1/2tsp

Halve and scrape out the avacados, them mash them up. Mostly ripe is key – better not quite ripe than overly ripe.

Put the dehydrated chopped onions and lemon juice in a microwave-proof cup and microwave them for about 20 seconds, twice. This will reconstitute them – puff them back up. They need to be fully puffed, so hit them again if necessary.

Mix reconstituted onion flakes into mashed avacados and mix well.

Add salt to taste.

There you go. Basic, Mexican guacamole. No fancy flavors, no tomatoes (yikes, tomatoes always turn me off), nothing. The big secret is using the lemon juice to reconstitute the onions. I don’t even remember when I first started making it this way, but it works.

I guarantee you will like it. Add whatever you want, if you are one of those TexMex types. We Mexico-Mexican types will enjoy it plain, thank you.

The trend to moving content away from text and toward video is exploding, and it’s been driving me crazy for a while. Last night, I finally realized why.

I am a reader, but that isn’t it.

I’m not a watcher, but that isn’t it.

What it is a control thing. When I read a report or news story, I control how I internalize the content. I control the rate, the flow, and many other factors. I can gloss over parts that I deem unimportant or fluffy and reread the parts I want to dive into. I can process the prose and get it. I can jump ahead when I want to and pick out the bits that really make the piece work and enjoy them. It’s fun and involving to read a story. Time flies.

With video, I have to wait. First, the splash screen. Then the intro. Then the obligatory introduction of the host. Then who knows what else. And the story? Well, good luck with that. The presenter has control, and I don’t have the chance to internalize it, just to watch it and hope I can get what I need from it. I figure that out of every two-minute news clip on (news site of your choice), less than half of the time is actual reporting. The credits are always at the end, too. I like the credits and they are important to me.

But more important to me is my time. And I’m wasting it when I try to watch video news.

That’s it. Just a random musing about how I process content. I guess it’s also why I have trouble with internet news lately. Everything is a link to time-wasting video.

I had a nose job.

Not the outside kind, mind you. The inside kind. The kind where they bomb the insides and try to set them straight, so air can actually flow into and out of your sinuses and nasal passages. I wanted the outside kind to go with, though the recovery would have involved not wearing my glasses for two weeks and an extra $6K. That’s track bike kind of money. So no.

The actual surgery is quite straightforward. The ENT surgeon sticks a tool that looks like a snubbed needlenose pliers up your nose and breaks and resets your septum. Then, the surrounding membranes are repaired and moved into position. Finally, a packing is inserted to hold it all in place for long enough to get healing started.

Overall, the recovery started off relatively pain-free and stayed that way. I was rather concerned about taking the Norco that was prescribed – I’ve never taken anything like it and didn’t want to get sick or otherwise stress my throat any more. The intubation was enough to recover from. Fortunately, an Advil every three hours was plenty to keep the pain at bay. I could feel it creeping in by hour 2.5, but overall it was completely manageable. This is a good thing. I took it to mean that things were healing well and the there was not too much damage done in the process of the surgery.

By far the worst aspect of the recovery was the 24 hours of mouth breathing due to the packing stuck up my nostrils. Sleep was challenging – about an hour at a time was all I could manage before I needed water.

The packing used on (in?) my nose was interesting to me – two fingers cut from what looked like an extra large nitrile glove, packed with gauze to hold shape. I’ve linked the pic, it’s gross. It appears that it is true – you really can stuff an entire finger up your nose. I expected about 2″ of finger, but no, it was all 4″ or so. Pulling it out the morning after the surgery nearly made me gag – the seal was sufficient to make swallowing challenging and nose breathing impossible.

I seem to have three stitches on the right side. The right side was the side that was closed off, that needed to most movement. These stitches are currently the bane of my existence – they are stiff and too short to be stuck down with petroleum jelly. Therefore, they tickle me. This is rather annoying because I can’t take them out or really rub my nose. It still hurts too much to displace the cartilage that way. So I settle for poking at them and sneezing. I have to deal with them until day 8, when I have my follow-up visit with the surgeon. Five days to go!

This morning, I felt a new sinus for the first time. The sinus in my right forehead must have been quite blocked before, because I think it had never felt airflow. The soreness was quite profound prior to a nice, hot, steamy shower. I’m thinking I’ll need a few Tylenol over the next couple of days to contend with that.

In about ten more days, things will have finished healing and the swelling will be down. Then I’ll know the full impact of the surgery, one which I probably should have had done years ago.