Thursday, November 15, 2018

Uraling to Castlewood Canyon State Park

Fiona and I rode out past Parker and Franktown to the back entrance to Castlewood Canyon State Park.  I'd recently adjusted the butterfly plates on her carburetors and was testing out the new settings then required on the idle air mixture screws. 

Note:  Started the ride with the idle air mixture screws at 3/4 turns out from soft seat per the Clymer's manual for the carburetors on Fiona:  Bing 64/32/351 and 352.

Got to the back entrance to the state park, cruised down past the trailhead parking lots which were pretty much empty as it was the middle of the week.

Temperatures were in the mid to high 50s, the sun was out, it felt pretty warm; considering it had been in the high teens earlier in the week!

 Just in time for Thanksgiving, I ran across a rafter
of young turkeys feeding on the side of the road.

Rafter of Turkeys
(yes, that's what you call a gathering of Turkeys)

Soon enough, I got to the vicinity of the Castlewood Canyon Dam, or what remains of it after it collapsed and caused a flood in Denver back in August 3, 1933.  More info on the flood here:  LINK

 The remains of the dam

On can walk partway onto the top of the dam

Retracing my route back towards Franktown, I stopped Fiona to get this wintry scene:



Looks icy doesn't it, however it was quite good traction as it was a dirt road to start with and it seems some gravel had been spread on top of it as well.

Took the long way home by way of Elizabeth and Kiowa, much more enjoyable than driving north on Parker Road through the traffic mess that is the town of Parker.

Note: the air mixture screws setting, once Fiona was warmed up, led to idle RPMs of between 840-900.  Not bad, I turned out the screws 1/8 of a turn more, total of 7/8 of a turn from soft seat on the way home.

Now she idles at 960-1020 RPMs, and I like it better.  She's a bit smoother at idle as well.  All in all, a good test ride.

7 comments:

RichardM said...

Adjusted the butterfly throttle plates so they seat better in the carburetor bore? Were they removed at the last rebuild or just not seating very well? Nice wintery scene. We now have more snow than you. Maybe a foot or so...

redlegsrides said...

There was too much light coming through at bottom where the holes are to induce vortices when at idle or startup apparently. The idea was to reduce it. All I did was loosen the two screws holding the plate and shifted it to better seat in bore.

RichardM said...

Did you re-stake the screws so they wouldn't come loose?

redlegsrides said...

They weren’t staked, used blue loctite

SonjaM said...

So, it wasn't the chicken that crossed the road... it was the turkey. Yet the question remains: why?

redlegsrides said...

SonjaM, technically the turkey didn't cross the road, he doublebacked when he saw no one else was following him..... :)

MotoVentures said...

Castlewood Canyon is always a fun place to hike. We were warned by rangers that rattlesnake activity has been increasing there, but in all the times we've gone, we've only ever seen one small bull snake. It's a great park to explore!