Colorado's governor has issued, as many other states have, "shelter in place" orders but it hasn't really impacted one's movement much. I wonder if more draconian measures are in the offing.
In the meantime though, I've several items to get done/fixed.
Task 1: (completed)
My failed attempt to stretch the tongue of the Aluma 638 trailer, caused stresses for which I continue to pay for. You might recall, I'd had it lengthened by two feet to give some turn clearance when I had Yagi, my 2006 Yamaha TW200, mounted on a rack at the front of the trailer's cargo area.
So, the extension was taken off the tongue and its back to original length. This was last year. After coming back from camping this year, I found the bed had cracked where stresses of loading the Ural sidecar rig showed up. Not to mention, I somehow managed to lose the aluminum inner cover of the right side wheel well somewhere between home and my last camping spot in New Mexico!
I took the trailer to CMW Welding and they welded up the crack as shown below, did some repair on spot welds on a rib spanning the width of the trailer where they'd separated; and now there's no more unsettling cracking noise and dips when loading the rig!
Quite a big crack of the bed and side rail eh?
Damaged section now welded up as shown above, on both sides.
And no, I've no idea what happened to the metal panel which would
be normally hiding the inside view of the tire.
As long as he was welding, I had him also reinforce the left side
That's what the missing panel on the right looks like....sigh
Task 2: (Completed Apr 22)The BMW R80 engine used by Fiona, my '99 Ural Patrol has been seeping oil from the pushrod tube seals for a while now. I'd managed to "press in" the seals as a temporary fix but that's no longer doing the trick. This makes for a messy engine as dust/dirt gets on the leaking engine oil and accumulates rapidly into an unsightly mess.
I'll be ordering the parts soon to replace the gaskets, o-rings and of course the rubber seals involved this coming week. I'm debating, since I have to pull the heads, whether to also replace the piston rings or just the seals as Fiona seems to be running fine otherwise. I'll be ordering parts 4,5 and 6 from below fiche drawing.
In preparation, I also cleaned up the outside of the carburetors, removed the second spring I'd attached on the left hand carburetor's throttle plate lever now that I've figured out its an issue at the throttle grip side of things. Should make it less of an effort to hold throttle while riding.
I borrowed a neighbor's motorcycle lift and did a test lift of Brigitta as I didn't want to separate Fiona from her sidecar just to test out the lift. Took some trial and error but managed to not drop the motorcycle while learning to use the lift. I'll be disconnecting Fiona from the sidecar to allow easy access to both sides of the engine.
The above pic shows the bike 12" or almost 30.5 cm, I could raise it 4 more inches to the max height of 16" or 40.6 cm but as you can see, it's high enough for a comfortable working position on the engine's cylinders or "jugs". And to think, I'd been looking at a lift that would life the motorcycle to 30"! I was nervous just going up 12"!
Straps and jack stands would be of course involved in actual repair work to ensure the motorcycle doesn't go anywhere while off the ground.
Yagi, my 2006 Yamaha TW200, has been lightly seeping oil from the front valve cover. I've seals ordered and hopefully arriving soon to remedy this. Nothing major, just annoying. Oh and I need to replace the fork seal covers. The motorcycle lift will make this an easier task.
Task 4:
I've got to decided whether to replace the awning cover for the URRV's slideout or just make do without it. There's something wrong with it causing it to fight the slideout being pushed out, like it's hanging up. Since I removed the awning while boondocking at the Hot Well Dunes Rec Area, the slideout has operated smoothly.
Task 5: (completed on Predator Generator, not needed yet on Onan Generator)
I have to check hours but probably time to swap out the oil on both the HF Predator generator and the Onan 4KW onboard generator in the URRV. Will also verify that it's not been 3000 miles since the last oil change on the URRV itself.
Task 6: Completed May 22
All five shock absorbers on Fiona are leaking fluid and so the seals have to be replaced. I've got one set of seals, awaiting four more from Russia and then it'll be time to do this task. These are the "rebuildable" shocks from Russia, not the new style Sachs shocks from Germany which are apparently not rebuildable.
12 comments:
This is solely a motorcycle related task-list, Dom. Where is the honey-do list, now that you are requested to stay put? I am sure that Martha has something to do for you to keep you busy ;-)
So far SonjaM, no tasks have appeared in the honey-do list. Patrick, my #1 son, took care of the one thing that popped up, a burned out lightbulb in the closet. There might be some snow shovel work here soon though.
SonjaM, as to staying put, there might be some “nearby” BLM and USFS camping in near future....with restrictions regarding facilities that I. Don’t need, areas remain open to camping via URRV. Weather more a factor than Covid19.
I see none of my usual tasks on your list: clean basement, clean bathroom, rakes leaves out of flowerbeds, clean out garage, Stuff like that.
How do you manage to only have fun things on your task list? Not even a single wash dishes or clean out the refrigerator??
Regardless, there should be plenty of time to get those things done. I have some work to do on the Vespa and K75 but it's farther down my list. Not seeing much change in our isolated, immune suppressed lives for a long time now. I hear talk of opening up the economy and country again but the details on how to accomplish that are pretty sketchy.
Other than that, everything is fine!
Steve, the tasks you list are just standard household chores covered already under normal SOPs. :)
My list is stuff that isolation has created time for working on, stuff that can get delayed by life but now is a way to pass the days as we wait and see re COVID 19.
Weather, as always, is more of a factor. That and my having lost all resistance to cold weather due to my time in warmer climes!
So staying in a heated garage turning wrenches is your version of "shelter-in-place", hmmm. I admire your choice of lifestyle.
The bike parts people are happy to get your orders. They need business to stay afloat. Am doing my best to keep them alive too.
So the Federal parks are closed but your State parks are open? Our Govn'r closed all state parks.
CCjon, all Colorado State Parks and Wildlife areas are covid19 closed. BLM and National Forests remain open for the most part but restricted in terms of facilities.
As far as task 2, you probably don’t need to bother replacing the rings if it isn’t burning oil. The plating on the cylinders pretty much minimize wear. I don’t remember what it is called but it is like chrome and similar to what is done in airplane engines. And, if you have the pistons at TDC before removing the cylinder, you can partially remove the cylinder until you can see the wrist pine. Then remove the circlip and remove the wrist pin. Then you can remove the cylinder while it still contains the piston. This avoids the task of compressing the piston rings to get them back into the cylinder.
Thanks for the tip re the wrist pin RichardM....I'd bought the clamp already but it'll be nice to not have to deal with the piston rings re-insertion if at all possible. Then again though, perhaps it'd be better to withdraw the piston from the cylinder (leaving it attached to the connecting rod), to avoid having to freeze the wrist pin in order to reinsert it later during assembly?
Once you remove the circlip, or internal snap ring, the wrist pin just slides right out. That’s why it needs the snap ring to keep it in place.
RichardM, just going by video by local airhead guru where he mentions having to freeze the wrist pin to make it easier to insert back into piston.
I have limited experience on 3 airheads all 1000cc.
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