Test ride after Clutch Bleed

I left the house shortly after 1230, the sun had come out in force as usual after a snow storm and had melted off almost all the snow from the roads and grassy areas. Temps were in the high 30s to low 40s and felt almost balmy.

I took Maria out for a ride to make sure her clutch worked just fine after yesterday's bleeding of the clutch circuit. I am happy to report no issues, she shifted just fine or rather, the same as before the maintenance.

Since I was just wandering around, I headed over to Quincy Road the the Plains Conservation Center located there at the intersection with Picadilly Rd. I'd see the old pioneer houses and such from afar on my daily commutes and this time I actually went into the center to get a closer look.



Although you see some remaining snow in the picture, the roads were bone dry by 1330 hrs or so. I did some errands, bought some miscellaneous stuff, and headed home where I finally got around to rigging an overhead light for times when I am working on Maria with the garage door closed due to weather. Much better now.

Bleeding the Hydraulic Clutch Circuit on Maria

The speedbleeder for my R1150RT's Clutch Circuit arrived last week and I finally had some time today to go put it in and bleed the clutch circuit on Maria.

I was following the great instructions/guide put out by Jamie of BMWSportTouring.com. LINK

The procedure is pretty straightforward actually. I only ran into one issue that had me puzzled and frustrated for a bit. The speedbleeder apparently is a little bit too long and the pointy end trying to push back the check valve ball on the motorcycle's clutch filler adapter is difficult if not impossible to do without damaging something!

I had been referencing the printout I had made of Jamies' article and had not printed out the commentary that usually follows his work. I went back online and re-read the whole thing and found that others had not only run into the same issue with the speedbleeder valve but there were two options to get around this. I had also emailed Jamie and he'd actually responded at same time I was discovering these solutions proposing same thing! Wow, now there's a guy who stands by his postings! Thanks Jamie!

So there two options are:

A. File down the pointy end of the speedbleeder so that the threads get a chance to "bite" into the filler adapter's threads. Tried it, did not work, risked stripping things, so I did B.

B. Remove the filler adapter, which is apparently there to make it easy at the BMW factory to put fluid into the clutch circuit! Put the speedbleeder in its place, which goes in nicely and voila, the sucker is in place and you're ready to bleed the circuit easy as you please! Speedbleeders, as I've written before, are the bomb! : )

I looked at the stuff that came out as I started bleeding the circuit and it looked same color as the new fluid so I only ran half a bottle of fluid into the system. I only had one bottle of brake fluid you see, and did not want to risk running out. I also wanted to have some "reserve" just in case even though the fluid starts absorbing oxygen at this point and can't be kept for long.

The rest of the process was easy, got everything filled up, tightened back down and cleaned up with no issues. Can't do a test ride today though, there's snow falling outside and the roads look icy. I'll wait till tomorrow when the sun hopefully burns the snow/ice that's falling today off.

Review: Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

On the longer rides, I sometimes would wear some wired sound-isolating earbuds with speakers built-in for music or ebooks from my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet which has an MP3 player.

The sound isolation kept the wind/engine noise down to an acceptable and safe for my hearing level and I did not have to turn up the volume on the music too loud to be able to hear it and still be able to hear things around me as I rode.

However, it was a wired system and I had to rig a quick-disconnect or risk yanking the dang earbuds from my ears while I still had my helmet on while dismounting the motorcycle! Not good.

One day, I saw these on woot.com and for $20 it seemed like a good trial. You can apparently buy them from walmart, though not online, see link below pic.

Link

It's got a bluetooth transmitter box (tiny) which I hooked up to the output jack on my Amplirider Amp inside my BigMak tankbag. Both the transmitter and receiver use rechargeable batteries and I've gone over 8 hrs on one charge with no issues or fading of power.

The receiver earbuds work fine in city driving where the wind noise is not great. On highway speeds though, I found I had to crank the volume way up and probably contribute to hearing loss.

So I cut off the stock ends and spliced in my sound-isolating earbuds which I'd used before this bluetooth gadget came into my life. A couple of trial and error attempts later, since I suck at splicing apparently, I got it working reliably with the N800's MP3.

Wonderful sound quality when couple with sound-isolation earbuds. Not having to disconnect from the amp when dismounting is great stuff. I can even go about 20ft from the motorcycle, still be hearing music while taking pictures when stopped! : )

Highly recommended, if you're lucky you can get them for a reasonable price and they work well for me.

A short, cold ride on Thanksgiving Day

Temps the 18-24 degree range, sunny, not much wind. In other words, a perfect "rounder" kind of day to get in a short ride before sitting down to Thanksgiving Dinner with friends and giving thanks for the riches and blessings in our lives.

I left the house around 0830 and cruised southwards along the backroads to Parker. As I was heading West of Lincoln Avenue and perhaps heading south on Parker Road or CO83, it came to me I did not know what layed west if I stayed on Lincoln. So I kept heading west, over the I-25 Slab and the road became Highland Ranch Parkway! This is a road I'd been on before, but heading East from the foothills.

It was nice riding, very little traffic and the electric vest, ATV grip covers and heated grips were keeping me nice and warm on the motorcycle. The paved roads were bone dry and what remained of the little snow we had yesterday was mainly on the grass along the sides of the road and on the roofs of houses and buildings.

I spotted this church steeple from about a mile off and thought it'd make a good background scene for a picture of Maria on this ride. It's apparently going to be a religious high school, and you can see below it the Cherry Creek Community Church. The unusual cross built into the church's wall drew my eye.



I kept heading West on Highland Ranch Parkway till it dead-ended on US85 which I took North towards the E-470 slab. I got on the slab for a few minutes to get to the Wadsworth Blvd exit which lead me to my favority local twisty road: Deer Creek Canyon.

Here's some pictures of the rock formations I found interesting in the South Valley Park area which one rides by on the way to the twisty parts of Deer Creek Canyon.






After meandering through the South Valley Park area for the above pictures, I started back on Deer Creek Canyon Road to see how far I could get before ice would force me to turn back.

Turns out the road was pretty good and clear for a while but about two miles west of where Grizzly Road intersects with Deer Creek Canyon road the ice patches were more prevalent and the clear paths between them narrower and narrower so I stopped and turned around. No big surprise, the canyon walls here prevent much sun from hitting the road and melting off the snow/ice.

I made my way back to the dry portions of Deer Creek Canyon without incident. I turned South on CO121 towards Waterton Canyon Road and from there to US85 again which I took South this time towards Sedalia and Castle Rock.

By this time, it was around 1100hrs and my toes were feeling a bit cold. I wiggled them vigorously and things were fine after that, just had to remember to keep wiggling the toes! The thought of electric socks came to mind but I don't know if I'll get some. If I could figure out a way to keep the toes out of the airstream, I think they'd be fine. Oh well.

I took CO85 South to Castlerock and from there took the Crowfoot Parkway back towards Parker. I was back home before noon after tanking up at the usual gas station.

I'd worn my summer gloves within the ATV grip covers and my hands never got cold, in fact I had to turn down the heated grips a few times as the palms of my hand got almost too hot! I think next cold ride, medium gloves since the outer portion of my summer gloves are vented and were letting the cold in just a tiny bit.

Not a single other motorcycle spotted during the entire ride, I guess everyone's getting ready for Thanksgiving Dinner.

So how's this for cold? I could, at times, see my own breath inside my own helmet while riding along. Couple of times I had to crack open the visor because my eyeglass lenses were fogging up! The Fogcity Fogshield on my visor did it's job nicely, it scratches easy, but it's nice to have on cold rides.

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers, I hope you have many things to be thankful for, I surely do.