Engine Guards for Brigitta

I had signed up for the Airhead Beemers mailing list shortly after acquiring Brigitta as part of my efforts to learn as much as I could about my new to me airhead. Part of the offerings of the list is listings of stuff for sale or wanted that is sent to all subscribers.

Well, on Friday I spotted this ad from Patrick of Aspen, CO offering up free to a good home several items he did not have a use for that he'd gotten for his own airhead. He's moving and instead of just chucking the parts, he offered them up to the airhead community. One of the items was a set of engine guards/crash guards! The price was right, free! All I had to do was go to Aspen to pick them up as he did not want to hassle with boxing things up and shipping them.

I called Patrick up and he said he'd be back from the Paonia Beemer Rally by 1300 on Sunday and so we made plans to meet.

I left the house around 0915 and arrived at Patrick's place in Aspen, CO by 1250 or so. I took the I-70 super slab out of Denver, then CO 91 down to Leadville and south of there went on CO82 towards Twin Lakes and Independence pass. LINK to last years ride through Independence Pass: LINK

Aspen is not a nice town in terms of traffic control it seems, obeying stop signs is apparently optional and the pedestrians dart out in front on you at will. Oh, and gas prices, holy cow....I paid $5.34/gallon for the premium stuff on the way back, I had tanked up in Centennial for $4.19/gallon at the start of the trip! Wow.

So my GPS got me to Patrick's apartment complex with minor issues. He gave the the engine guards right away and then we whiled away about two hours chatting about his R100 motorcycle, the rally, my Maria which I'd ridden to Aspen, his plans for the future in Trinidad, CO and he imparted some mechanical tips to me. For all this I was very grateful, thanks again Patrick!

Patrick and his R100

Patrick's cool vintage Jeep

The top end of a R100/7, without the tank.

ATE Brakes, less effective than later Brembo's

It was a long ride back to my house so I had to leave what had been a rather enjoyable conversation with Patrick. I headed out of Aspen, and saw this on the way back up to Independence Pass which I had traversed earlier in the day on the way to Aspen:

Looking back towards Aspen

Oh yeah, that's rain

I put on my rain jacket but elected to forego the pants, I should have put them on as the rest of the trip I got to enjoy the feel of wet underwear. My cycleport jacket and pants are very well vented and of course that means water comes through just fine. Oh well.

It rained on me and a whole bunch of cagers as we slowly snaked our way to and through Independence Pass. The lightning bolts I saw lit up the mountainsides and the ensuing thunder echoed impressively amongst the mountain peaks. The rain was not too bad, and road conditions were fine though I did keep a close eye on the thermometer! The coldest it got was at the top of the pass, 48 degrees farenheit. It would slowly increase as I neared the front range to 88 degrees. Quite a temperature differential eh? Never did get the shivers but I will admit to turning on the heated grips on Maria on the "low" setting.

I elected to forego the I-70 super slab on the way back and instead went by way of Buena Vista on US24 and from there caught the US285 highway back towards Denver. Traffic was heavy and passing cars did not really help much as there was always yet another slow moving clump a mile down the road. I got home shortly after 1900 hrs an I was tired!

Here's the object of todays' almost 400 miles of riding:


I am going to have to clean them up and get them repainted again but hey, the price was right. Got a long ride in on Maria, engine guards for Brigitta and crossed the continental divide three times today, not too bad of a riding day.

Brigitta's 65K Minor Service - 1K early

I decided to not wait till the 65k Mile mark on Brigitta's odometer before doing the scheduled 5000 mile minor service since I'd just gotten her recently and wanted to have good baselines as I work my way through the sputtering issue during hot weather riding.

So, since she's due for an oil change tomorrow, why not also do the major portions of a minor service as well? Today after work I removed the valve covers and checked and adjusted the valve lash clearances. All of them were pretty tight! So I adjusted them until I just felt a minor "drag" or stiction" with the appropriate feeler gauge. (.20mm for exhaust valve, .10mm for intake valve).

The above went fine though I did have to enlist my loving wife's help to find Top Dead Center or TDC as it's a bit more difficult on an airhead than on my oilhead Maria. I can't use the screwdriver in the sparkplug hole trick with the airhead. After some trial/error, I believe got it to TDC on each side for adjustments.

I tore both gaskets when I removed the valve covers so I scraped off the remainder from the mating surfaces and headed to the beemer dealer for replacements. $5.90 each it turns out, I also replaced the spark plugs as well not only to have good baseline but also because the left side spark plug was fouled. I'll keep the old as emergency spares.

Once back home, I put on the gaskets and the valve covers, carefully torquing the center nut to 25nm and just snugging the two 10mm nuts on the sides. I fired up the engine for a bit to check for leaks and there were none. Good stuff.

I put all the tools aside and geared up, going for a 12 mile warm up ride for the carburetor sync operation that was to follow.

The yellow ruler is my manometer

Showing how the manometer tube ends fit onto the carburetors

The carb sync operation went fine, used the manometer again and found the level unsurprisingly far apart. I got them to almost be level with each other with some adjustment of the idle stop screw, and the left side cable end as well. Now they're close to level at idle and pull even vacuum under load. Just the way you want them to be.

Tomorrow, my first oil change on a airhead.

Brigitta does not like hot days

So this week we had some days where I was riding home on Brigitta and the temps were in the low to mid 90s, pretty hot.

Near the end of the ride, she'd sputter like she was not getting fuel when at low revs on the engine and now she consistently dies at idle while at a stoplight or while slowing down to a stop at least once a ride. Rather annoying even though she starts right back up. Another annoying symptom is that she will not hold idle after riding in a moderate rain, have to keep the throttle twisted a bit when stopped at lights. I am sure these are all clues, just don't know enough to figure it out yet, but I will.

I'd checked for kinked throttle cables, nope. Took the tank off a couple of times to ensure all electrical connections and ground wires are nice and tight. I even loosened the gas cap when the symptoms appeared today to eliminate vacuum building up in the tank due to heat, nope.

Clem, the vintage BMW mechanic at BMW of Denver also advised me today that I was missing a rubber gasket on my gas cap so he did not believe it was a vacuum buildup issue in the tank.

Today when I got home I learned how to and took off the bowls from each carburetor. I checked that there was good fuel flow from each gas line. I confirmed that the floats from the right side carburetor floated on gasoline with about 1/3 of them out of the gasoline. When I went to do the same check on the left side carburetor floats, I found a problem.

Mind you, its not probably THE cause of the sputters of late, but still, a problem. The outboard metal post where the mounting rod that holds the floats' tab was broken off! Yep, nothing really holding that end of the rod except the other end of the rod in the inboard post. Still, it seems to function fine.

You can clearly see the end of the float mounting pin appearing to be handing in thin air.

Here, you can it's actually the metal tab of the floats that helps hold up the pin.

06AUG08: Note, the hole you see above where the pin is, is not the stock hole, I'd drilled it there while trying to implement multiple fixes, all of which failed and caused overflow of the carburetor.

I plan to take Brigitta to Pete Homan next week, he's at the Paonia Beemer Rally this weekend, and show him the damaged post to see if he offers to fix it since I bought the motorcycle in that condition from him. We'll see what he says. Update: 06AUG08: Never did ask Pete about this.

IN the meantime, I am penciled in for 23SEP to drop off Brigitta at the BMW of Denver dealer. I hope to be able to figure out what's really causing the hot engine sputtering at low revs before then.

Brigitta is still rideable for short rides like my commutes and as long as I don't lug the engine when its hot outside, she behaves quite well. Still, the wannabe wrencher in me wonders, what's causing this?

Film Review: Twice Upon a Caravan

Today I received from the Denver Library system a DVD containing the film created by Robert E. Fulton Jr when he rode around the world during 1932-33 by himself on a six horsepower motorcycle.

LINK to where I got these images and where you can buy the film if you wish: LINK

Mr Fulton on his trusty steed

It's 53 minutes of black/white movies that were a great complement to my recent reading of the book by Fulton: A One Man Caravan.

While the book did an excellent job of describing the many varied views and people that Fulton saw as he rode; the film films in some of the blanks for the viewer. The book remains a must-read before the film, then let the film finish the job of bringing you along this man's great adventure at the tender age of 22. Wow.

The film starts with Robert Fulton, now 92, sitting on his trusty motorcycle which he still has in his possession, it's his voice that narrates throughout the film and he mentions portions of the book as examples. Having recently read the book, I found the repetition of these book portions to be great aids to the film and to my enjoyment of the films.

Watching the film, you'll get a small idea of what kind of rough terrain he had to negotiate during the early thirties and you'll wonder how he ever managed at times. After all, it's not like he had a support crew and chase vehicles, a mate to ride alongside him, powerful BMW dual-sport motorcycles etc. The man did it on his own and not a single whine did I detect.

A scene caused some wishful thinking on my part. Fulton shoots some footage of himself and his motorcycle, they're next to a stone marker marking the Equator in Sumatra. He eats a sandwich, while straddling the Equator....that's cool! Maybe someday I'll do the same.

One commentary I found noteworthy, which highlighted the changing times that were the 30s; he was the 100th person to make an international long distance call from Bangkok to NY on their recently installed phone cable!

Some of his film was destroyed by heat and humidity during his travels he mentions, but he made it a point to mention he'd lent the US Army his footage of roads in Siam and Indochina during WWII. The army apparently lost it all and he's never been able to recover it. That's a darn shame.

So, check your local library system and get this DVD sent to you for viewing! Specially if you've read the book by Fulton but even if you have not. Its title is in the subject line, the author is Robert E. Fulton Jr, made by Searchlight Films of Bernardston, MA. Now this is a visual record of a world-class motorcycle rider!