It's just shocking

I beat this girl mercilessly. She's averaged more WFO throttle angle than most have. Well, hopefully anyway



I don't mean abuse, I mean whipped in the spirit that Mr. Buell intended with every stroke of his genius and every tap on his calculator. Well maintained and ridden hard will always be better than languishing in the dusty corner of a freezing garage, sucking 2 milliamps off a tender while the tires rot into the concrete.

I'm telling this story because it needs to be told. A warning to others that get their heart rate up by taking risks. It's hard to explain why my risks are OK and yours are not, in fact theres a whole psychiatry thing about that, but I digress.

Chuckwalla Raceway:

Very nice place, recently re-furbed and fast as Hell. See that wild 180+ curve in the upper right? Going clockwise thats turn 13 "The Bowl". 10/11/12 are all accelerating and the run to the super-speedway style heavily cambered sweeper #13 is downhill so you can see everything and smash the gas as far as you dare. The G force will compress your suspension to the max and the inevitable visions of shooting off the high side of that berm and not landing until you hit the Moon and bounce back to Earth are the only thing slowing you down.

Thats OK, been doing it for 2 days now. Faster and faster. It's late afternoon on the second day of daring yourself to just add another degree of twist to the grip, and this time it's all yours. That magical time where most are off track or going home early, no one around to distract or disturb the perfect line, just the wildly loud roar of the wind, that beautiful pop on an upshift, and setting up exactly where you want to be. Smooth, fast, hang on old guy, this ones gonna be great!

The flag stand waves the black flag and points. ****. I'm doing well over 110mph and no one else is near me. Quick check. ****. Boots are shiny with oil. Nightmare. Can't check up. Smooth is survival now, you're probably riding on an oily back tire. Still dragging your knee.

Leg out, hand up, whatever it takes to not get run over by the next racer. Theres only a few corners left to pit entry, so off the line and cruise. Dang thats a lot of smoke out the back.

This motorcycle. Number 24 of all ever built, has been nothing less than a stellar companion and willing partner for anything I could ask. From 10 hour days of touring and now a track bitch, she has been needy, but never demanding. Now I fear the worst.

Not catastrophic, she still runs well, but odd oddities and the rear shock is dripping with oil. Looks like it blew out a seal and dumped its oil on the rear header and tire. Thankful I know the OE shock is a decent piece and can be had for about $150. I'll be swinging for the next track day EZ PZ.

No. Now it's $550. Used? For OE? WTH? I know theres not a lot of these out there but... what happened?

Well, being a guy, I know I can literally justify any purchase, and soon I'm on the NCCR website writing the recipe for a bespoke Wilburs rear shock. Oh Hell yes I did! :angel:Knowing it would take some time for Zee Germans to send it to Sweden, where it's manipulated to spec, to be sent to the good ol' USA to be installed and tuned by a Redneck Hippie like me, I got one ordered quick.

That was 2 months ago and the next track day weekend is looming. On my birthday.

I can't possibly say enough good things about the folks at NCCR. A family business who have drank more of the Buell-aid than I ever could. Knowledgable and friendly, ready to do whatever it takes for their clients, not because of the paycheck, but because they care. Thats seriously rare these days.

So the shock gets to CA about 2 miles away from me and gets stalled out. UPS keeps moving the delivery date forward a day, everyday. After a week of this BS, i get an late Thursday email from UPS. "Your package is being held in a secure facility, pending instructions". Ok, WHAT instructions? I assume they can't find a street address but no answers come from the website, the FAQ's the Virtual useless BS. I won't bore the details... but 5 DAYS later I get to talk to a human. "It's missing its invoice for import".

I send NCCR a e-mail and my phone immediately rings. It's Pär. Taking care of **** ASAP. NCCR gets the invoice FROM UPS and sends back TO UPS, and now UPS says its on the way. Again.

One day, two days, on the third day I get another email from UPS. "Pay $101.31 via check or MO". Why you ask? I didn't know either. Shipping paid, Taxes paid, oh! Its "impound fee's" at $20/DAY because they couldn't find the invoice they had in their own system or see any of the THREE copies attached to the package.

Another 2 days of phone calls and I get the secretary of the guy that can remove the silly (and criminal) charges. I send the e-mail to him while on the phone and hang up. I immediately get the auto-reply "I'm out of the office for a week... blah blah" ****ing furious I blanket email every single UPS email address I can find and a day later get ONE reply "COD has been removed"

Great! Sigh. Except my UPS driver didn't get the note. His computer still says due. More phone calls. The lady on day 2 says "when he driver gets there, have him call me for a code". Which means sitting at home all day and then stopping him from doing his job to wait on hold for you like I did??
How about you GIVE ME "the code" to put on the door? "No sir, I can't do that" Like I'm going to perform a hostile UPS takeover with that valuable info. Sheesh.

Done. Finally get this jewelry for my girl.


2 bolts right? The ass is already strung from the rafters I can't WAIT to get it on and test/tune tomorrow!

Highs and lows. Dang I was so stoked to be able to replace the bad OE shock and get her together well in time to prep for the next track day.

But the universe shouted NO! I have the intake off to swap plugs and a misc check out and look.


closer


closer...


Why the Hell is there a piece of the inner clutch cover missing?!?

Well, I'll tell ya.

I am a lucky, lucky, lucky, SOB.

I need to see behind the clutch basket...
To get the clutch basket off, you need to take off the outer clutch cover, take out the clutch, get the inner clutch housing off, so you need to take the rear head pipe off, so you need to split the bike in half.
Granted, its not as bad as it sounds BUT, could also be easier, looking at YOU Erik:grumpy:
Spent 1/2 my Saturday in a damn sweaty shop.

Heres what happened:


One of the 3 bolts holding the cush springs to the clutch basket sheared off at redline in 4th gear and smashed a hole in the cover at 11 billionty mph. It did NOT touch the actual engine case, then dropped past all these literally 10,000rpm spinning gears,

to harmlessly land here,

and NOT jam the crank, locking the rear, and sending me high siding to the MOON.
It also broke the cover (happily), because if it didn't, theres no way I would have known until....:hororr:

So here it sits.




Just replace the bolt and buy a new cover right? Well, I have an old EBR clutch basket to steal the OE hardware from, the gaskets OK, so all I need is a $480+tax+shipping+3 weeks= rent/borrow/steal a bike for track day, from EBR (if they even have it). OR a ton of internetting provided the answer I wanted. The latest version (2010) of the 1125 had the same slipper clutch and oil cooled water pump seal so.... $99 incl ship on e-bay later and I should be in business by Friday!

Unless UPS loses it.

I am a lucky, lucky, lucky guy. (Pats golden horseshoe, facing East, rubbing Buddas belly, with a rabbit foot in my pocket, crossed fingers...)

Well, I took advantage of the unplanned downtime to do some maintenance items I was leaving for when it's too hot outside to haul my old ass around a race track in the desert. Seeing this stuff with a new perspective was embarrassing to say the least!

Cush drive was fine, front sprocket was toast (so was the rear), chain was fair, but I swapped for a new RK X-ring anyway. I wonder the thought process for someone like Erik that is hyper sensitive to every gram of rotating mass at the wheels but adds a 4 POUND bespoke front sprocket/cush drive assembly thing right to the engine output? Weird choice.
Of course my Motion-Pro chain riveter had seen better days and honestly it's the same off-shore junk that Amazon sells (but for 5X the price)... I have a good habit of grinding the rivets to remove chains bigger than 4 series but still, cheap mis aligned pin/anvil will smash and split the master link in a hurry
A bit of searching and I found an surprisingly hard to find answer. RK sells a chain breaker/riveter tool for about $70 that really really nice!

Even made a PERFECT 5.55mm squish!


It's not a tool you use a lot, but when you do, this is completely worth it. It's been a long time since I bought a tool I was happy with:angel:

I added 5hp to the engine with the powdercoat gun.

I guess that 5hp on each cylinder so 10 hp total!

The are so buried, no one will ever see them lol. but whatever, It was fun. Its a little hobby kit form Eastwood that works pretty well! Except. It was already late when I started and first I tried to PC a "Copper Penny" color and they turned black? Even boiled a little? Took an hour to figure that out. Then had to break out the sandblast cabinet to start over. that took another hour, and the blast cabinet leaks a little so thats a big clean-up job, so then I switched to red and the gun puked PC dust EVERYWHERE for some reason. Ugh. Cleaned that up for a half hour, which was a mistake, because I hit the trigger and it absolutely puked bright red all over again.... Hmmm.. a beer maybe? Yes, that sounds delicious.
A little Youtubing had me discover they "kinda-do-that" soI modded it with some siphony vortexy holes and it works better again, but now I have brought red pigment all over the shop. Not quite something you clean up with the air hose add an hour of cleaning and an hour for baking and they turned out sweet. Damn I'm tired.

Did the valve check, and swapped a shim that was within spec to make it the middle of within spec because I'm silly. I found the exhaust cams to be advanced 1*?? Weird? Is this normal? I wouldn't think so.. but I bought this new and have been the only one to work on it.

Got the 2010 Buell 1125R inner clutch cover delivered Friday afternoon and super excited to check it out! This is a 'new/other' removed from a new 1125 engine that was hot ran for testing then removed. The mysterious seller (from Wisconsin) knew a TON of detail about such an innocuous part and they were exactly right (as confirmed by EBR and NCCR). This is the same part, excepting the slightly different color and inside the casting it says "Buell" instead of "EBR". Sorry i was too excited to take pics, and frankly couldn't wait to get it on, so I could get the rear head pipe on, and at least get the 2 pieces of this precarious motorcycle to be ONE motorcycle again. Which I did. A few hours of a whole bunch of niggly little stuff and she super close.

I'll do my least favorite job of installing the airbox bits tomorrow. Too bad you need to remove that thing to do ANY service work to the bike.... I'm going to have bad dreams of TB hose clamps. There HAS to be a better way!

I'd love to do a shake down test ride tomorrow, but now I need to heli-coil the chain idler pulley bolt:mad-new: Glad I found out now instead of the middle of nowhere.

Parts!

Cooter said:

I'd love to do a shake down test ride tomorrow, but now I need to heli-coil the chain idler pulley bolt:mad-new: Glad I found out now instead of the middle of nowhere.

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Love the write up! Don’t forget Aagaard Moto Foundry! We sell NCCR stuff, and have a ton of EBR and Buell parts!

Thanks Chaz. You have my credit card info on file already, :angel:

That man, ^^^^^^, is the real deal. Super smart, honest, and passionate about our bikes. Five stars!

Oh boy, she's back together and my heart is pounding. Took me a couple miles to realize my replacement sprocket was the 44 tooth (not the OE 41 anymore). With a bike having the ludicrous torque this has mean I can't touch WFO until 4th gear! Amazon will have a pair of 42 tooth sprockets on my doorstep tomorrow, whew!

It hasn't even been that long and I don't really ride her on the street that often, but the mods I've done really personalize her to exactly what i want. Quickshift? check. Motion-Pro throttle? Check. Streetable? Hmmm, maybe? You better be in the right mood. Erik built a BEAST.
Pics coming, she's clean, maintained to the hilt, and prepped for Buttonwillow this weekend. It's my B-day weekend so I'm not packing everything in the El camino this time. Got a U-haul trailer on the back of the 4-Runner to pack extra party supplies in:cheerful:

Happy 51.

Old fart.

You'll probably spend it at the Elks Lodge.

Thank you my brother. Currently using my AARP invitation letter to light a Cohiba.

Cooter said:

Thank you my brother. Currently using my AARP invitation letter to light a Cohiba.

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Holy crap! "Mr. I think I know it all" had to look up what a Cohiba is.


Cohiba is a brand for two kinds of premium cigar, one produced in Cuba for Habanos S.A., the Cuban state-owned tobacco company, and the other produced in the Dominican Republic for US-based General Cigar Company. The name cohíba derives from the Taíno word for "tobacco".

This or this ????

Starbuck! The second one was better to look at And a rider:love_heart:


Fun Fact: I didn't know what Cohiba meant either. Pretty lame it just means tobacco Like driving down my coast road "Vista Del Mar". Well, of COURSE it is!

Maybe you and Ben Jones can do a collab like this?

Cohibas are great but you owe it to yourself to order some flying pigs from pappy van Winkle cigar company.

Now that I have a few miles on it, I have opinions. Surprised? LOL.

A quality rear shock is one of those... damn, thats expensive things If you want to ride fast confidently, get one. Period.

Rebound on the Wilburs is still simple and can almost be statically set for the minimum no-bouce at rest. I can reach it while riding:applause: but it's at the same place I set statically now. The height adjustment (that is now separate from pre-load) is awesome. It will affect the rake/trail, but I'm not Rossi enough to notice, so I use it for comfort and peg clearance. It's near there minimum height now. Pre-load/sag is a set it and forget it thing for me. Hopefully my weight doesn't increase too much!
It takes quite a bit more tuning to figure out the high-speed/low-speed compression damping. I had a hard time visualizing the speed where the valving switches over so I just over adjusted one and under adjusted the other, then swapped the settings to get a feel for where it was. Still playing with it to get it to settle at speed but not knock me around on the nations ****tyest interstate road surfaces*. After getting it close at Buttonwillow, I did a few runs up Angeles Crest highway and once again moved the screws. Still playing with them, but overall VERY happy with the quality and amazing looks of the Wilburs!



*51.1¢ PER GALLON in State taxes means an expected 7.1 Billion per year in revenue to fix them, and that doesn't even include the 18.3¢ per gallon in federal taxes. Yet, I never see anyone fixing them, hmmm.:mad-new:

I really enjoy reading your events !!!! Happy belated ! Coot.