Drifter wrote:
m II wrote:
Drifter wrote:

Cool Mike, you ride?
just trying to lighten things up around here.

BTW, my group is heading up the national middle-aged
Harley guys this weekend. about 15 miles from where i live,
at the county fair grounds. good time. mostly middle-aged
professionals. but, they ride hogs, so that makes them brothers.
we got maybe 25K bikes + up there.

I have a 1976 BMW twin. Peter Maus rides too.

There's project Sportster waiting for parts. I will be converting an
883 into a 1200 sometime this fall. I'm hoping for a bit over 80 HP
after pipes, cams and all the misc. stuff that goes into backyard hot
rodding. I sold the Triumph 1200 Daytona a few years ago. At 560 lbs,
that thing was getting to be too much of a handful in the parking lot.




mike

Hi Mike. 560 is not that bad. my first bike was a 47 tank-shifter
ex-cop bike. i had to move the throttle to the right. you may be
too young to remember. clutch on your left foot, shifter on the
left side of the tank. 3 forward, one reverse, means it could take
a sidecar for city use. i bought it from the local legion of
Pittsburgh, guy called Handlebar Hank. hell, i was 16, he looked
old back then, and he just died a few years ago. anyhow, we trucked
it home, and i got the plates and a legal title. it had that god-awful
wooden seat and a hard tail. it was my first bike, not the first one
i ever rode. i was 16, about 6 foot, and maybe 100 lbs. the bike weight
in over 1400 lbs. i did good on the local back roads, mostly dirt. but,
my first time on a main road, waiting for a red-light to change, my
left leg relaxed, and the clutch jumped, and the bike fell on my right
leg. took 2 friends to get it off me. hurt like hell. 2 weeks later,
i traded in on a 57 Glide/ bagger. only weighted a hair under 900.
right now i got a 04 fat-boy for local and an 07 road-king bagger for the
open road. both are under 700lbs. and, i still got the burn/ scars from
way back then. i had a few triumphs, and a norton, but never a bmw.
gotta be a hog.

I know those clutches. The friction plates on the foot pedal have to be
snug or it self engages. They should stay wherever you last left them. I
got sick of it, so I found a mousetrap mechanism and shorter lever for
the top of the tranny.

The weight of the Triumph was no concern at all when rolling, but with
cafe style clip on bars it got to be a handful in parking lots. it had a
relatively high seating position too. In town, my thumbs would fall
asleep after half an hour, because of my weight on them. After 70 MPH on
the highway things all made sense. No weight on the wrists.

My first big bike was a 1968 Norton. The later Commandos were far better
(excepting the '72). My favourite bike ever was the 1978 Ducati Super
Sport 900. Parts were very hard to get though and you couldn't drink
beer when setting the Desmo valve train.


mike



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