To the show and of course swapmeet. Check out this sweet huge FLH model NIB. It would suck to buy because you would kill the value if you actually built it. Asking $125 and I know it sold before the weekend was over.
Very cool, but $25 is too rich for me on that one.
Jeff Williams Motorcycle Show and Cattlemen's for breakfast; two Oklahoma City institutions.L to R: Shemp(Scott), Texas Mark, Cobra(Paul), and Shovel4Life(Jason).
KS_1977 shovel(Trent) rolled in late.
I meant to get an instragam worthy picture of the steak and eggs, but I was too hungry and forgot. Here's what Jason's looked like about half way through.
I'm pretty sure this was Jason's Valentine's gift for Paul. Quite Bromanitical.
I prefer to wear a full face helmet(always) and earplugs(whenever highways are involved). If you are interested in either of those, then you should get to reading this post now. I always carry two sets of corded earplugs, because I can even lose corded sets on a roadtrip. I prefer Howard Leight FUS30-HP Corded. Those are a good price point for a good set of corded and mostly reusable/cleanable plugs with a case.
So I happened to be shopping at Mil-Spec Monkey, when I saw their take on corded earplugs; MSM Retracto-Plugs. Here's the video. I decided it was worth the $10 gamble to see if I could use them in a motorcycle helmet.
I was just a bit disappointed that the hook part of the hook-and-loop stick-on dots wouldn't grab the liner of my Arai helmet. So we had to use the sew eyes.
I pulled the cheek pads out of my helmet and found the deepest part of the ear relief to put it in. (If I had a do over I would point the string straight down instead of forward.)
I actually can pull the cloth off the foam to make sewing easier. My wife helped me out on this, but was a pretty simple affair. (Search youtube for sewing on a button.)
Here's what I got. The case doesn't hit my ears at all and I ride comfortably wearing or not wearing the earplugs. Of course, the plugs need to be fully out and installed in my ears before I put on the helmet. Also, I need to be careful to remove the plugs after I take my helmet off and getting the helmet too far from my head. The plugs retract and store nicely as advertised.
The extra bonus is the way the plugs attach to the cable via a threaded fitting. I can swap out the green ones../
It became pretty obvious that my 1500 Vulcan Classic had an intake leak. So I bought two new intake o-rings and got to work. I figured I would look at the rubber intake manifold for cracks. I found something alright. Do you see the tab on the bottom of the intake manifold.
Well, it actually looked like this when I pulled everything apart. I totally blame the last mechanic that pulled that carburetor off. That guys screws up so much of my stuff. I guess I need to be more careful next time.
Luckily Nate "Okie Smoke" had a spare intake manifold in his stash. It only took two trips to his storage unit, a bunch of digging, and most of a Sunday afternoon to find it. I also got set of stock shocks for my 1500 from him, too.
So I misspoke about the smaller engine sprocket helping to lower my highway rpm's. The smaller motor sprocket would help me get off the line, but raise my highway rpms.
So let's start back again with the long story of my gear ratios. (I'm using calculations and images from Bakers RPM Calculator.) This was my first build set-up. It worked fine, but I wanted to drop my 70 mph rpm just a bit.
I'm running a light rigid bike with 93 inch motor with T&O torque monster wheels. Even with a high ratio FX first gear, I think I have plenty of torque to get going off the line with higher gearing overall.
This was my first plan. Drop the rear sprocket to 46 teeth and the rpm drops about 120.
But then when I was doing the swap over, Ed didn't like the condition of
the 24 tooth sprocket I was running. The only sprocket available
in town on Monday was a 23 tooth. So we did that and I was exactly where I started.
So now where am I going to be with a 39 out front? Way up to 2945 rpm. That's 80 higher than I was when I wanted to go down.
So let's look at a 24 or 25 on the transmission. I'm thinking the 25 is what I need. Usually, a sprocket that big could be a clearance issue but with the open belt set-up I'm running it should be fine.
