superhawk996

Speed dents, like on a golf ball, let them be.

I used a small pencil torch on a car decades ago, it did a pretty good job. Swirl the heat around the dent, carefully to not burn the paint, and it'll magically lift. I've read that using a can of compressed air held upside down so it sprays the super cold liquid, you can spray the center of the dent immediately after heating and it works even better.

Depends on the guard, I've never seen one. Anything in front of the radiator will restrict flow to some degree, but it might not actually matter if the restriction is minimal. If the guard is like hardware cloth I'd say it's no issue, if it's a fine mesh screen it might be a problem. The stator is always putting out max power and the regulator has to absorb & dissipate any extra power not being consumed by other stuff so adding electrical loads, like running the fan, takes that stress off the regulator. A bike's stator is very similar to the alternator on a car, but different. An alternator has spinning windings inside a stationary electromagnet and the regulator cranks the power to that magnet up/down to create more/less energy. The bike has stationary windings (the stator) and a permanent magnet spinning around the outside of the windings creating an uncontrollable amount of power. The regulator basically creates a controlled short circuit to bleed off extra power that's not being used by the bike. That extra power is turned into heat which is why the regulator gets hot and why Honda made them bigger & better in later bikes so they could dissipate that heat better and live longer.

The Bird's radiator is somewhat shielded and not all that open to the incoming air, and the out going behind the rad. seems fairly restricted too. It would be interesting to know how fast you have to go to keep it from coming on, if there is a magic speed. The fan on my Excursion kicks in at 85MPH on a hot day and that has nothing but a grill restricting incoming air. The fans on many of my vehicles kick in at high speeds, doesn't seem like they should be able to do more than what the natural air is doing, but they cycle which indicates that they are actually doing something. I only notice it with mechanical fans because they're loud, don't know if any of my electric fan cars kick in at high speed, but since the mechanical ones do I assume the electrics do too. It also happens with semi trucks and those radiators are very open to natural air flow. Most radiators are fairly restrictive to air flow. Even tho a fan can't move air at 80MPH, it's right against the radiator so it's able to create enough pressure/suction to force air through it. To make the radiator less restrictive it would have to be bigger to still have enough surface area to get rid of the heat as well as one with a tight core. I've known of some cases where someone "upgraded" from a 2 row to a 4 row radiator and started having overheating problems because the fan wasn't powerful enough to force enough air through it.

The Bird that Carlos now owns has a JetHot coated header in the pretty shiny color, looks kinda like aluminum. At idle the header tube temp dropped from 400ish to 300ish with an infrared thermometer, but colors effect the readings on those things so I'm not sure if that's an accurate number. And it's real purdy. I considered swapping it back to the stocker before delivering the bike, but brotherly love & all...in the Az hell heat every bit helps. 300* is still a lot of heat, but that was sitting still with no wind. With a little bit of air flow I expect the difference with the coating would be even higher. I didn't do a whole lot of slow traffic riding after the swap and didn't really take note of felt heat before/after, but later realized that I no longer felt a noticeable furnace blast coming off of it like I used to. Do not expect a drop in engine temp, that's almost entirely controlled by the thermostat/cooling system. You'll probably get less fan running since the header isn't cooking the radiator as much and you should have less felt heat coming up around the fairings. If you have a thermometer and can get a temp reading it would be interesting to see your numbers.

Almost positive. And a 3 barrel carb, the CVCC has a unique dual combustion chamber system. Two barrels feed the main combustion chambers like a normal system and a tiny one feeds the 'pre' combustion chamber where the spark plug is.

Modern stuff? In any vehicles? Or just old industrial type stuff like hit-miss motors?

The pressure doesn't matter, I gravity bleed 99% of the time. Angles of shit definitely matters. I'll park on ramps or blocks, or jack the vehicle as needed. The 'trick' to bleeding a master is to angle it so that the inlet port of the cylinder from the reservoir is a little higher than the outlet/pressure end, this lets bubbles in the cylinder rise into the reservoir. With a cage that sometimes means lifting the rear of the vehicle, on most bikes just turning the bars will angle the master. Angle also matters on calipers & clutch slaves. Most calipers & wheel cylinders are mounted so that the bleed nipple is at the top and nothing needs to be done, but if the vehicle is on an angle it might not be. Bike clutch slaves may require you to tilt the bike to get the nipple at the highest point. Whenever you're opening the system like to replace a hose or caliper, if you push the master piston in a bit it'll block the fluid in the reservoir so you won't have as much mess and won't have an air locked master. A zip tie or similar works great for front brakes/clutches. For the rear brake I just put something between the pedal and stopper if it has one, or wedge something wherever it'll work, or hang something from the pedal to keep it down. With cars I generally use a prybar or whatever between the front of the seat and pedal. The piston doesn't have to be moved much to block the inlet port, 1/8" or so should do it, but more is fine. If you put pressure on the piston be aware that when you first crack something open you'll get a little squirt. When doing just a fluid exchange all you have to do is open bleeders and let gravity move the fluid through, if you wanna speed it up you can pump the master. I've been solo bleeding for over 20 years with no 'special' stuff like pressure bleeders or check valves, it's easy once you understand the system and pay attention to the angles of stuff.

We had a '78 Civic that did mid 30's in mixed driving. On one trip to Vegas it did 42.5 including 2 days of street driving and a few long stretches at WOT. 4 speed manual and a 52HP 1.5L carbed with points. No electronic controls and possibly the last car to have a manual choke, and the only car that didn't need a cat to meet emissions specs.

Harleys are said to get really good MPG, your 35 seems like a low guess. I believe the number I've seen tossed around is 40+, some do 50+. Harley motors are slow revving low performance engines compared to a XX and that makes them more fuel efficient even tho they're in a less efficient vehicle. The power potential of a naturally aspirated engine will mess with potential MPG; cam specs, RPM, compression, bore/stroke ratio, ports & valves, rod/stroke ratio, displacement,.... The more power potential you add the more likely it'll be to get less MPG and have higher emissions. If you put the Fit or Harley engine into a XX the MPG would go up. If you put the XX motor into the Fit the MPG would likely plummet. The Harley motor might do ok in the Fit.

Just a guess, but I'll bet the Fit doesn't make 130hp/liter or do 0-60 in under 4 seconds.

Easy math, it costs you 1.5 pennies more per mile to use the 'better' gas.

If you're trying to bleed out air on the kickstand that'll be a problem since the bleeder will be at the low end of the slave cylinder--from memory of where the bleed nipple is located. I don't know what it is about clutches, but many have troubles bleeding them, and not just on bikes. The most troublesome on I recall was a forklift way back in my learning days. I've since had no problem on any vehicle despite 'everyone' saying that the only way is to back-bleed with a pump. The only thing I think I do that is different from other people is paying attention to angles and working with gravity. I'm also careful not to let the master go dry when opening shit downstream so the master doesn't have to be bled.

Possibly, tho I would think the same would happen when a tire is close enough to need no weights. I've had a few that needed none or just one weight. Have you ever noticed a new car with what looks like just the steel clip part of a weight and no weight? I was told they do that at the factory as a visual inspection thing to show that it was checked and didn't need a weight. Seems kinda silly, but I can't think of any other reason they'd do it.

As a tire wears there are slight changes that occur in the structure of the tire and that could change the balance. The tires can rotate on the wheel. I don't know if all tires do this, but I experienced it with one of my Mustangs. I did a lot of drag racing and that may have caused or accelerated the process. I was only checking the rears and only because I knew I was stressing them more than 'normal'. Uneven tread wear and tread damage will obviously do it. Hard off-roading causes tread damage, but I've seen street tires with chunked bits of tread, possibly from going over curbs or just hitting shit on the road. I had some shitty tires on my Explorer that would repeatedly go out of balance quickly, but they had obvious amounts of runout.