superhawk996

It's not about one side of the tire being heavier, the wheel/tire combination will almost always be heavier on one side and that doesn't matter. The light spots will generally be in two different places between the two sides. When you static balance, whether done by one of the DIY methods or a machine, you find the light spot for the whole thing (combination of inboard & outboard light spots 'averaged' out to one spot) and counter that with weights. Dynamic balancing will show the light spot inboard and the light spot outboard and let you counter both of them independently to get a better balance. The wider the tire/wheel is the more important it can be to go dynamic. Above that would be 'road force' balancing. A roller puts load on the tread while the machine spins it and they can balance out imperfections even better. This might have been what you meant by 'one side being heavier' and already understand it all, but I spelled it out just in case and for the next guy who's curious.

What I always wonder is why they say that you must remove the weights to use beads, makes no damn sense.

There isn't a lateral balance, AFAIK. It's a vertical balance on the inboard and the outboard ends of the tire and it's called dual plane or dynamic balancing. I don't know if beads can do dual plane balancing like weights can, but most people who use them love them. And when you do it your way with weights you're not doing a dual plane balance so if that satisfies you the beads should also. When I do the DIY balancing I let the heavy end fall to the bottom, then do the back & forth thing to try to get rid of a false position due to friction/stiction. I think it would work better, or at least faster. On one car I used the idling engine to break the stiction, it seemed to work really well. Repeated spins of the tire had it settle in the same place every time, within an inch or two, which is as good as it gets unless it's hugely out of balance.

On the left side, press in and down, then it'll swing away from the bulb and towards the right.

I can't imagine the bags being the cause.

I've had many experiences with that stuff, particularly in RVs. With my old one I had to manually light the heater, oven, refrigerator, and water heater at the beginning of a trip, and remember to shut them all off at the end, but I was never stuck in the desert with non-working shit like everyone else's modern electronic stuff did to them. But theirs were more efficient and (if working) took no thought or effort to operate, just hit the power button. I can't count how many times people had to come cook, shower, and hang out in my tiny old box because their rolling mansions weren't working. The leveling jacks is a big one, mine took a fair bit of time and energy to deploy, 4 screw jacks and wood blocks. I was never stuck with unhappy electronics or leaking hydraulics. My previous washing machine lacked a spin rinse cycle, a stupid omission. A few minutes with a file on the timer wheel and voila. If I could re-program the many retardations out of my newer Electrolux I'd jump on it. I've had to pull the plug to reboot it a few times because it just locked up and it's not even one of the extremely modern types, scary thought.

When I went from a '97 to an '01 I thought it was pretty cool to not have to mess with the choke, but not a big deal. When I went back to a '97 I briefly though 'this is some bullshit', but I got over it. There was also a WTF moment every time I turned the key and the fuel pump didn't prime. An automatic choke would be pretty cool and I'm surprised bikes never had them. Scooters all did and it seemed to work great. Modifying is another area where the old stuff can be better or worse. If you have the technology, modern stuff can be super easy to modify, but if you can't talk to and modify the brains of the system you're possibly fucked. Technology still amazes me, and scares me a little. With my 7.3 powerstroke I love that I can touch a button on the dash and the engine is transformed from a mild cruiser to a tire shredding dragster, but my old 7.3 has never suddenly decided it didn't like the chip in the key and refuse to start 370 miles away from home like the PS did to me.

My understanding is that the headlight/front fairing has to come off to get to the low beam bulb, but I've never tried.

Thinking about it, it's possible that I was a hair paranoid since I did carry a spare brand new distributor on board, along with a starter and other stuff.

We know that carbBirds are the best, accept the others' ignorances. There are lots of ups and downs both ways regardless of vehicle type, same goes for electronic vs. mechanical ignition. EFI & electronic ignition are generally perfect until a problem arrises then you might be stuck, mechanical stuff can degrade over time needing some maintenance but rarely fail without notice. If I'm venturing out into the boonies I prefer a carb and points, but the modern stuff works better when it's working. I put electronic ignition into my sandrail because I wound up with a new one for free and it *should* be better than points, worst case scen...... On my first run, and only time I ever left camp alone, it died a very long walk away from camp. Luckily I had tools and a set of points with me. A buddy offered me an electronic ignition for my previous boat; fuck no, I go across the ocean alone.

No, it's an EFI thing.

I've never been a fan of wax, but many people who've done lots of miles love it. To me it seems like it's a good sealer, but I can't see how it would get into the rollers and lubricate. I use Silkolene Road and it seems very slick & smooth. Chain lubes could be as bad or worse than a motor oil conversation, at least with motor oil you can look at analysis info to get some useful data. Considering the wide array of shit people use on a chain it almost seems like anything, including WD-40, works perfectly fine.

That's a shocking amount of WTF? even for you.

From what I can see it's the typical honeycomb. It's in the first section of the muffler right at the header so if one wanted it gone it should be fairly easy to break up and pour out. Cat guts aren't easy to break, but at least this one's easily accessible.

No price, that usually means ludicrous, but once in a while people just forget. I'll guess it's $5K or more.

My experiences with diagnosing cats are on cars/trucks, but I see no reason it would be different on a bike since they all do pretty much the same thing. If plugged up there'll be an increase in heat upstream of the cat and a huge decrease downstream, often enough that you can hold the pipe while the upstream is 300F +. If they're just dead there'll be a small decrease downstream and no change upstream. With good cats there will be a rise in downstream temp since the cats themselves are creating heat. It's been a while, but I wanna say that around 100F rise is what I've typically seen. As for the BB mufflers; I see no reason they would have to be constructed differently between cat and non-cat, but they might be. The cats might add restriction and definitely add silencing so the mufflers could be made more 'open', but no clue if Honda did. I have a pair of each but they're too pretty to cut into. If I think of it I'll try putting my borescope into them to see if there's any obvious difference between them.

I just realized that the whitebird has a full set of SS braided lines and I think the manufacturer's name is on them, take a look.

Probably air or some other problem that was caused during the swap, many have done it without any problems and there would be no reason for the hose to be a problem. Another possibility is that you changed oil types at the same time and that was the cause.

That's the outer layer that has almost nothing to do with the pressure holding parts of the hose. The only time the outer layer plays into pressure holding is when the inner layers fail, and once that happens it doesn't take much to burst the outer layer. ---from my experiences.

I've met a fair number of automotive brake lines that have failed, but none on bikes that I remember. Some fail in an obvious way of leaking, some just become spongy where they only expand under pressure so you might not notice it, and occasionally they have an internal failure where they'll cause brake drag because they restrict fluid flow. Cars/trucks regularly see several hundred and possibly over 1,000 PSI in "normal" use. This is just a guess, but I'd be surprised if a bike system sees 500 psi tops and probably no more than 100 in regular riding.

If the cats were dead or blocked up the mufflers would run colder, not hotter. Normally, the exhaust leaving a cat is hotter than it entered, when they die or start clogging the opposite happens. I know lead will kill cats, not sure if it coats them or chemically reacts to kill them. If the latter I could imagine some extra heat happening 'till they actually die. Once they die they'll generally clog up since they're no longer able to burn off the stuff coming into them so it starts to build up in the tiny passages. O2 sensors are also killed by leaded gas.

That's not oil. The mid-pipe area where the cats reside are super dark with some darkening of the mufflers, definitely some pretty extreme exhaust temperature happened. Might have had some bad tuning done, maybe a leaking FPR that overheated the cats, who knows.

I can't imagine the motor getting hot enough to effect the mufflers that much without it melting down.

Yup. It appears to have the catalyst mufflers so if it has/had a tuning issue I could see the cats overheating causing it. Or maybe from some real hard riding, but having never seen it before I lean towards a tuning problem overheating the cats. It's interesting that the hot spots are so different between left & right. I wonder if the mufflers have different internals or if it was just the difference in flow between them that caused it.

Duh, a smart man woulda put that in the post huh. https://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/mcy/d/hacienda-heights-clean-title-2nd-owner/6959736329.html The Rock Store is about 60 miles from me. I've only been once, but it was pretty cool.