superhawk996

The beads were super easy to break, they damn near broke on their own. Probably because they're tube type wheels so they don't 'need' the bead retaining bump that most tubeless wheels have. Zipties were a fail. The recess in these wheels barely accommodates one bead, both together is an absolute no go so I cut the ties off and went traditional. Holy fuck that was a battle. Even when there was only about a foot of tire bead under the wheel I still had to use tools to keep prying to get it the rest of the way off, insane. I got the front tire off and pondered how much worse the rear would probably be, at that point I said fuck it and took them to a shop, but the guy was out. After waiting for over 1/2 hour I went back home and figured I'd just work on de-rusting the rear wheel. It would be easiest to work on it mounted to the forks, but it would't fit with the tire on so I decided to have a go at removing it, way worse than the front. I was finally able to get one spoonful of bead pried over the wheel, no way to get another in. I held it and used a die grinder to cut through the tire bead, then it was only a 'normal' battle of stretching it over the wheel. The rear rim was super rusty, some of the chrome is gone, but it cleaned up reasonably well. I didn't take photos of the wheel, but here's the rear brake lever. I had already done the ends when I thought to take the before photo. If I decide to make it better I'll dab some chrome paint on the bare spots to hide them better, but it's vastly improved. It took about 5 minutes, most of the work was done with a fine wire wheel on the bench grinder. I wish I'd tried wire wheels sooner, it does a great job and does't scratch up the chrome as long as it's fine wire. I used two different ones on the rear rim being driven by a cordless drill and die grinder. I had a small one that was able to fit between the spokes fairly well. I took a quick stab at mounting the front tire, fuck that, they're both going to a shop with a machine.

How does it compare to the KTM?

I rode a DR350E right after being on the XR650R, it made me really appreciate how supple the XR's suspension is. I didn't realize how bumpy the area was 'till the DR smacked my butt/spine. My understanding is that the DRZ has better suspension than the DR, but the XR seems hard to match. The suspension 'should' make it easier to ride without getting knackered, but the killing part is still there. Having the magic button of the DR/DRZ is nice, but luckily the XR starts easily....as long as it's not flooded from a crash and, most importantly, you put the piston in the right spot before kicking it over. The previous owner is pretty buff and tall, he always had trouble starting it. Long before selling it to me he brought it for me to do some work on and said he'd come start it when I got done, he was very nice about not saying "you ain't got this you little weenie boy." He showed up carrying his right motocross boot to start it up, as he was walking up the driveway I fired it wearing normal shoes. He and his son are both tall and yoked, they froze staring in amazement. I told him how to set it up to start without it trying to kill him, I think he appreciated that more than all the stuff I've fixed for him. All that said, part of the reason he sold it is because he was afraid it would kill him some day.

I rarely have matches so I just hold the lighter in front of the quick start nozzle and blast a fireball at the tire to ignite what's in it. Plus it's more fun to use a flame thrower than to toss a match. I did that to re-seat my friend's motorhome tire while it was on the rig. He was a little concerned, but was happy it worked since it was going to take over an hour to get a tire service guy out to us.

God damn that thing is tall. I already knew it, but wow.

Sweet! I was guessing/hoping that the bike is fine and one just has to allow it to feel squirly and drive through it.

Or just use flammables or explosives, more fun.

I think it's about letting the rounded side of the tire bead 'guide' the opposing bead off and on. I only watched two videos on it and they were able to dismount and mount without tools.

Check that the rear tire isn't out of alignment, I didn't think to.

Maybe it becomes stabile at Baja 500 speed....to The Sea! My only thought is to verify that the neck and swingarm bearings aren't sloppy, but I doubt it. I think the neck would have been obvious just from moving it around and using the front brake, I'd expect a clunk or something. I can't say I did a thorough inspection, but I yanked the wheels around and didn't notice any obvious issues. Maybe it just crosses the threshold of being too tall to be stabile, I don't know if that's a thing.

I put about 5 minutes on it, possibly got above 30MPH, and survived just fine. My immediate impression was "this thing will absolutely let your wrist write a check that your body can't cash." The thing that bugged me, and kept me from writing a bad check, was that it's so squirly. I have very little dirtbike experience, maybe they're all like that, but the thing felt like it just wanted to fall. I never got around to riding the XR400 when we were out, guess I'll have to drag it out again and see how it feels. I rode Mike's Suzuki a little and don't recall having the same feeling, but I was so thrown by having my spine whacked when I went over the same little bumps that the 650 made unnoticeable.

The 400 and 650 are night and day for kicking. I give zero thoughts to where the piston is on the 400, just hop on and kick. I assume it has a decomp, dunno.

I'd forgotten about the zip tie method. I've seen it, but never done it. I might employ that in the near future. I thought I'd be mounting the R5 tires today, but I sorta got fucked/fucked myself. I had the tires, tubes, and rim strips in my cart when I placed the order, but didn't notice that the tubes and strips were out of stock. I feel like they should have made it more obvious, but maybe they did and I was too cross-eyed from the endless tire hunt.

My current one has chrome rotors, the fastest color.

In another installment of DTE he took the skin off his shin.

I joked about soaking them in the wintergreen oil.

Day or night, no matter how you stacked em, it was quite a sight.

I rebuilt a VW engine in the kitchen. It got rolled into the living room when not being worked on.

CA has the most bikes by a long shot at almost 1 million, but only ranks #37 in bikes per 10k people. Odd that states with shittier weather have more.

Tires ordered, along with tubes and rim strips. The ones in the photo are no longer made, now it's an "all weather" version, but they're similar. Dennis Kirk appeared to have the best price, $200 shipped for everything. I wonder how glued the tires will be after 54 years, breaking the beads might be interesting.

I use race gas/castor oil blend to achieve the proper char cooking temperature, those aromatic hydrocarbons break the benzene planar compound bullshit and neutralize them.

I hate gooey fat, but charred is usually tasty, whether cow or pig. Randy talks shit about me removing it, "you should eat that, it's good for you." It's a bit of a hard sell when nutritional advice is coming from someone twice my size who's breakfast is a fist full of pills.

And just like that, we're headed toward P&RBS.

I'll go with #2, Republicans.

How much difference, if any, is there between the fat you can see on meats vs. the fats in the meat? If you trim off the obvious fat around your steak are you helping, or is that fat good/non-damaging?