A pie ride but no pie today

April 25, 2024

After seeing this story in the local news, Klo’s Kitchen: 17-year old opens bakery in heart of Harlowton, I thought it make a good excuse to ride there to check it out.  I texted Keith and he responded in the affirmative and we met up at my house this morning and were on the road by 9:57.  While just going for a ride on a day promising beautiful weather was enough of a reason to get out, I also had another task to attend to in Harlowton and that was to check out the city park for camping and their EV chargers.

Keith led to way to Lavina on his Gold Wing under gray skies that provided a few spits of rain, but only a few.  The highway was relatively quiet and we made it past Acton and Broadview easily with the air temperature at 60-62°.  The bigger treat was an almost total absence of wind.

We stopped in Lavina for break and I grabbed a few pictures.

The sky to the south looked like rain and when I checked the app I saw this:

After looking at the radar map we were pretty sure that it would be going south of us, which it did.  If it didn’t I was prepared with rain gear.

I took the lead and we rode the highway to Harlowton at an easy 67 miles per hour.  We pulled into town and I decided that we should check out the city park first.  We stopped at the sign to check the rules.

While were parked there, the owner of sprinter-type van that was parked at the far west end came up the road to pay her camping fee.  We chatted for a few minutes and I learned that she is full-timing the van life and had just spent the winter near Yuma, AZ. She came to Montana to help some friends and has decided to stay in the state for a while, even getting an appointment for a Montana drivers license.  We said our goodbyes and circled the west end of the park before I pulled into one of the RV camping spots to inspect the EV charging option.

It looks like it has what we need should we come here in our Tesla Model Y.

I met Keith at the restrooms and I must say that it is one of the cleanest public restrooms I’ve ever visited.

I did take a few more photos.  It looks like they may have had a problem in the past with livestock using the playground.

We exited the park by taking the road to the southeast entrance which quickly connected us to Central Ave,. The Main Street of Harlowton.  This took up past Galley’s brewery, which was, unfortunately, closed but a short ride to the end of the street brought us to Klo’s Kitchen, the bakery.  We parked across the street next to the train museum.

The interior is simple and very nice.  I asked about pie and was informed that pies were sold out.  I made due with a piece of apple blossom cake that was quite good and a heck of a deal at $3.00.

We sat by the front window and had a good view of our bikes and the train museum.

It was time to hit the road and after a quick stop at Ray’s for gas, I led us the 45 miles back to Lavina.  We took a bit of a break before Keith led us back to Billings.

We went directly to Keith’s place where we were joined by his wife, Bonnie, and after a bit, another friend, Greg.  We sat on the back deck and enjoyed the nice weather.  Greg just picked up a new Honda Transalp so there was lots of motorcycle talk rover pretzels I’d bake that morning and, of course a beer.  We did end up in Keith’s basement for a few games of pool before calling it a day.

My odometer indicated that it was a 186 mile ride.

Spring Maintenance

April 15, 2024

While there is no guarantee that winter’s snow is over, after all this is Montana, spring is definitely here with warmer temperatures and the foliage greening up.  With an upcoming cross country trip in the offing, it was time to think about some maintenance issues.  In my last posting here, I mentioned ordering tires and they came in last week.  I figured that as long as the bike would be off the ground, while the wheels were in the shop it was time to tackle a few 16,000 mile maintenance items.  Yes, the bike has 30,000 miles on it but I’ve rationalized delaying a few things due to the good build quality from the factory and how other owners on the forum have mentioned the lack of wear on many of the parts, even with longer periods of delayed maintenance.

The main item I wanted to cover was the swing arm bearings.  I follow Two Wheel Obsession on YouTube and he has some excellent videos on many jobs including this one.  However, with this job he also shows how to pull the relay arm and the main stand, a job that, by the book requires fairing and exhaust removal, or the cutting off and replacement of certain bolts by his method.  I decided to defer those items to the 60,000 mile job if everything looked OK on the swing arm this time.

I started the work Thursday (April 11) morning and once the bike was on the motorcycle jack, removing the wheels is more or less a straight forward job.  Once the wheels were off, I loaded them and the new tires into the car and took them to Troy at CycleWerx.  He said he might have them for me later in the day and I told him I was diving into the swing arm bearings so there was no hurry.  He said doing that job was a good thing and that very few people choose to dive into it.

It feels pretty stable on the jack while still on the main stand but I back things up with some straps hooked through some eyelets in an overhead beam.  They are adjustable and provide extra stability.

The rest of the day was spent getting the swing arm off the bike.  It really was just a matter of following along in the video and keeping track of the various parts.  While I do have a pretty good selection of tools, I did make two trips to Harbor Freight to pick up something I needed.  The first was for a socketed T50 that was required to pull off the left side shift linkage cover.  I, of course had to buy a set.  Next, I made another trip to buy a socketed H19.  The set I already had only went to H17 and, again, I had to buy a set.  

The video shows removal of that side cover as a problem due to the factory installed red Loctite which, in the video, caused the near-rounding off of one of the bolts.  His solution was to heat the bolt with a soldering iron.  I tried the bolt first and didn’t feel it cracking loose so I first tried by old Vessel impact wrench to no avail.  I did the soldering iron trick which I don’t think really did much.  I used both my low wattage soldering iron and my higher wattage soldering gun and, using my infrared temperature gauge, could see that not much was heated up, probably due to the bike acting like a huge heat sink.  I also read that the red Loctite doesn’t soften until 550°F so maybe it helps, maybe not.  I finally got brave/bored, put a socket hex wrench in the bolt and applied steady pressure.  It cracked loose as did the others.

That is something not generally covered in many videos that illustrate how to disassemble something, not just the ones from Two Wheel Obsession.  It seems they have no problem loosing up anything and that leads me to believe that they do that before the video was shot, retighten, and then make it look like things come apart easily.  That’s never real-life.  Real life is using PB Blaster, impact wrenches, and long bars for leverage, sometimes followed by drills and helicoils.  

Once I had the covers off both sides I pulled the differential and swing arm off and called it a day.

Friday morning I got back to it by first cleaning and checking those swing arm bearings.  They are not overly greased but were still adequately packed and felt pretty good.  I went ahead and packed the main ones and the others.  Cleaning and lubing was the order of the day as I reassembled all the pieces.  In the middle of the morning, Troy called so I went and picked up the wheels with the newly mounted tires.  He reminded me to take it easy when breaking in these new shoes.

Putting everything back together was relatively easy, following the video and the service manual, and torquing as I went.  I use two torque wrenches as one (from Harbor Freight) does the low settings and the other (Craftsman) gets to the higher settings.  Both are both 3/8” drive and that socketed H19 I picked up is a 1/2” drive.  No problem, just use an adapter.  Hmmm, just the one I didn’t have.  Back to Harbor Freight for a small set of adapters.  

I was pretty proud of myself getting things back together in an order, where I didn’t have to stop and take something off to get something else on first, until I was mounting the rear brake caliper stabilizer bar.  I fiddled around a bunch and realized that the rear axle had to come back off.  It was 5:30pm and I was getting tired so I called it a day and went and made a Mexican pizza for dinner.

Saturday morning I got up early for a 7-mile run, which helped loosen up my stiff body.  Two days of working on the ground with all the up and down for the right tool had had its impact.  When I got back to the job, it went smoothly and before long it was done.  Before I put the plastics back on I pulled and cleaned the air cleaner, which looked pretty good.

All that was left was a test ride but I had other things to do so that had to wait until early evening when I took it on the Shorey Road loop and everything checked out fine.  On Sunday I did another 20 miles, carefully breaking in the new tires, and feeling for anything that might be loose.  Everything is fine and I think the bike is ready for its cross country trip at the end of the month.

While this turned into a 2-1/2 day job, I was taking my time, took a few breaks, had to chase after tools, etc. If I had it to do over again, just getting the swing arm off, I’d say I could do it in 2 hours.  The next time I’d tackle the bolt cut-off method to get the relay arm and center stand off.  With the new tool acquisitions, I’m into it for about $65 so that’s not a bad deal.

Red Lodge/Columbus Loop

April 4, 2024

When the weather is this nice, a ride is in order.  We’ve had snow off and on and rainy snow predicted for the weekend so when it’s supposed to be clean and 70 the calendar gets cleared and the bike gets out.

I planned to do the Red Lodge/Columbus route and figured it would take 3 hours or so.  Leaving around noon would work great as the Urban Sketchers of Billings were meeting up Downtown from 3-5 and I wanted to get a piece of that since I missed the last two.

I got the bike out and checked the air in the tires which was right at 42 psi front and rear but thought to take a look at the wear marks.  Hmmm, they are getting a bit close.  When did I put these tires on?  This is a problem which I hope is not a sign of aging but I couldn’t remember for sure.  Luckily I wrote it down in my service log and it was April 2023.  Ah, yes, right before my trip to San Diego last year.  It was about 10,000 miles ago and that about how long my previous tires lasted.  OK, I have a big trip coming up and I might, might get these to last but why take a chance.  I went inside, logged on to Revzilla and ordered a set of Michelin Road 6 GT tires.  That’s a bit of an upgrade from the GT4s I was running and I remember telling myself I wanted to try the GT6 next.  I placed the order and expect them to be here next week.

I gathered up by drawing tools and packed a sandwich.  By the time I hit the road it was 12:30.  I went out the usual west end exit except detoured around where they are putting in a new roundabout on the west end or Rimrock Road.  The ride to Laurel was fine.  I was wearing my cold weather coat with its liner and had on a t-shirt and sweatshirt.  It felt just about right with the temperature in the low 60s.

I passed through Laurel and took the new version Hwy 212 to Red Lodge.  Very light traffic today and only a steady breeze from the southwest.  I pulled over for a photo near Roberts.

In Red Lodge I pulled over to park by the old depot and use the public restroom there.  It’s next to the EV chargers and I wanted to check them out too.

We want to drive our new Tesla here and give the charger a try while we go walk downtown and maybe have something to eat.

I headed out of town on Hwy 78 which will take me to Columbus.  It was a little windy but I took my time and set the cruise control to 62, just enjoying the scenery and the big sweeping curves.  I did stop for a photo or two.

I stopped at the campground in Columbus for a quick relief and then, due to time, grabbed the slab back to Billings.  I parked in the Depot parking lot and joined my friends who were already busy drawing.  Since I knew my time was limited I decided to do just one corner of the bar building.

The ride home was like the rest of the day, uneventful, which, considering all the motorcycle wrecks here this past week, a good thing.

The odometer indicated 165 miles.

A Ride to Rapelje

March 19, 2024

When an early spring brings good weather to Montana we have to get out and ride when we can.  I’d plan to go yesterday but it was really windy and today turned out to be a much better option.  I started the day with a 7-1/2 mile run for my Run All the Streets of Billings project.  That run is documented here.  After a shower and lunch, I got the FJR out and headed west.  The first stop was the gas station.

I did the usual Billings exit by heading west on Grand to its end, drop down to Lipp road, and then Buffalo Trail to Laurel.  From there I road to Park City where I pulled over to put on my lighter gloves.  When I went under the freeway (in the background) there were a half dozen Highway Patrol and sheriff cars there with their lights flashing.  Something was up but I have no idea what it was.

I passed through Columbus and picked up Hwy 306 and road that north toward Rapelje.  I stopped for photos along the way.

I got to Rapelje and my rip counter indicated I’d ridden 73 miles.  I took a few photos before heading back.  I plan to come back here with my medium format film camera and my sketchbook and do some imaging of those grain elevators.

I headed back south on Hwy 306.  There is a shorter route back to Billings by riding to Molt but the road isn’t paved.  I stopped for some photos on my way south.

In Columbia I grabbed the Slab and rode it back to Billings.  I’d really rather not do the freeway but it’s good practice.  I gassed up before I put the bike away.

And here’s the route.  It was about 150 miles, out and back.