New toy! 2002 Yamaha YZ426 with a **** ton of mods.
Almost complete, still missing a few pieces. I finally got it running so I went to take it for a break in ride and it fouled the plug in the middle of nowhere. My fault for not checking to make sure the spark plug that came with head was the right one
Wow.... Let's see.
I found out what windshields are really for. They're not to make things more efficient. They're made to turn us into wimps. GHeesh! riding without one is fun, but it kicks your ass. I finally got tired of having to peek around mine at night. No it's not just dirty. LOL It's probably older than some of the newer LFSers. So I polished it. I got it clean and shiny enough to realize all that milky crap is INSIDE the damned thing! Thus, riding without one for a couple of weeks. So I go to my favorite website for parts and plunk down around $250 US for a new piece of plastic. I wanted factory/OEM replacement instead of some one size fits all aftermarket POS.
That crap is only about $50.00 ± cheaper and about $200.00 more of a headache, so why bother?
So I got a nice shiny replacement windshield. That's only for the plastic. I had to reuse the bracket. And that was weird, I never really noticed, but the screws/nuts were backwards. It had acorn nuts. Shouldn't those be facing on the outside instead of the hex heads? So I do all that. Also, the front seat was toast. My wife found a complete new... Well NEW looking seat. A complete FACTORY front seat for a "97 Valkyrie. For $50.00! Fifty dollars! FIFTY DOLLARS !!!!!!!!!! Did I say Fifty Dollars???? FIFTY DOLLARS!!!!
OK so I get all this together. Get up to go to work and I gots a flat tire......
It's hell. That is 1 mile off in the distance where you can see the house. You can't see the 2 more similar hills down-up and down-up before you reach that house. I don't ride around home often, I'd burn out way too quick. I have no flat where I live. Pic #2 is half a mile from my house so pretty much the beginning of my riding. That's as flat as it gets and pretty much the only flat I see. It is mostly roller coaster like hills as in pic #3. That is the straightest road I could get a good shot of to show the hilly terrain.
I try to ride daily close to work on more rolling hills with only 1 or 2 like this. The climbs are shallower but longer. There's also a ton of old rail road trails like the last 2 around me that are dead flat running deep into the woods or along the river, dirt, crushed limeatone, or paved. I rode 18 miles on the last 2 pics between 2 small towns in the Allegheny National Forest. Saw 3 people the first 5 miles, 2 people the last 5 miles, and felt like the only person left on the planet for the middle 8 being out in the middle of nowhere in bear country.
Haven't yet seen a bear, but more importantly, I'm keeping an eye out for Bigfoot, LOL. He has to come down out of the forest for water sometime
Down maybe. But Up? Man, I have a hard time breathing just thinking about it. Hello Mr Rogers! long time no see. I've heard that part of Pennsylvania is really pretty country. Your photos prove that.
My bike currently is a 2008 Specialized Hardrock XC Disc that I was given for my 13th birthday (actually a day before it - on April 3, 2009). It was on of the cheapest in the shop, 8800 Kč (about $410), but that didn't matter back then, I wasn't riding it very much. I actually only started to ride a bit more last year when my tachometer was showing about 500 km... During that year I rode a bit more and made something over 1000 km. And this year I started to really ride quite a lot (compared to what I did before) and now I've done about 3000 km. That resulted in the fact that I now almost spend more time servicing the bike than riding it (RD stopped shifting properly after about 1000 km, both brakes were pretty weak, FD is impossible to tune accurately...). Because of that and also because I grew up a bit since 2009 and the frame has become too small for me, I decided to buy a new bike, see my post in "Post Your Last Purchase", when it comes, I'll post it here.
I've modded the Hardrock a bit to make it a bit reliable, here are the mods:
Brakes: Tektro Iox to Avid BB5
Brake discs: Tektro something to Avid HS1
RD: Shimano Altus M310 to Deore M570
Crankset: Shimano Altus M311 42-32-22 to Alivio C10 48-38-28 (not that much because of reliability, but because I wanted to be a bit faster on the road and had this one lying in the garage).
And, of course, a new chain.
I'll probably soon buy a bigger (20") frame to have a well-sized backup bike.
Bought some road tyres to replace the chunky MTB tyres, i've only gone up and down my path but already i can feel how much better it is. Also the amount of rolling resistance is substantially less and it looks nicer!
Probably picking this up this sunday.
Honda NSR50 racebike. 50cc 2-stroke, 6-speed. Allot of fun and just nice to have!
Need to buy a racesuit and everything though.
63 Plate 125cc 'Honda'. £250, my winter cafe racer project
Already taken off the rear rack, rear footpegs, the 1 mirror it had and front L-plate (for now). Better & more pics tomorrow/sunday after i've cleaned and detailed it
Don't knock it til you've tried it. Forward controls on a lowered frame gives you a whole new perspective on things. Besides sitting like a wide receiver in a prison movie gets mighty uncomfortable after a while.
Just outta curiosity Omar, did you scavenge anything off of a dirt-bike for this project? My mechanic builds quite a few and they use me to draw up brackets and graphics here and there, mostly for brakes. A couple of bikes had dirt bike forks and shocks.
You switched the head light too? Yeah. I can see the shocks better. in the other picture, It sorta looked like a chrome plated rod. I think the tear drop tank actually works well with the overall look too.
I have headlight problems with my suzuki. Wanna know where I get the bulbs? (pay attention forbin, this'll blow your mind) I get the bulbs from Home Depot. You have something like that in the UK? It's a home and garden place. Anyways, I buy these $12.00 set of lawn lights, break two apart and snag the bulbs out.
That's the high beam. The low beam is a driving light bought from an auto parts store. I'm wanting to re modify that and replace that with xenon bulbs, but I haven't had the time to compare amps of the bulbs to amps put out as well as make a housing. I don't know how to describe what I have now. Let's just say it could stand improvement.
... a hardtail cafe racer... It would look cool, but hurt to ride...
