Anyone into motorcycles?

[Ulu]

Loostening the Big Nut is the only tough bit.
That's not my new jockey shift.

Everything went together OK, after hours of cleaning, and I took Baggins the Nomad out for an hour this AM.

It launches off the new clutch like a scalded ape.

It was 80+ outside and 85 F in my garage when I got back at 9am, and I needed a second shower.

The clutch is just too tight and drags too much. Once it warms up it's difficult to hit neutral at a stop.

Soooo . . . I'm going to wait a little to see if the spring will relax a tad, and drain the Delo 15-40 to replace it with a lighter 10-30 synthetic.

Then I will ride it again and decide whether to open the case and re-set the clearances. I knew I was on the tight side of spec, but with the Barnett spring it's too tight unless you want to drag race. I'm going to order new gaskets anyway. This will probably need to come apart again to dress down the thick plate. One metal plate is thicker from the factory. It's how they adjust the clutch pack for the buildup of tolerances in the assembly.

 

[Ulu]

I spent about $600 to hop up this bike in 2004. It had maybe 3000 miles on it.

That bought me a fuel programmer, a couple big air filters (each suitable for a 4 liter car) and a lighter glasspack exhaust system with no premuffler. There was a big one under the bike (where the HD has the trans) and the bike lost about 10 lbs. Now on a 800 lb bike ya don't notice the weight missing much, plus I added back 30 lbs of chrome.

Here is my Mrs with the stock 2004 Nomad in Sept 2003. It is stock except for the billet sissy bar/rack combo.
Stock pipes, no brake covers, much less chrome. I paid $15,094 OTD and they threw in a pair of gloves and a helmet.
That was the price of a stripped Dynaglide before tax etc!. A Road King was $20k+



What I did notice was the HP went from 59 to 65 and torque went from 81 ft-lb to 90. That's about 1/10 of what it costs normally, for a 10% increase in power.

Why doesn't an HD do the same for $600? Air cooling, fewer valves and no OHC. (I ignore the v-rod here) The Kawasaki is heavily de-tuned from the factory so it will last. Once you tune it up a bit, the u-joint and output bearing start taking a beating.

But the HD had some advantages in less weight and complexity, if it was far less well equipped for the cost. It was generally a prettier bike (not all models!) and easy to get parts. Yet a customized Nomad looks more custom than a customized HD sometimes, because the Nomad is like 100x rarer.

 

[Ulu]

Big mistake:
I used Delvac oil, and though it doesn't say so, it now contains enough molybdenum to affect the clutch.
Most all moly oils say RC or EC or such in the API rating. This one doesn't have enough to qualify, but has enough to be a problem.
I'm changing out the oil for an older, lighter, conventional JASO-spec oil, and this should be an improvement.