In my first two years riding my motorcycle I learned a few things the hard way. Long story short I laid my Thruxton down twice, once on each side. They weren’t bad spills but I got a few cool scars out of the deal and so did my bike. A few weeks ago I purchased [...]
The chain on my Thruxton was about 6 years old and looking pretty ratty so I decided it was time for a new one. My buddy recently did some homework on chains and he ended up buying an EK X Ring chain so I followed suit. After hitting my Haynes manual to find out the [...]
The crash course I’ve been getting in bicycle handle bar diameters is a real drag. There’s 1/7th of an inch difference between most roadbike bars and BMX so, as I describe in my last post, the stem on my new cutter won’t work with my new bull horn bars. The old FBM bars I had [...]
I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever to get my wheel set from Mello Velo (the local bike shop). I’ve had pretty much all of the other parts together for a week now, but a bike isn’t a bike without two wheels. Yesterday they finally came in. You’d think that would be all good [...]
A few weeks ago the seal on my valve cover started leaking a bit of oil. It was very minor at first so I ignored it. Eventually it started leaking out on to my exhaust (headers) so I’d pull up to a light and notice a bit of smoke rising off my front end. That’s [...]
I purchased my 2004 Triumph Thruxton back in 2006 (I think). Since then I’ve made minor modifications but all of those predated this blog. Needless to say as a wannabe DIY mechanic a motorcycle modeled after the classic Triumphs is a pretty tempting toy. This post is just some quick back story on what I’ve [...]
It’s been a busy month and I’ve neglected putting up a few things I’d deem “blog worthy”. First up is the new bike I’m building. Restoring the Raleigh was so much fun I had to start in on another one. So far I’m just spec’ing out parts. I settled on the Cutter frame by Volume [...]
It’s done. Putting the bike back together was super easy. Part of what made it so easy was that I put the components (breaks, derailers etc) back together as I cleaned them up. The brakes were already done so I just had to bolt them back on, the bottom bracket was a bit more difficult [...]
This is the turning point. The derailers were the last two pieces of this bike that had to be cleaned up / repaired. Mechanically they’re pretty much the most complicated parts of the bike. Modern derailers have a lot of plastic on them but these ones are all steel. This makes them super heavy but [...]
Drilling out cotter pins is a pain in the ass. I tried real hard to pound these things out but I ended up doing more harm than good. I tried pounding them out the good old fashioned way but I ended up bended the threaded end one one side and putting a good ding in [...]
