Now that I have throughly test rode my 1998 I have decided I will keep this bike a while. Cheap bastid that I am I find though that I am hating visiting dealerships more and more! Something about the pointy haired pimply faced race-wannabe-kids manning the parts counters out here that makes me cringe at the thought of having to answer the age old question
SPike "what bike"?
Me- "1998 vfr 800?
SPike - "what size is it?"
That just makes me want to reach across the counter and smack the
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Rampart Range Video - The Hard Part
Dan and Craig ride the roughest steepest part of the Rampart Range Trail system, getting stuck along the way. Dan rides a yz400 race bike not geared for climbing, with a racing flywheel it doesn't have the torque for this kind of riding, he must rev and feather the clutch to achieve momentum a tiering task that is fraught with fatigue if you don't ride well.
Rock slant Dan and Craig must keep the bikes from sliding off a slanting granite rock face
My new mirrors just arrived today in the mail from Germany!! :P
Yup, I ordered some mirrors with integrated turnsignals from Thurn Motorsports' ebay store. Installation was a piece of cake, since I already had the wiring done up for the Kisan vectraLights, Model VL-20. Anyway, here are the pictures of the new mirrors. :happy:
I ended up wiring the LEDs to the running lights and then grounded them out through the turn signal wires. That way the lights are on all the time but flash on
Lately it seems the mood of VFRD has been somewhat hostile. It just seems that the normally good nature of most posts have been negative. I'm sure this negativity isn't intentional an anybody's part (at least I hope not), maybe it's because winters coming up or something. Who knows? :unsure:
Anyway, on the lighter side of things, I got some Helibars installed on my bike. A kind gentlemen from Australia who rides a Blackbird made me a very tempting offer. He wanted to buy the Helibars tha
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Canyonlands at Twilight video
This is a short 5 min video of the our trip through the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Canyonlands National Park Utah. It was incredibly hot for 9pm somthing like 100 degrees in the twilight, I cant imagine how hot it is in full daylight in July?? The road is surreal surrounding you with red rock lava like stone walls on each side and then falling deeper into Glen Canyon along the Colorado River near Lake Powell. Its one of the n
Well after returning home from the Mosca Pass ride I have not touched the XR since last week, too disappointed to do so. Until I mustered up the patience to replace the scored up cams. Which I did, and promptly ripped up that set too. OOKKKAAAYYY maybe I am missing the root cause here!!
This time I took the head off and took out the spark plug and pumped the kick start to see if it was oiling the cams? NOPE NO OIL OUT OF THE DARNED JETS!!
So I took off the plate to the oil filter and shot
Part 2 - Craig takes the camera this time as they ascend and descend the Devils Slide at Rampart Range, trail number 676. ATV tracks mostly up steep climbs, whoops, rocks, tree roots, tight switchbacks. Craig on a Honda XR400, Dan on his Yamaha yz400. A few stalls, some rain and lots of good trail!
THE TRAILS
THE VIDEO
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Devils Slide Video
Runs about 12 min 768kb/sec wmv
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Info on Rampart Range
I let my Buddys Dan and Craig take the vfrd viosport cam with them up to Rampart Range last week and they filmed some good trail riding in the Front Range Foothills. They drove up to Rainbowfalls Trail Head and proceded to ride several of the Rampart area trails, almost 120 minutes of video. I cut it down to 10 minutes of part of Long Hollow Trail #650 for your viewing pleasure, this makes me want to go ride my 650!!
Long Hollow Trail Video
Here are some map files of the area
Google Ear
Tonight I removed my rear wheel. Tomorrow I have my new Dunlop D220 SportMAx mounted at a local dealership (LandAir). Some observations about the removal. The only difficulty was in the bolt that held the Arrow exhaust can to the rear pegs. The bolt has a captive nut in the Arrow canister and the nut is not supposed to turn but the square housing for the nut is a bit big and the nut rotated. So I stuck a pair of pliers into the housing to keep the nut from turn and then I was able to remove
So I made my first tire purchase from Ron Ayers on Saturday morning (9/9). The order was entered on Monday (9/11) and it shipped on Wednesday (9/13) and FedEx should deliver it tomorrow (9/15). That is not bad. When I reviewed the shipping/fullfilment schedule that Ron Ayers put out it looked like it might take two weeks. I guess they just sand bag
So I called Land Air this morning and they said I can get the tire installed on Saturday for $30. I bring in the rear tire. So I plan to take
Well I had a great weekend ride this past weekend. My friend Jeff and I rode down to NH on Saturday morning. We took the long way which ended up at about 4.25 hrs. We got off the beaten path for about 45 mins. The weather was fantastic. The morning started at 8am with the temp at 55degF. I got a chance to really ride with my new Speedmaster pants. They are so comfortable. I did also realize that I should have put on my taller Givi fairing. I did put on my cowl but no idea if that made a
Well I made the Friday barbeque of the "We Don't Give a Hoot" WDGAH rally in Lyme,NH. It was my first real rally and I had a blast. I started by taking a half day and driving down to Lyme. I left work about 12:30pm and took a beautiful route down. I left work and went down Rt. 2A to Rt. 116 and picked up the Appalachin Gap (Rt. 17) adn took it to Rt. 100 south to I89. I rode hard and had some fun on the App Gap rode. I found the Gap Road to be very bumpy. I had some fun leaning in the corners. M
Labor Day Plans Out The Window
I have had a fubared Labor Day Weekend, I was supposed to ride down to New Mexico and go camping with my sister, but she called and said that my Niece has come down with the flu or something and my Nephew looks like he has it too! Kids are in Bed and mom needs to take care so camping was out!
That is what friends are for!
My buddy Dan says he got a few guys lined up to go riding half day down to Bishops Castle, since I am out of plans why not go along. I ask hi
Well from my previous blog entry you can see I took the XR650r out for a long jaunt in southern Colorado, long enough to screw up the bike again! I can't say the bike has been unreliable, cause it always starts and keeps running taking me from here to there and back home again - in that respect its always gotten me home! However she is a fragile beast in the cam shaft deptment and has a few quirks the vfr just doesent have!~
Last spring I rode her out 300 miles and came back home with a burne
Luckily, I was not standing in the freshly digged grave and was not talking to Hamlet. But the picture I saw was not prettier. I was standing in front of a bike lying on her side and almost obscenely showing her guts. I don't know about you, but I feel that there is something ungodly and disturbing about bike down. It is never a pretty sight.
The bike, nicely painted roadster with not much chrome, was lying on my favorite spot. I was too late to repark my Hawk GT and a guy who parks in the sam
For years now, whenever I've been driving on I-5 between Portland and Seattle, I've been seeing these statues on the side of the highway. I've always wondered what they were, but I've never gotten around to stopping and seeing them up close.
Well today I was up in the Seattle area picking up some VFR parts and on the way home back to Portland my friend Bryan and I decided to stop and see these statues. The monuments are near mile post 60. Here are the pictures I took:
Informational bill
I took the XR 650r down south Tuesday for a 300 mile loop through Pueblo, Buela, Colorado City, San Isabel, and over the Wet Mountains to Gardener and Up over Mosca Pass.
map google earth image
Buela Colorado Sleepy Little town southwest of Pueblo
Buela Colorado Main Road
San Isabel National Forest Hwy 162
Lake San Isabel west
Mosca Pass in the distance
Gardner road miles and miles of dirt road
Mount Blanca 14,000 foot peak from top of Mosca Pass
East F
On Saturday, I decided to visit my friend in New Jersey. I zoomed through George Washington Bridge and enjoyed about 20 miles of nice freeway speed.
Soon, I turned into his neighborhood. I remembered that the last time, I was almost hit by a car coming onto a street from nearby parking lot and thus slowed down. I was on the typical road in the shopping rural area. Two lanes each way, hard median and rather wide shoulder on the side.
I kept my distance from ugly looking SUV in front of me and
I just finished viewing the pictures from the Pacific Northwest Meet put on by Kiethbob and wow what a great time yall had up there - I really looked hard at attending that event, but alas the ride to made it prohibitive (2 weeks vacation instead of just needing one). I really love attending motorcycle meets as opposed to huge rallys for the comeradrie and the sheer fun of riding with kindred spirits. Sometimes it ends a bit of tradegdy, I have attended 2 sport-tourung.net meets and there were
ARRGGGG!!!! I hate ebay snipers. I'm so pissed right now.
So, I find this 1993 VFR rear wheel on ebay for dirt cheap. The only problem with it is that it's bent a little. No problem, I get the rim cheap, have it straighten locally, and I've got a 8-spoke rim. Great idea!!!
With only 5 seconds left in the auction, some ass-hat snipes me with a higher bid. WTF!! :mad: I hope his new 8-spoke rim flies apart on him when he's up above 100 mph. Seriously, be a real man and put a bid down
Thursday was just a weird day. In the morning, I have discovered that I got two parking tickets during one hour over night. I did not want to leave my VFR there anymore, so I rode her to work. From then, the crap started just pile up.
I went home that night and first I realized that I left my knee protectors at work (which complicated my planned Friday ride out to upstate NY because I never ride without proper gear) and then it took me forever to find the 'right' parking spot for her. I had to
