The mailman

African or European? Sorry, can't help myself at times...

I guess that's like saying my tires wore out and not listing the mileage too. The air filter above had just over 15k on it. No Salvation Army trucks, no cotton gin nearby, and maybe 50 miles of dirt road in the life of the bike. Still amazed it would even run. - even more amazed I let something slide for so long. Yay! 50 more horses! :angry:

I keep up with everything! oil changes - early most times, tire pressure, chain tension, daily visual inspections, everything. Well, evidently almost everything. Looking through my maintenance log I noticed the air filter seems to have been overlooked for a while. I had installed a K&N ...ummm... a while back we'll say, and hadn't checked it since then. I pulled it last night and I can't believe the bike could even breathe well enough to run. I didn't have mice in the airbox but I could knit a sweater from all of the "fluff" in the filter. Just lightly tapping the filter on the driveway produced enough for some warm mittens. After spraying on a heavy dose of the K&N cleaner, letting it set, and then rinsing, it looked brand new again. Once it dried completely, I sprayed a new coat of oil into the folds, let it soak in a while to make sure I had full coverage, and the re-installed the filter. I'm not sure if it is my imagination or if my VFR actually said thank you when I fired it back up. Everybody is always looking for more horse power - it may lie in a clean air filter!

A++ on the Airplane Stripper! I spent a cold February weekend in my garage with some tunes and a few beers and came out black-free. I gooped up one wheel, stuck it in a black plastic yard bag to help quell the fumes in my closed and UNVENTILLATED garage. I waited one beer, gooped up the other wheel, put it in another bag and then began scraping on the first wheel. I simply repeated the alternating process with very little trouble. The flat surface on your spokes WILL polish up shiney. The spokes on the 4th gens are very rough and can be polished but it takes an boatload of elbow grease for that job. I just left my spokes rough and polished the rims. SMART IDEA! - I put a drop cloth over an old door that I had layed across two saw horses to bring the work up to my level rather than knelling on the cement. I used eye protection, long sleeves, and gloves. Stripper is not to be messed with! DUMB IDEA - After finishing the job, I took my drop cloth out in the street to shake off some remaining paint bits. After shaking the drop cloth out, I felt a burning sensation on my neck and knew immediately that I had thrown a big ol' glob of stripper onto my neck. I had what appeared to be a GIANT HICKEY next to my Adam's apple for two weeks before the burned skin finally peeled off. Did I mention stripper is not to be messed with? uh... have another beer Colorado