dirt bikes ! - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

01/15/2011 02:57:38 PM · #1

oh yeah - they are fun - they are dangerous - they make lots of noise - they smell really cool - and yeah - sometimes they need work.

so i got a 1986 honda xr100r ( 4 stroke ) that needs some TLC...

i've cleaned the carb and jets well, changed the oil, cleaned and oiled the air filter, replaced the rear brake shoes ( and they work ), got the springs in the foot pegs working again, replaced the throttle cable, and some other minor things. have new rear wheel bearings i've yet to install.

i can get it to cold start ( in a vermont winter ) with 5 or 7 kicks. not bad IMO.....

it's not fouling plugs, but the POW the throttle should have is lacking, and i have thought from day one it was a compression issue ( or an air leak )... i think it's the former at this point - unfortunately.

here's how it sounds at this point, after a warm start. you can hear it sputter some if you listen close.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0vhT76kTk4

shot with an HTC droid incredible BTW.

the issue i have now is i think the seal between the cylinder head cap, and cylinder head is bad. ( looks oily bewteen the two ) and i don't want to pull it apart if i don't have to - before knowing what else i might run into once it's removed. ( i know the gasket will be shot - already is i think. ) but i don't have the cash to have the head machined - never mind a cylinder bore, and new piston, and rings. i could afford the piston and rings - but the not cost of having something properly machined. and no sense replacing the piston and rings, etc with a scored cylinder, and a warped head...

it's an old bike, so i don't think i'll have much luck finding 'good' used parts - especially in VT.

thoughts, comments, your own dirt bike stories... have at it.

Message edited by author 2011-01-15 15:19:44.

Art Roflmao

Canon EOS-6D Mark II

01/15/2011 07:35:39 PM · #2

Originally posted by soup:

thoughts, comments, your own dirt bike stories... have at it.

I have lots of stories (and a few photos) from my very early years.

Got my first bike around 1974. A used "Steen" Hodaka 100. Steen made the weird frame and put a Hodaka 100 motor in it.

I was short and most 100-125's had tall suspensions and this was more the size of the popular XR-75 that all the cool kids had. It has a fiberglass fuel tank and a weak fork stop. The day after my dad bought it for me, my parents went out for the day and foolishly left me and my brother home alone. We took the bike out in the culdesac and my little brother ended up running it into a telephone pole and bent the fork stop and caused the triple-tree to put a sizable gash in the fuel tank. >:( Got it fixed and I got a good year or so out of it before I outgrew it.

My Dad's bike was a brand new 1975 Yamaha Enduro 175.

I "borrowed" it often and when I was 13, I discovered that it could not outrun five police cruisers chasing me through a residential neighborhood on a four mile, high-speed chase that ended with me wrapping the handlebars around a lightpost. 55MPH on impact, no helmet, head-first into the steel pole and get this: NO DRAIN BRAMAGE! A few stitches in the head, some bruised thighs - I was in the hospital for a few days, couldn't walk for a few weeks, was in juvenile court a few weeks after that for the list of violations I racked up during that episode.

I worked off the damages and within six months got me a used Honda Elsinore MT125.

My dad used to take me and my brother on riding / camping trips with his buddies who were MUCH more experienced riders. We used to camp at a place called Clear Creek which was an unofficial riding park of massive proportions. By this time, my dad had bought himself a Yamaha 360MX - wasn't long before I had my eye on that thing.

So after a year or so, we were out riding and my dad took a nasty spill and suffered some massive bruises and kinda gave up riding for awhile. So I took over his 360MX, tore it down, cleaned it up, painted it, put new fenders on it and had it looking pretty good.

My dad thought it would be a good idea to enter me in a Hillclimbing race in Hollister, riding this thing. So, the day before we left, I was getting it ready - took the carb apart, cleaning it and I had unknowingly dropped the float in backwards. When we got to Hollister and unloaded the bikes, I tried starting the 360 and it would not start (carb float in backwards = throttle wide open). Tried bump starting it but couldn't get a good enough run, so dad hooks one end of a tie-down strap to the back of our 175 and the other to the handlebar of the 360. He gets on the 360 and I get on the 175 and he tells me to pull him. I tow him along, picking up speed and he pops the clutch and the 360 starts up and goes ballistic - he passes me and I know that is not good because his front is tied to my back. When the tie strap caught up, it spun me around and sent me sailing through the air. My dad was just slammed down hard to the ground and the engine was still at full throttle and the back wheel spinning. I landed back first into the spinning back knobby wheel and smacked my hand on the frame. My back was bruised and my finger was broken. My dad was in pretty bad shape as well. We camped out, but I did not do the hillclimb. Good thing, too because when I saw the hill and the other bikes (specialized, extended swing arms, etc), I knew I would've had some serious problems getting through that alive.

Well, there's a few to chew on. I could write a book. ;-) Enjoy your bike if you get it running well enough. I have long since given up riding - not necessarily by choice - just life and priorities.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

01/16/2011 01:07:18 PM · #3

some good stuff there. you ought to write a " How Not Not Ride Dirt Bikes for Dummies ' book :)

this is my first bike since i was 16. sold my old suzuki before i went to college. also used to ride a suzuki 4 wheeler, cr125's, and then some. then never had the money to mess with them again.

no this got dropped in my lap, and am trying to rework the old neglected piece back to life.
wish i had a vid/audio of how it first sounded - even though it ran - it sure as hell didn't want to.

being january in VT, i have some time before it warms up. going to fix the snowblower today, and clean the exterior of the bikes engine in prep to disassemble - and assess...

as far as stories go - i don't have pics unfortunatley...

i used to race BMX when i was 8-11 or so. and my friends and i built a practice track in the woods next to my house. it was great fun. then we got older, and started tiring of the pedals - got motor bikes, and used the track to tool around on for that. we also had a four wheeler. 125cc i think. a bomber no brakes at all... etc. all in the shifting....

well one summer day - i think i was 13 - i hear the four wheeler running around the track, but was busy doing something else. a couple minutes later i hear a yell, and the sound of a four wheeler running 4th gear with no resistance. it was screaming ! i look toward the track, and see my buddy lying on the backside of a tabletop jump with his feet in the air holding this screaming machine up by the handle bars with his feet... keep in mind it has no brakes.

he was trying to flip it right side up before his legs gave out. in which case it would have just taken off on its own... so in the mean time - i run down there, and hit the kill switch. i wasn't strong enough to pull it all the way back onto its feet ( you'd have to seen the poistion, and angle of the slope ).

so i tell him i'm going to lift it and then let it drop - and he best not be under it. it worked out, and we bent the handle bars back sort of straight, fixed the sticky throttle - and eventually brought it to its grave - though still lacking any sort of brakes.

--

the old suzuki i had also had no rear brakes, and was my "car" from when i was 9 until i actually got a car. it's how i got to work and back - among other things.

anyhow. one day i was cruising down a dirt road in the fall - coming to intersection with the "main" road in town. now - i had this trick down - look thru the trees for incoming traffic, and if there is none - don't slow down.... hard to stop a bike quick at 50mph with front brakes only...

so i look - clear - until i start to round the corner. a semi truck is bearing down on me - horn blaring.

so i have two choices.

1) jam the f'r into 1st, and hit the front brakes. ( likely resulting in me sliding across the paved road before being run over by a semi ).

2) shift into 5th - and hit the throttle ( the choice i made - phew !! )

i'll never forget - and rear brakes are one of things i've already repaired on this new / old bike :)

--

this isn't really a bike story - but related.

a buddy of mine used to race some motocross. we would have to get up really early to travel to the events, and then travel back afterwards. this time we were headed back from southwick, MA after tuning two bikes the night before, travelling a few hours, dealing with the event, and heading home.

at this point in my life i hadn't driven a standard transmission car.

so we are in the middle of MA in bumper to bumper 65mph traffic, and the truck he was driving -w trailer starts to merge across 5 lanes of traffic - we get to the slow lane - and i look over - and my buddy is sleeping at the wheel.... so i grab the wheel, and i whack him in the chest to wake him up.

crisis averted... but he tells me he can't drive anymore. understandable.

but i haven't driven a standard i say.

eh - it's easy - we'll practice in the breakdown lane. ( three speed 1978 chevy pickup ).

so i get the thing going 60 down the breakdown lane with a trailer attached, and there is an exit upcoming... time to merge this bitch into bumper to bumper moving traffic. UGH !@

so we made it home - all the way in third gear - i think w/o stopping at a single intersection...

needless to say - i've not any issue driving a standard since. an almost crash course in learning to drive standard.

Message edited by author 2011-01-16 13:07:41.

Art Roflmao

Canon EOS-6D Mark II

01/16/2011 06:34:34 PM · #4

When I first started riding in the 70's, Bruce Brown just came out with "On Any Sunday" (featuring, and funded by, Steve McQueen) and I think that sparked much of the popularity. In the mid-70's, some of the popular bikes were CZ, CanAm, Bultaco, Hodaka, Husqvarna, Maico. Only a few of them are still around or still making bikes. The Suzuki RM was just coming out and one of the first I can remember with the high suspension. By 1980, it was pretty much Suzuki RM, Yamaha YZ, Honda CR and Kawasaki KX. Also, the only four wheel dirt vehicle I can remember was the Honda Odyssey ATV. 3 wheelers gained popularity in the 80's before they were banned. :(

My Dirt Bikes for Dummies story continues from below in 1979 when I had a decent job and was able to get a loan and buy my first real racing bike - a 1980 Yamaha YZ250G.

I raced at several tracks in Northern CA and went to Hollister quite a bit. I also used to take it out in the fields and hills in my neighborhood. One time I was out riding wheelies, showing off for my girlfriend who was taking pictures and I would wheelie back and forth across the field at increasingly higher speeds. The last run was 5th gear, wide open. She snapped this pic below just before the bike got away from me:

I fell off and hit the ground, curled up and just tried to maintain a controlled roll. The bike flipped over backwards and then was flipping end over end right next to me and ran over me twice before it finally bounced up and crashed down sideways right on top of me. You can see the tire marks on the cracked helmet. I thought I had the wind knocked out of me and I sprained my knee, so I hobbled up and tried to get my breath. I picked the bike up, started it up, got my girlfriend to get on and rode home (about half mile down the street). When I got home, I still couldn't breathe. My parents were out of town (they always were when these incidents happened) and I had my next door neighbor take me to the hospital where they found that my left lung was collapsed. Spent 3 days in the hospital getting it re-inflated.

Wow, I am surprised how much detail I remember. Thanks for letting me ramblinisce. ;-)

Message edited by author 2011-01-17 18:19:43.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

01/20/2011 06:02:29 PM · #5

i had a suzuki rm80 i think. though it was orange - not yellow like the pics i could find. when i got too big for it - i put some 125 rear shocks on it to raise it up a bit. that made it a pretty wild jumping bike. i think i got that when i was 9... i don't have too many crazy crash stories. though i did take a number of decent spills.

one was not long after i put the big shocks on the 80cc, and the first time i went to jump it. i was on the track i mentioned we made, and came up to one of the table tops which was on the back side of a gully. so come into the gully, hit the gas on the down part, and up onto the jump, the extra height on the back end threw off the front to rear balance of the bike, and i essentialy started to do a front flip ( like the back end kicked up like a bronco ). i got about verticle - nose down ( the point of no return ), and shoved the bike to my right while jumping myself to the left, and into the brush.

the best spill i can think of - though i didn't get hurt - was in a honda odyssey. a couple of people in town had one, and there was a track around a corn field - where we would race. on a misty fall day we were tooling around the track. the track itself was relatively dry from riding on it, but the long grass on the inside edge was pretty wet. i was ahead, and came around the last turn a little tight, and going waaayyyy to fast. i took the corner well on the inside, on the wet grass, and started to slide sideways - until i hit the track again, and instantly stopped sliding, rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and maybe once more - stopping upside down near the pig pen - which also happened to be the finish/start line... thank goodness for the roll bars... no helmet...

not a dirt bike spill. but similar. my neighbors used to have the orginal kawasaki jet skies, the ones you stood up on ( they have been banned i think ). they had a 550cc, and a 440cc. i was around 8 or 9, and would race the owner ( an adult ) on the 440, while he rode the 550. because i was lighter, i could usually take him on the smaller ski. CT river, summer evening. no boats out. nice glass like water. we race a few times, and do some slolum thru the water ski bouys, and decide to call it a day. i come up toward the beach at speed, and hit the kill about 100' from shore. i'm light enough that i don't really bog the machine down into the water much at all, and the water is like glass. when i hit the kill, i didn't slow down at all, but because there was no more jet i also couldn't steer it. so i come screaming toward the beach kneeling on the thing - and straight up onto the sand across some beach and into a thick mass of pricker bushes. stopping dead and slamming my face into the handle bars. thankfully they were padded. all the adults come running over, to see if i am alright, and also ask me why i kept the throttle on... i was like i killed it at the dock... it just wouldn't slow down.

another BMX related wipe out... seeing as spent most of childhood on some sort of two wheeled vehicle - i was pretty good on them. one day i was up the hill at my buddies house, had walked up because i was working on my bike. we decided to go for a swim. so he hopped on his bike, and i stood on the rear frame, with my hands on his shoulders, and down the hill we went. i was wearing sneakers, and shorts. we got to probably around 30mph down this hill, and he hits a stick or something in the road. the back end kicks a little, and my left foot kicked in a little placing my toes in the spokes - and flinging me off the back and onto the pavement - sliding on my ass. i ended up with a road rash on my right check the size of a large cantaloupe that took the entire summer to heal, and skinned my right ankle bone nub thing to the bone. all the nerves in that check were' F'd up - so if i sat down ( on my left check ) my leg would just jump up and down, and twitch. so the entire afternoon ( until my mom got home ) i spent walking around the house in tighty whities to prevent annoying leg twitch :)

when my buddy was racing mx, i was his "mechanic". so at middleboro, southwick, et al i would get a track pass, and could go out onto the track. that was pretty sweet. being right on the track as they all came flying by spitting up dirt and mud.

Message edited by author 2011-01-20 18:06:57.

Art Roflmao

Canon EOS-6D Mark II

01/20/2011 07:06:15 PM · #6

Sounds like you were much luckier (read: more skilled) than I was. LOL. When I reenlisted in the Navy (living in San Diego, CA), I spent my entire reenlistment bonus (and then some) on 3 new motorcycles - all Yamahas: A 1984 YZ250L, a 1983 YZ125K (for my wife at the time), and a 1982 Yamaha Maxim 750J.

We used to ride at this big area in Chula Vista and I raced my wife's 125 a couple times at a place called Indian Dunes if I remember correctly. My last race there, I missed making a double jump and nosed into the second jump, slammed my chin into the crossbar, wiped out, got up, picked the bike up, jumped on and finished the several laps left in the race. But as I took off, I looked down and saw a lot of blood dripping onto the gas tank. I finished in the bottom half and then had one more race to do that afternoon. When I got back to my truck, I saw that I had a nice gash under my chin and it was still bleeding. A couple paper towels and some duct tape took care of it.

One time while riding with friends, I went off a jump WAY too fast and there was not enough room to land before hitting a fence, so I laid the bike over in mid-air and was going to jump away from it, but didn't make it and came down with the full weight of the bike on my left leg, shattering my ankle in several places. That was the only time I ever broke any bones. I ended up cutting the full leg cast off above the knee after 2 weeks and then went riding in the mud and trashed the cast completely 2 weeks after that and cut the rest of it off.

I also did some Jet-Skiing down in San Diego. I'll save some of those stories for another time. :)

Cory

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM

01/20/2011 07:40:24 PM · #7

Got my first 3-wheeler @ 3 yrs old, rode them until I was 17..... - dangerous fun. I used to think I was indestructible, still lack respect for them, so I try to stay off anything that doesn't have doors. :)

01/23/2011 09:05:27 AM · #8

well riding on the roof of a car isn't exactly a safe thing to do either - at least bikes have handle bars to hold onto... :)

Originally posted by coryboehne:

still lack respect for them, so I try to stay off anything that doesn't have doors. :)