You can barely identify the brown grass showing in this picture but it really is there. The afternoon temperatures are above freezing though the early morning lows are still around -6°F. Even though Spring is supposed to start tomorrow, I don't think it will really be here for quite a while. Maybe mid-April. Still lots of ice on the sidewalks, in fact a little more than before due to the warm days, so still minimal walking outside. I still seem to be doing fine walking around, in fact, on Monday, I walked 10½ miles around the SeaTac (I had a long layover). Still no real issues with my sore knee. It still feels a little weak after a lot of miles but it has felt like that for quite a while.Yesterday afternoon, I spotted an old Kawasaki riding towards the Parks Hwy in the late afternoon. I don't think that I will be able to get my bike out for another month or so due to all the snow and ice in our driveway and subdivision roads. I still have more work to do on the bike anyway. This weekend, I plan on adjusting and greasing the swing arm bearings, replacing the front and rear brake fluid, engine oil, transmission oil, drive shaft and rear drive oil, adjust the valves and lube the rear drive spline. That should be just about all the maintenance I need to do at this point. I still need to pull off the exhaust headers to try and get a good look at the exhaust valve seats to see if there is any evidence of valve recession. So far I haven't seen any evidence in the valve adjustment changing rapidly but it doesn't hurt to get a better look. I needed to remove the exhaust header nuts anyway to put on a coat of high temperature anti-seize. I've been reading a lot of other blog posts about people out riding some complete with video. Makes me feel a bit jealous. Just a bit....
Saturday afternoon - Another "Spring-like" day. Temperatures worked their way up into the mid-30s (°F) and lot of water flowing into the parking lots. I only walked 5 miles today since I was "volunteered" to help with a spaghetti feed fund raiser at the high school. Entertainment was provided by Cold Steel, a local steel drum band, shown here setting up. I think that there may be some food left over since the early turn out was pretty light. This must not be my month for computers. When I turned on my PC at home, there was a "pop" when something blew in the power supply. Instead of ordering a new power supply, I just pulled out the hard drive and put it into another old PC we had laying around. After booting up and installing a bunch of drivers, I'm up and running again. Maybe it's time to retire this machine as it is about 6 years old, still running XP and all I normally use it for is going on the Internet and accessing network devices around the house.
Richard:
ReplyDeleteI think isolation and lack of local dealers forces you to be more self sufficient, which is a good thing. I have always wanted to learn more about mechanical things and understand what I read and who others have to say, but there are tricks to everything and unless you are actually doing it, you don't gain the experience. I think if I could look over your shoulder to see what you are doing, then I could attempt it myself. Regular maintenance seems easy enough but it is simpler for me to just bring my bike into the dealer, then there are no questions as to warranty issues.
bob
bobskoot: wet coast scootin
Thank you for stopping by. I guess that I have a distrust of dealer service departments. I think it's because I used to work at one. The goal of management always seemed to be crank through as many jobs per unit of time and do barely justifiable warranty work. I have more confidence in my own work.
ReplyDelete