Termination Dust

Part of this weekend was spent at Twin Bears camp along Chena Hot Springs Road at a men's retreat. Friday was cold and wet and you could see a slight sheen on the roads from the ice. These pictures were taken on Saturday afternoon and it was beautiful and it would've been a great day for a ride with temperatures venturing a above freezing. Quite a few guys brought their four wheelers to ride on the trails but I settled for walking around the lake taking pictures and just relaxing.

Twin Bears camp

I'm headed back to Barrow this week and it just seemed to be a good time to just relax. As you can see from the frozen lake, the temperatures have been well below freezing for a while and if we get a good snow fall, it may actually stay for a while.

Sunday brought a bunch of "termination dust" (as they call the first snow that will probably stick around) or at least enough to make the roads really slippery Monday morning. Several vehicles in the ditch just on my short commute. I guess it may be time to park the bike and get started on some of the repairs. Looking at the valves through the exhaust ports last spring showed the edges starting to thin. This usually points to the exhaust valve receding into the head. Valves and valve seats need to be replaced, not a job I have the tools to do. I did find a shop to do the work in California so I just need to pull the heads, package them up and send them down. I've heard a lot of positive comments about the shop on the airheads.org mailing list. There were also a lot of warnings about having the job done at a dealer since most of them don't have any staff familiar with these old engines. The valve recession issue is fairly common with early 80s BMW airheads due to the elimination of leaded gasoline. Newer years had different metallurgy in the valve seats and smaller diameter valves which apparently eliminated the problem. Or at least that's what I've read on the Internet...