Only a Few More Days

We are approaching the summer solstice and the Weather Underground app has this cool graphic that shows not just hours where the sun is above the horizon but also first and last light. Currently, they are both stuck at 2:00am. In some ways it almost looks like summer though this mornings 45°F temp did have some wondering if they missed Summer. I had a lot of errands to do this morning and at the hardware store, there was a German tourist looking at the Ural. It turns out that his as an R100T and was thinking about putting a sidecar on it somehow. He prefers being able to go more than 100 kph (62 mph). That UDF was about 15 minutes.

I was at the hardware store to pick up a couple more 3mm stainless steel washers (hard to find) to raise the carburator needles up a little bit more. The needles control the mixture at mid-throttle and I would occasionally get a little bit of "popping" while just cruising down the road. I had told myself that I need to stop messing around with the rig and just get ready to go so I'm not sure I'm going to change things. If I get more popping while on the trip, at least I have the option to add them. The one thing that I probably should do it to switch the pusher with the sidecar tire. Compared to the sidecar tire, the pusher is pretty worn and this way I'll be starting the trip with an almost new rear tire. I want to leave on the mud tire as I initially will be heading for D2D.

D2D, aka Dust To Dawson, is a moto non-rally that really only exists on the Alaska regional forum on ADVrider.com. Their definition of "non-rally" is that no one is in charge and no one is charging you to attend the event. They still have a schedule of events, a dinner, and t-shirts though you have to pay for all those things individually at the non-rally registration tent. As long as it isn't raining, the Top of the World Hwy should be in pretty good shape. It has been a muddy mess in the past. This is last years group photo taken at midnight.

Friday Evening Update - Here are the two rear tires, the sidecar one is on the right and the pusher is on the left. You can see why I swapped them. Both of these tires have almost 10k km on them or about 6200 miles. Tire life isn't as bad as I had been expecting.

I had mentioned the special tool that one of the SovietSteed members had come up with. Since I was switching wheels I needed to readjust the brakes especially on the pusher. The first step is inserting the axle through the tool and through both wheel bearings. then set the caliper to the diameter of the inside of the brake drum. Then remove the axle and tool being careful not to bump the caliper.

Then install the axle and tool and using the other side of the caliper, measure the brake shoes. With the adjustment nut near the loose end of it's range, adjust each brake shoe so that it barely touches the caliper. Once both shoes are adjusted, remove the brake adjustment nut, put a little bit of high moly grease on the hub spline and install the wheel. And just because I could, I readjusted the wheel bearing (it didn't need it). Then just tighen everything up.

At the auto parts store, I found small tubes of high moly grease. These small tubes fit the small grease gun that I've had lying around for several years and will go on the trip. Like the bottles of oil, it'll ride in the ammo can installed under the sidecar trunk.

Posted with Blogsy