Alaska Sidecar Rally

It was a cold ride to Talkeetna. Overcast, a headwind and temperatures in the mid-40s (°F). This picture was taken at the south McKinley viewpoint. Needless to say, there was no view of Denali today. In Cantwell, I dug out the heated liner and ended up using the heated grips. Not expected.

But other than that, it was a nice ride down. Dan and his daughter had claimed a campsite at the city campground. When I arrived at 3:30pm, it was completely full. Driving through Talkeetna was packed with pedestrians. Dan pointed out that it was mostly tourists who arrived on the train and they would be leaving on the steady stream of tour buses.

Three sidecar rigs are here and we are all camped in the one campsite. Dan and his daughter Sophi, Bob and Sharon, and myself. We went to the brew house for dinner and it was a very long wait. This is the first weekend that they’ve been open.

Getting Ready for a Ural Trip

This is one area where the Ural shines. Luggage space. I'm getting ready to head to Talkeetna tomorrow for the Alaska Sidecar get together. It is a very informal gathering organized by Dan, the Alaska representative of the USCA (United Sidecar Association). We meet at the Talkeetna City Campground at the edge of town near the Susitna River. We meet there because Dan played softball and there are quite a few games here over the long weekend. I've missed this event for the last couple of years since we've been out of town with the RV so it'll be great to renew old friendships.

The campground doesn't allow RVs so I'm taking the Ural. All of my camping gear fits nicely in the footwell of the sidecar. The trunk has tools, food, and clothes. A folding camping chair is on the rear rack. It could fit inside of the sidecar if I wanted to re-organize things. Talkeetna is around 280 miles from here so it'll be an all-day trip on the Ural. This will also be the first trip with the tractor seat and the top box. We'll see how comfortable (or uncomfortable) it is. I don't plan on having much in the top box except water and snacks.

World Travelers

After getting back to Fairbanks, I checked the DeLorme page for CCJon and saw that he was in the Walmart parking lot. We had been texting back and forth since he had some sidecar and tug issues while on the road. I went to the parking lot and he and Nestor, his nephew, were easy to spot even among all of the RVs that fill the lot during the summer. Here, they are spraying chain lube on Nestor's chain after he arrived back from Deadhorse. Coldfoot to Deadhorse and back to Fairbanks in one day. Amazing. He has now completed the entire Pan American Highway.

I led them back to our house through all of the road construction that seems to be plaguing Fairbanks these days. He let me drive his extremely wide sidecar rig. The plastic marker is nice to have as it is easily a foot wider than the Ural and you can't see the fender while riding. Even with the weight and size of the sidecar, the rig is very easy to drive. At least for the short distance of the test drive. Tons of power even at low rpm and lower gearing. The bike is what felt huge to me.

After dinner, CCJon decided to set up and stay in the tent trailer since all of his gear is packed inside anyway. I had been really interested in his rig ever since I saw what he was putting together. It was built by Claude Stanley at Freedom Sidecars in Middleburg, PA. The tug is a 1000cc V-Strom with only slightly lower gearing than stock, leading link front suspension, and car tires. The support leg of the tent trailer platform doubles as the rack. The tent supports are then raised and his moto-RV is ready for occupancy.

Anyone who has tent camped while on motorcycle trips will really appreciate the attraction of this rig. Lots of dry storage and not sleeping on the ground. During the setup, I noticed that the anti-sway bar arm was touching the sidecar frame. And the suspension piece that determined the ride height of the sidecar frame was set to its lower limit. I.e. there was no upward suspension travel at all on the sidecar. We made a small adjustment the next morning and he will see if it upsets the handling. I expect that the pull to the right will be reduced and the sidecar to tug attachment will need to be raised as well. That would eliminate the slight lean in i.e. the bike looked like it was leaning towards the tent trailer. But, then again, I have no experience with rigs running car tires.

This is Nestor's V-Strom that made the Pan-American Highway trip. Still really clean and from what I heard, it has been a very reliable bike. Some of the gear was removed when this picture was taken. It was not seriously overloaded like many of the riders that I see passing through Fairbanks. The only preparation needed for getting on the road again was adding air to the tires after the trip on the Dalton Highway.

Here they are both packed up and getting ready to head south again without much of a break. CCJon's rig had developed a crack on one of the sidecar cross members which he had welded and reinforced. The welding shop recommended by DavidR did a great job. It looks stronger than it did originally. CCJon also plans to rebuild the clutch slave cylinder. It sounds like there may be some seepage in the slave cylinder when the lever is held in as he needs to regularly add hydraulic fluid. From here, they are headed to Haines to catch the Alaska State Ferry to Washington before heading back to Texas. The ferry trip should be a good time to relax as I think it's a five-day trip.

It was great to see CCJon again. I missed him the last time he passed through Fairbanks but caught up with him a few weeks later at the BMWMOA rally in Salem, OR. He mentioned that the next Sidecarist rally is in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, next July. I may have to add that to the calendar. CCJon is involved in the organization of the next rally and plans to check out the venue on the way.

Saturday - I just received a text from CCJon. They are in the very crowded town of Haines. Hopefully, they both get onto the ferry on Monday.

R60/5 Alignment

Tuesday morning, Brian came by with his R60/5 w/Ural sidecar rig. JedR and I had talked to him at the last airhead.org get together at the Howling Dog. While looking at it, it was arrarant that the sidecar wasn't aligned right. We gave him some suggestions and he did some alignment work. The sidecar frame is now level, lean out is 1° and toe-in is ½". Just about perfect now. Before working on it, he said it was leaned in and toed out slightly. He said that it still pulled to the right and suggested that the toe-in be increased until the pulling decreases at whatever speed he rides at. With the R60, that’ll probably be 50-55mph. 

Jed also brought his Ural by since it was making some funny sounds from the sidecar wheel. We had replaced the sidecar wheel last week and it looks like there may either be some pieces missing or it’s the wrong hub. The wheel was dragging on the caliper and the disc broke its mounting to the hub. The scraping damaged the bolt heads of the disc mount so an allen wrench no longer fits. We tried drilling them out and one of the drills broke inside the bolt. 

Misc Updates

Well, I spoke too soon. The heated liner and gloves have been put to use again. It was only 16°F on Monday morning though it did eventually warm up to just above freezing. Today's (Wednesday) challenge in addition to the cold was strong, gusty NE winds so if I was riding in any direction where the wind was from the sidecar side of the rig, I needed to shift my weight to the right. The sidecar was definitely wanting to fly today. You can definitely feel when the sidecar wheel unloads. The NWS was saying 19 mph winds with gusts to 45 mph. In the picture, the dirty snow behind the rig is actually a huge pile as there is a pretty steep drop off.

Before disconnecting the battery bank, I had one more minor piece that I needed to install and test. A small DC-DC convertor (circled in red) so I could run the Raspberry Pi directly off of the battery bank instead of through the inverter. There will be a small parasitic draw from the Trimetric monitor and the Raspberry Pi even as they are connected before the main cutoff switches. It looks like the parasitic draw is around 100ma. This would eventually drain the battery bank to 50% in ~3 months but the plan is to remove the batteries during the winter. The small white labels next to the breakers are to remind me to disconnect the solar panels before turning off the charge controller. And to turn the controller on before connecting the panels. I'm using the 50amp circuit breakers as DC switches. In the picture they are both "tripped" or "off".

I also had to disassemble the serial cable, grind down the DB9 connector and reassemble the cable with the flat cable coming out the other side so it didn't interfere with the charge controller cover. After re-assembly, I took the opportunity to not only test the cable but also the Dell netbook with a fresh install of Windows 7. It connected and recognized the MorningStar Tristar using their proprietary MSview software. The software allows a lot of control over the individual charge parameters. Right now I'm just using the defaults for flooded, lead acid, deep cycle. After testing, I realized that I should've taken the opportunity to shorten the cable. It came 6' long but I only need it to be 6".

Friday Evening - The system is now partially disassembled and starting to get boxed up. The battery bank is sitting in the truck now and time to start getting everything else sorted out and packed. I'm trying to figure out all of the tools I need to get everything installed. Everytime I go out to the garage I think of something else. Now that the pallet is empty, I can use the space to start sorting things into boxes. 

BBBC 2017 #11 and a Random Update

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

A national park you’d like to visit

We are still in the planning stage for our road trip are thinking of visiting a lot of national parks. Unfortunately for this particular challenge, I've been to just about all of them at least once and for many, multiple times. Except one. Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. In all of my travels, I just never had a reason to go through that part of Colorado. It looks very interesting and hope we are able to go on some of the tours through the ruins. To help with this, I reserved one of the few RV sites so we can leave the RV air conditioner running for the dogs. Dogs are not allowed on any of the trails or visitor facilities within the National Parks.

And just a random update, I removed the sidecar from the BMW as there is someone in Fairbanks thinking about installing it on one of his classic bikes. It sort of has the look of an old sidecar without the associated price tag. I was going to remove the subframe from the BMW and most of the sidecar specific wiring mods. I probably won't remove the auxiliary lighting switches as those are built into the fairing pockets.

Road Trip to Anchorage

Wednesday morning was clear and sunny and there was a great view of Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, from the Parks Highway monument. The mountain was out for most of the day though afternoon clouds covered parts of the peak later in the day. We were heading down to Anchorage for a couple of days as I am attending the ARIN Road show. ARIN is the American Registry of Internet Numbers, the same group that you would request IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and ASN (autonomous system number) for you business or ISP. I'm not really sure what to expect from this meeting but it was hard to pass up the opportunity. BTW, we are driving the Prius and not on the sidecar. Way better gas mileage…

After checking in the hotel, we had some free time and headed down to see Mickey, the owner of Mickey's Muffler aka Slick Mick Manufacturing aka Classic Motorcycles & Urals of Alaska. He mentioned that he only had two 2014 models left in his annual allocation. This grey Gear-Up is one of them and the other still in the crate is identical. He had just recently returned from his training session on the new model and had a lot of positive comments about the EFI system though he still feels much more comfortable with carbs. He had asked where I had seen the 2014 model Ural before and as soon as I mentioned Colorado, he said "Redlegs?" with a smile. So, Dom, you are warmly remembered.

Bridget was wondering about the ride so she went on a ride with Mickey on his demo reg. She said that mine felt like riding on a jackhammer by comparison. He didn't have the windshield on so she thought that it was a bit breezy.

No deposit down, no purchase but maybe next year.

 

 

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2nd Annual Alaska USCA Campout

This weekend was the 2nd Alaska get together of the U.S. Sidecar Association (USCA) in Talkeetna. I had gone down last year and it is a very unstructured, Alaska type of non-event. Just an opportunity to sit around the coffee pot and talk. In this case, much of the conversation would be centered around motorcycles and sidecars. This photo is from the Parks Highway Monument again just outside of Fairbanks.

At the McKinley View turnout at the southern end of the Denali State Park, I stopped to see if the mountain was visible. All except the peak could be seen but some of the closer peaks are just as spectacular. Plus it was a good opportunity to stretch out and relax my arm and back muscles. Even though the alignment is pretty good, the rig still takes quite a bit of effort to turn expecially the sweeping left turns when cruising at the speed limit.

While parked here at the turnout, a number of tourists were looking at the rig when I returned from picture taking. They had all sorts of questions about sidecars and many had quit riding once they got older. After about 15 minutes, their bus started it's engine and they rushed back so they wouldn't be left by their tour group.

When I arrived late Friday afternoon, there was only one other sidecar there. Dan, the Alaska USCA rep with his Yamaha Venture and enclosed sidecar. We spent the evening being entertained by his daughter and her friend setting up their tent and other activities. And the music from the next campsite which continued into the night. Thank goodness for ear plugs.

The next morning, I went on the search for a coffee stand and walked all through the small town of Talkeetna. There were lots of tourists getting off of the train and tour busses at the edge of town as well as locals attracted to the craft markets, art shows, live music, softball tournament and other activities going on in town during the holiday weekend.

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day for wandering around town and stopping in the shops. I managed to not buy anything (except coffee) and even managed to ignore the home made ice cream and fresh baked pastries. There were lots of bikes rumbling through town. I think that many came up early for the ride to the Alaska Veterans Memorial on Sunday.

Shortly after returning to the campground, two more sidecar rigs joined us. Bob and Sharon on the R1200GS with DMC sidecar (with all of the options!) and Dieter and Karen on their BMW which redefines the work "hack". We went into town to have lunch at the Wildflower Cafe and do a little more wandering with the tourists before returning to camp. Be sure to follow Bob and Sharon's trip this summer along the Pacific coast with their GS rig. They posted quite a few photos of the get-together on their blogpost.

Here is the 4th side car rig. The frame is from an R60/2 with engine and transmission from an R90S and though you can't see it in this shot, the side car is a Ural. Other items are Harley mufflers an a modified leading link front end. It was modified to clear the front of the engine as the R90 engine and transmission is a bit longer than the R60 it replaced. I think the conversion was very nicely done though he mentioned that the BMW purists cringe when they see the rig. The /2 is the last BMW that came with side car mounts from the factory.

It had rained most of the way back to Fairbanks on Sunday so no pictures and I had forgotten to charge the GoPro remote so no additional videos either. I'm not sure that I would survive a long road trip with the sidecar as after only 250 miles on the road, my arms, fingers and upper back were pretty stiff and sore.

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Farmers Market is Open!

Saturday was the first day the local farmers market. No fresh produce but there were plenty of vendors selling garden related stuff like seed potatoes and small plants. Plus plenty of art and food vendors.

I ended up riding the rig to the market twice both times with different passengers. The first trip was with Bridget and the second with my son, Kyle. It was obvious when my son was standing on the sidecar step that the soft spring on the sidecar dramatically changes the tilt of the tug. This would really affect the handling.

So, I messed around with the sidecar alignment some more and violated the primary rule of debugging, I made a whole bunch of changes at one time. Initially, I had removed the sidecar windshield and got back the neutral handling with no passenger. With a passenger, it was still much better than it was on Sunday. I'm amazed at the difference the sidecar windshield has on handling. I then swapped out the sidecar spring over shock from the Progressive unit with the one that originally came with the sidecar. I had installed the Progressive unit since it has a much softer spring and I thought that it would ride better. The original one is much, much stiffer and even with a passenger, it doesn't compress very much. This shock is also about 1" shorter than the Progressive unit that I had been using so it reduced the lean of the tug slightly even with no load. I increased the length of the upper struts by two turns and restored the lean to around 2°. With these changes, I gave my son a ride to the farmers market and the steering only pulled to the right during acceleration but was relatively neutral. And is still neutral without a passenger. Maybe I'll put the windshield back on for another test.

Side Car Alignment

That is George Rahn standing next to his Royal Enfield with Cozy sidecar. He thought that the high steering effort that I felt on Sunday's ride was a unusual and wanted to check the toe-in. Last year when Dom was visiting Fairbanks, we set the toe-in to about ½". George feels that it should be about 1.1" to 1.25". He then brought in a BMW factory service manual which covered the installation of a sidecar onto a /2. The BMW manual explained how to measure the toe-in (which is the same procedure that Dom and I used last year). And it listed the spec as 1.1" to 1.25".

Today's measurement was ½" so it hasn't changed at all over the last year which by itself is excellent news. We also measured the toe-in on his RE rig and it was 1⅛". This evening after returning home, I measured the toe-in again using my equipment and it was still ½". I adjusted the front lower heim joint in by 4 turns which increased the toe-in to 1.1". This also required the front upper strut to be shortened by one turn. I'll try it at this setting for a while to see if it makes a difference. The lean out is still 2° measured at the rear disc.

When you use a similar procedure to measure the toe-in on a car, you would take the measurement and divide by 2 to get the to-in spec. This is because the toe-in is specified relative the the center of the wheel.

In case you have never met him, George is acknowledged to be the local BMW guru and has been riding and repairing motorcycles longer than just about anyone around here. George is very generous with his tools, knowledge and time and is well known in the riding community. He also used to own the BMW dealership in Fairbanks, Trails End BMW, but is now the Royal Enfield dealer.

Skyline Drive

This video was taken from the sidecar on Skyline Drive, just west of Cañon City, CO. Ever since I first heard about it on Dom's blog redlegsrides.blogspot.com, I had wanted to see the actual road. We went there last Saturday on his Ural sidecar rig, Scarlett. He had generously offered his immaculate '87 R80 airhead for me to use but since I hadn't really ridden on two wheels since October 2012, I passed on his offer. After all, this may not be the best place to learn how to ride on two wheels again.

I wasn't able to capture the entire road as I quickly ran out of memory on my phone. The original was captured at 1080p/60fps and I have never looked for a way to change the default resolution. The transitions were added as we stopped several times along the way for pictures.

I really want to thank Dom and enabling spouse, Martha (the smiling one), for their wonderful hospitality. They opened their home, banished one of their children to the couch, and gave me the run of the kitchen. Plus, all of the transportation around Denver and beyond. Plus, a loaf of wonderful chocolate chip-banana bread to tide me over at the conference.

This is the highway on the way to Denver International Airport at ~6:30 Monday morning. A nice sunrise developing on the horizon and a surprising (to me) amount of snow. The highway itself was clear but most of the surface streets were still full of clumpy, slippery snow.

By the time my flight left, it was blue skies and they persisted most of the day until I caught up with the storm at my destination. It has been raining here most of the day, I'm told, but it should be clearing up by tomorrow. It rained during the hour+ shuttle ride to the hotel and on my walk to grab a bite to eat. I found a middle eastern place only a half mile or so from the hotel and the food was very tasty.

This was taken at the airport and should give a hint to where I'm at for the rest of this week. 

Colorado by Ural

Yesterday afternoon, Dom aka Charlie6 of redlegsrides picked me up after the Internet² Global Summit conference ended. We took off early this morning on his 2014 Ural, Scarlett, and headed south towards Cañon City and Skyline Drive. I had always enjoyed the videos that he has posted of this road and was anxious to see it in person. I believe that the The mountain in the picture is Pike's Peak but not 100% positive.

This arch is at the entrance to Skyline Drive and as you will notice from the sign, it is a one way, very narrow road. The next several pictures are from the road including one of Dom and his new ride. I took video with my iPhone but haven't figured out how to upload the edited video from the iPad to YouTube. So I will post it later.

After Skyline Drive, we headed to Royal Gorge. There was a large fire about a year ago which burned 48 out of 52 structures. After repairs to the bridge they just started to allow visitors but only on buses due to all of the construction. The bus stopped in the middle of the bridge to allow folks to get out and take pictures.

While we were at the overlook on the far side of the gorge, another bus stopped mid-span on the bridge. Pretty impressive structure that was completed in only 7 months in 1929.

There was a steam locomotive parked which, I believe, used to be one of the displays.

 

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Replacing the Pusher

Friday evenings motorcycle maintenance task was replacing the rear tire. As you can see, it is worn out and near the end of its useful life. I didn't expect it to last as long as it did at almost 4,000 miles. This was also an opportunity to try out the tire levers that I had picked up last winter. The first step after jacking up the bike was removing the left muffler. Supposedly this doesn't need to be done but it makes it much easier to get the wheel off. After removing the wheel, I used the bead breaking setup that I had made up last winter using a couple of 2x4's. Removing the old tire was surprisingly easy and only took a few minutes.

My new rear tire is another Heidenau K60. It has a really stiff sidewall and I expected it to be difficult to get on the rim. The first bead was no problem and after inserting the tube and putting in a little bit of air, I attacked the second bead. With the help of a little water and dish soap, my son, Kyle, and I got the second side on. This is a really stiff tire and it took a lot of weight to get the bead on one side to drop down into the center trough of the rim. But once it did, the rest of the bead popped right on. I was careful to align the paint dot on the tire with the valve stem as it is supposed to mark the heaviest part of the tire. It took about 40 psi to seat the bead with a couple of satisfying "pops" and I aired it down to 38 psi.

I dug out the tire balancer and ended up removing all of the existing weights and adding only ½ oz to the other side. This is a far cry from the 5 oz that the sidecar wheel and tire needed and this is by far a much heavier tire. Once the weights were added, it was a simple matter of reinstalling the wheel on the bike, putting the caliper and muffler back on and bolting everything together again.

The final task of the evening was studding the rear tire. Last winter, I used some screws with hardened heads but they needed to be replaced every couple of hundred miles on the rear tire. This year, I am using carbide GripStuds that I ordered from Aerostitch. I hear that they will last through multiple winters. I installed 52 studs for now and will see how they do. According to the weather guessers, our next snowfall will be on Monday. It probably won't stick but I want to be ready for it. I'm still trying to figure out what to do on the front as there isn't enough rubber on the existing front tire. There is still plenty of tread left but not quite enough for the 11mm studs.

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