I haven't been blogging much lately - I'm a bit bored with it and have been trying to do more non-virtual activities.
I rode a motorcycle up to the top of Stevens Pass on Christmas Eve. The road was clear with a few snow flurries up near the top. There's a couple of feet of snow beside the road. The only challenge was finding a place that wasn't covered in ice or snow to turn the top-heavy Connie around. This is a poor quality iPhone photo I took up near the top
I took the Sportster out on Christmas day for a run to Snohomish and across the flats to Marysville to warm up the oil. I can get up to about 95 before the wind pushes my open-face helmet up to the point where it's annoying.
I ordered a pulse cover gasket Kawasaki PN 11061-1155 from Murph's kits for the Concours and plan to do another by-the-book valve cover adjustment before Spring is here.
There's two basic ways to adjust the valves on that bike - the by-the-book method involves removing the pickup coil (pulse) cover and using the timing marks to determine top dead center for the pistons. The other way is to leave the pulse cover on and adjust the valves with the cam lobes horizontal so the valves are closed (cam lobes not pushing on the rocker arms). I'm going to try one more by-the-book adjustment and see how the measurements compare with the looking-at-the-lobes method while I have the valve cover off.
Had the police bike out a lot since it's my everyday rider in the wet winter. I was thinking about painting it myself or having someone else do it so it looks less police-like. I decided against that since a decent paint job would cost as much as the bike and it would still end up looking like a painted police bike. It works for what I want to use it for and like any two-wheeler it's fun to ride.
