In February I put a new chain and front sprocket on at 57,547 miles. A 16 tooth front coupled to a slightly used 45 tooth Super Sport at the rear. I also knew at this point I would retire this year as I’d accepted an offer to do just that from the company along with several other of my mates there. The grind of 80 miles a day commuting across Orange County into Long Beach plus a decade of business travel had me done with dwelling in a cube. Commuting like that five or six days a week makes a person not want to have anything at all to do with motorized transport come the weekend. We had also decided to sell the house rather than renovate the kitchen, floors and master bath. Big changes compared to swapping final drive ratios.
I never even took a photo of the swap. Weekends were mostly taken up with working on a friends house at the beach town we were planning on relocating to and our place puttering with the bits and pieces I needed to attend to there prior to the painters coming in then flooring people.
Here a lot of furniture and stuff meant for the friends beach place were stored in my garage. The stack would increase until my motorcycle would just fit with enough room to scoot sideways between it and the tool boxes and bench. Anything work I did required moving stuff out of the garage to the driveway or into the house.
By April I’d worn the TKC80’s to skins, so swapped a used Pirelli MT 90 A/T to the front and new tire to the rear after slicing the TKC80.
I managed to find a 140 rear Pirelli in town but none in the proper size of tires I wanted. The 140 worked fine on the bike.
In April, I installed my final lighting solution; a Cyclops 7000 lumens LED headlight.
This was bright enough to get noticed in morning rush hour for the few months I had left. I now had an exit date and the house was officially set to go on the market come May.
In May, I rebuilt the rear brake master cylinder. I now think that really only masked what was really the problem, the sight glass o-ring failure as is usual for these units. I wouldn’t know that for certain for another couple of years. But, I had a spare new master cylinder on the shelf.
I changed the steering head bearings out for new. The old bearings had some sort of goo that felt like semi-solid epoxy rather than grease.
Back together and ready to go. Well, after tanks and fairing.
I had also come up with a better placement for the Oxford Grip controller. I used adhesive transfer tape and some Mil-Spec Velcro to attach it to my fly screen at the left lower corner, above the dash.
It was also time for another oil and filter change so that was done as well. We were up to 61,776 miles now. We were both aging.
Then I got a chance to help shoot photos at the Sacramento Mile flat track races. Press pass.
I had a point my usual point and shoot digital camera along with a digital SLR with a zoom and my old FTb with both zoom and a big and slow 400mm lens from way back in the early 70’s.
It was a very hot day, we rode through hundred degree temperatures, splitting lanes for an hour or more through rush hour traffic.
Motorcycles under the lights are always flashy.
Once the sunsets, shooting without a fancy ring strobe is tricky.
The house sold in a couple of months and we moved to a small duplex where we rented one side.
I missed the old big garage, but that was now empty.
The challenge ahead was fitting it all into the new smaller space. The new space would get shuffled quite a bit before settling on where I am almost four years later. There is still some left to do. There always is.
A long days work got me to this.
We could get into and our of the house through the garage, but the second bedroom suite downstairs was packed nearly to the ceiling. There was a lot of stuff to find. More stuff to get rid of and plenty to figure out where to store.
When we had signed the papers to rent I’d asked the landlord if I could remove the shelving at the front as seen in the photo below.
I went from what you see above to the photo below in a day. It took another two days to get rid of all the removed wood.
Note the sketchy wiring mess at the wall. I would make that right and move the lighting, adding LED flat light bar. Not perfect, but better. I also repair the damaged sheetrock and replaced wall switches that were worn beyond function.
With the garage evolving to functional I was able to do a little more work on the bike as I found time between helping at the other beach house where renovations and modifications were just about constant.
In September it was again time for a valve clearance check, oil and filter change, and change the gear selector sensor o-ring that was leaking. I changed fork oil and front brake pads. New valve cover gaskets and spark plugs were installed as well. All the valve clearances were within spec at 65,883 miles.
In October I mounted a set of Golden Tyre 723 knobbies. These would serve for the 2017 Advrider Pahrump rally around the beginning of November.
Some of us went out and got lost for a while trying and failing to find the backpay to where ever it was we were going. I never did hear. Such is life when not wearing my hearing aids while riding. It was the ride we intended, but it was still a ride with fancy supercars roaring past on practice speed runs. We had fun.
The next day we rode out in a valley I forget the name of. More roads I like, but pretty warm weather.
Somebody grabbed a shot of me riding my motorcycle.
Back home in December my forks were sent off to Super Plush Suspension to be customized. This is something I should have done when I bought the bike, but never had time. With the forks in I sent the rear shock off and it was back in no time and back on the bike.
What an amazing difference this made to the bike. My first ride with the suspension settings and modifications was on the freeway. Perfect.
One of the last things I did in 2017 was replace the clutch shaft seal that began leaking. A simple fix.
The odometer reading at the beginning of December was 67,178 miles. Just before Christmas I rode out to the high desert for some dirt testing with the new suspension. The wind came up and got colder than I wanted so I cut my riding short and headed for home. But, not before grabbing a glamour shot of the 990R.
Along The Way 