Archive for May, 2008
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
Pro-Oiler Installation on the 2006 F650 GS
Wow. That was not fun.
Fortunate for me Gary came in town to help me install the Pro-Oiler I bought from Belgium. The whole experience started on the wrong foot as Gary got a flat tire on Heather’s bike 60 miles outside of Houston as I was already another 50 miles on the OTHER side of Houston.
Long story short: Heather has a new rear TKC 80. Her bike now looks 83.41% cooler! Erm, I mean it’ll perform better offroad.
Anyway, onto the installation fun:
We tried tapping into the “Trip computer” lone wire that the chain gang people talked about with older bikes. For the record, it does not exist on a 2006 F650 GS. We tore apart the wiring nest up in the front of the bike and could not even find the properly colored wires with ANY connector on it. No success finding the “small, unused connector, with a single wire only”.
Then we tried tapping into the speedo sensor coming from the rear of the bike. We were unable to get a strong enough signal to register.
The final and successful attempt was not what we were hoping to do: Tap into a wire of the cable connecting to the ECU (Blue with yellow. I was really hesitant to do it but we had no problems isolating the wire and spliced it up… and it worked!! 47 was the correction factor, btw =]
Gary and I eventually got everything working. All was happy until I started putting the bike back together. I decided to see if I could weld the starter relay to the bike. See this little dot here? Well, that is where a MAJOR arc was created which blew out my starter relay.
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Monday, May 19th, 2008
Route ideas, meeting people, boxes fixed, new tires
Much has happened since I last updated.
After thinking it over a bit, I think I’m going to try fairly quickly through Mexico until the Yucan. I’d still like to goto Zacatecas and Aguascalientes, but everything else north and central in Mexico is going to be for another trip later. When planning, I think six months is a massive amount of time, but I have the feeling that when I get on the road, time is going to fly. Mexico is very close to Texas and I’ll be able to visit it as a long weekend trip, as opposed to say, Ecuador 
Through the HUBB, I met Wayne who is in temporarily in Houston with his wife. Wayne is my new hero. He and his wife are obviously into long distance motorcycle travel AND they fly a Cessna 180 (it is a tail dragger) all around the continent. Pretty cool. Anyway, he gave me lots of information about the countries he visited and forwarded some contact information along. Thanks Wayne!!
Last Saturday, I was going to Gulf Coast BMW to get some spare parts and saw a fully loaded big GS in the parking lot with a HUGE gas tank. I inquired who owned the bike and serendipitously I met Michael, a Danish Canadian who is on his way back from Tierra del Fuego. Pretty amazing coincidence. He’s currently staying at my house until he gets to have a technical behind-the-scenes tour of NASA. Sounds like it’ll be great fun. After Houston, he’s going to ride to Flordia and watch a shuttle launch. Awesome.
Back to the bike…. So spare parts. I have lots and I’m going to make a page about what spares I’m bringing later. I now have my front TKC 80 mounted and am going to wait to do the rear until just before I leave. Also, with the help of Michael, we were able to get my damaged pannier back on the bike. I don’t think I’m going to take it off again. I’m not 100% that it’ll make it on. There was some pretty serious convincing that we had to do to get it remounted.
Comments Off - Posted in maintence, planning by daveg
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Mexico Route Proposal
I’m trying to come up with a list of things to check out while in Mexico during my 6 month trip to Tierra del Fuego. Here is a list of route/cities/stuff in Mexico:
Starting in Houston
Brownsville
Ciudad valles
x badass swimming hole/road near!~!
Guanajuato (maybe)
x great colonial town. Been here before but try to find local riders there for mountain tracks
Aguascalientes
x multiple days with Friends’s family — a few days
Zacatecas
x revisit la quemada, colonial town, etc
Guadalajara
x stay a couple of days, find some locals to ride with
** Hang out in some pacific side beach town with good diving but not crowded????
** Somewhere else in southern Mexico
** Somewhere in Oaxaca
San Cristobal
x ????
Palenque
x Ruins
x ????
Mérida
x Check out Uxmal
x Chichen Itza
Buzz Cancun
Possibly take ferry to Cozumel
x scuba diving
Akumal
x more Diving
Tulum
x dive some more
x ruins
Akumal (diving!)
Belize City·
x Dive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Hole
Then to Guatemala from the north!
Basically, if any of you have any ideas for my ***’d sections, I’d greatly appreciate it. That.. or anything else I’m missing. I’m sure I’ll ignore this list and just wander like I usually do, but it is nice to have a plan.. just in case =]
Sorry about having another post without pictures! I swear, the next one will.
Comments Off - Posted in planning by daveg
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Shots, valves, and gereral update
I’ve been pretty busy at work these days so I haven’t had much time to update the blog. I’ll summarize:
I finally got the valves back in order — I did it at Motorcycle Exchange, which is located within running distance from my house. This is fortunate because I didn’t have a ride back home after dropping off the bike, so I jogged the 3 miles =].
Shots! I’m done with my shots and just need to get my malaria medicine lined up. I got my second round of Hep A/B (twinrx) and should be good to go even though I haven’t had my third round. Let the previous sentence not be the one that I regret.
I’ve started working on a route for Mexico. I’m open to suggestions you know anyone who’s traveled around Mexico. Thanks to Kevin I have a good idea of places to check out in the Yucatan area.
On the bike front, I’m busy pricing spares and trying to figure out what I’m doing to do tire wise. TKC 80s or Distanzias???? Also I realized that I can’t fit my right pannier on the bike after the drop I had on water crossing in the Hill Country. I bent the mounting rack just enough where the pannier barely doesn’t fit. I tried “convincing” the rail with a rubber mallet with no luck. I’m going to try to add some heat and give it some more love with my neighbor KTM Carl.