A Place To Rest My Feet

Well, we were trying to paint the tank over the weekend but the skies had other plans for us (that's another story), so me and Unnamed_Artist (why he is called that also in the related other story) decided to take a look at my plans for my footpegs.

Now, the forward control footpegs for a standard Modenas Jaguh is a crappy short rubber thing that can fold upon impact (loved that function when I was leaning into corners skidding and sliding the rear tyre coz ur running on the sidewall.). this function is quite good as if you fall (and survive), you don't have to ride home with your leg hanging off the air (IF you still have your leg).

So anyway, im sorry I don't have a pic of the original footpeg from Modenas (should anyone want to take a pic for me and post it up, I would be greatful.), I removed the footpeg and wondered what I could do with it. I stared at it day and night for many days (although this bike was in planning, there are times I forget to plan for small stuff like these). I then decided I like the BMX pegs for stunting (being a fan of XGames). Yeah Yeah, most in Malaysia will tell you that it has been done… but they buy them cheapo short pegs.

It took me a long time to source for those pegs and finally I had gotten real BMX pegs from a pro shop in KL. These were sorta made for them XGames and stuff, so they are made of some strange aluminum material and are much longer then them normal ones you get from those dime shops here. Then my headache came. I had no idea how these pegs were installed. Later did I find out that the thing had HUGE holes to fill and if I wanted it steady I would have to fit the correct nut and bolt on. Which I did. Problem one solved. Problem 2, how do I get it on the bike: most people told me that the only way you can do this is to weld it on permanently, this meant that it will not swivel, hence the problem (not a problem if you fall and are in d hospital, but ANYWAY…). I was NOT happy with that solution and did not want to just be like the average Malaysian that will just roll with it since they thought it can't be done. After more time to bang my head over this (I had ample time… since at the time, my bike was sitting collecting dust coz someone couldn't admit they couldn't do it.), I had finally figured out what to do. Why don't we cut off the metal supporting bar, leave the swivel point and weld a nut on it so we can bolt the part on? GENIUS!

Well, that's what I thought till I brought it to the Unnamed_Artist. He looked at it, weighed it and gave me that look. It's the look you get when you realize someone's master plan is going to shit and you are the one who has to break the news to him. And so he did… he gave me that look and went "dude, its aluminum" while pointing at the swivel point. My heart stopped as I realized the nut I wanted to weld is made of cast iron. For those who didn't know, aluminum and any other metals can't be welded together. Well, you can, but if you gave it a knock, d bolt will come flying out.

We sat for awhile and came up with a NEW plan. Instead of welding the thing, we will need to thread it. And in the heavy rain, we drove to the Unnamed_Artist's machine man and got it machined to perfection (car guys don't leave things to chance. Its all done with precision).

We bolted on the pegs and the next day I hooked it onto my bike. Yummeh!!! I'm happy!!

The sliced off part minus the hole

The Side View

The HUGE peg

Installed on the bike

By Vy

How to extend wires.

This is a tutorial on how to splice wires for extension purposes. This will be very useful if you wish to have a higher handlebar or maybe to relocate certain ecu's or other devices.

Fig 1: find the wire you want to extend and cut it

Fig 2: skin the wires meant for extension and also the ends of the wires you want to join.

Fig 3:Split the shrubs to 2 halves. then twisty twisty!!

Fig 4: do the same to the ends that need connecting.

Fig 5: put the 2 ends together (preferably one facing the opposite direction so it doesnt look too retarded)

Fig 6: pair up the 4 ends and twist it.

Fig 7: once done, join that two and twist those up too. the figure out which cable is harder (not all wires are made with the same stiffness.) and bend to the direction of the harder cable.

Fig 8: this is what it looks like when ur done.

Fig 9: Tape it all up nicely individually. Remember that when taping, pull the tape tight, no point having it loose coz it will slide down and cause the wires to be exposed.

Fig 10: tape the taped parts together, just so its stronger together.

Some may ask: "Why don't you just splice it the normal way any jack does it?"

Answer: That's why they're called "Jacks" (think abt it.. its short for something). But the real reason is because there are things that you can live without like a failed indicator or something. But then there are things you Can't live without. Like a non functioning ignition system when you are taking a turn at 120KMh. This holds it down strong. Even the taping is done the way it is to ensure that it doesn't rip off and cause you to crash just cause you got lazy. And believe me, I almost ripped up the wires because I didn't have the patience. If you wanna do it, then do it right.

By Vy

Sputt Sputter

While waiting for the weekend to come, I thought I'd just share something thats NOT related to my bike.

I had recently made friends with a dude from euro some time back. named Ciprian. He owns a pretty snazzy blog... while I was down, he was one of the people who actually told me to hang in there. And his bike too was taking a long time to get running. When it finally did, his enthusiasm really got me off my ass and wanted to finish mine too. Here is a vid of his bikes crazy idling. I love super "I'm so low in revs im gonna die, but not really" sounds of pipes.

By Vy

Tank on FIRE

Well, theoretically, the above statement is true. After so many months of heartache and disappointment, one would only expect me to do such a deed to my bike. Right? I mean, more then once I was THIS close to giving it a petrol bath and lighting a match in an empty place near my house.

However, with the process going well, not so smooth (even peanut butter has a chunky side), things have been better. Now, I don't think I wrote exactly what happened, but in the process, some lazy ass decided not to bother with my ideas and said that the fuel cork on the original location of my already tilted and RAISED tank would not cause my tank to waste gas. Well, OBVIOUSLY IT DOES. However I didn't know that till much later on so the tank was painted, negative decals stuck on, sprayed over and taken off.

Since the swingarm is ready, this "little" flaw I saw in the tank was driving me up the wall and I HAD to fix it. In fact, there was another thing about relocating the fuel cap too but I wont do that as of yet (I'm broke). Well, other then just doing shit with bikes, I was (I think I mentioned it before) very much into cars and street racing. Hence I got to know a lot of people and also was somehow introduced to this guy who is now my official car club mechanic. Now, "what does a car dude have any place to be in a bike world?" one may ask, but not many realize that fabrication shops (aka engineering/cnc shops) know no such things as the difference between a cars ported block, nor a custom made bush for some funky wheels. To them, its just metal. A body panelist (aka panel beater) knows no difference to a front car fender to a fuel tank he needs to weld.

SO, my good friend The MadDriver of Maddriver's Garage had brought me today to see a friend of his who is a, erm… how do we put this… a "body reinforcement specialist" who does very well in making stiff bodies for cars etc, for what use, lets not go there… so we left it with the guy, told him what we needed to do and went on our way to eat lunch.

When we came back, I saw he was still welding, but to my amazement, he was not using a MIG weld or an ARC welder. He was torch welding!! With some funny gold colored bar. I later realized that he was torch welding my tank with copper. Its funny coz someone once told me that you cant weld metal to bronze. (then again, this moron told me my rear brake cant be mounted.. see pic). It was further explained to me that for fuel tanks, copper is best used and apparently flame welding is the weld of choice. I would presume as it would melt the thing and seal any gaps whereas a MIG, TIG or ARC would be a flash dry sorta thing.

So looking at him do my tank, I realized he scorched the paintjob. And to make things worse, he took a grinder with a steel brush and blended away the side of my tank!!! Upon me regaining my consciousness (I'm joking), he explained that there are potential leaks. He had generously helped us patch it up.

Leaving, I felt great satisfaction on looking at the work (yes its considered good, you just need to sand it down abit), I guess my MadDriver must have seen the heartache in my eyes about the paintjob so he had offered to help me out on that.

Brother man setting my bike ablaze

There was a potential leak

All done, original location welded Primary and Secondary Fuel Cork Port Welded

By Vy

We're Swinging In The Right Direction:

Wasn't feeling too hot on Friday, so I took a day off from work. Just as well too as I had to run some errands and check on the bike.

Went over there with low expectations as I had been disappointed so many times by other morons. When I reached there, I saw that the guru was not in. He had gone for Friday prayers. So I went home, got some rest and came out again later. He was telling me that he didn't have time to check the wiring for me as he was bogged down with too much work. I was quite fine with that as I wanted to do it myself anyway. I checked the weld work and I must say, I was not disappointed. He did a great job! Yeah he needled me about how this wouldn't have happened if I didn't waste my time with the other monkey with a stick, but I guess it was a nagging that was coming anyway. I must say that any future modifications will definitely be going to him for difficult work. He is, after all, the best in his line.

The amazing work done by Eone

After being happy about the great work, it was time to call my friend who was supposed to help me with transporting the bike and later on with the swingarm. Several calls and smses that were not replied later, I finally got him and he had just bluntly told me to get other transports. I was quite unhappy but I sorta was expecting that. So I just sms-ed him telling him that I will do just that and will remove the swingarm and pass it to him as he had agreed. -again, no reply.

So I set on my way looking around for trucks for hire to get my bike to my house. Then it occurred to me that I had this contact before when we were moving stuff to my best friends house before. I called, and they gave me a good price.

Saturday morning arrived and the truck was due at the shop at 11am. Now, for those who are NOT from Malaysia, you need to understand that when an agreed upon time is set with any service people, expect it to be about 1 hour or more later then you agreed on (learnt this the hard way). Me on the other hand, although I know this for a fact, I tend to like to be early… no, not on time, but early. So the wife and I tried to be slow by driving like old folks and even having a slow breakfast, yet, we reached there before 11am. Hanging around for like 10 minutes, to my surprise, the truck driver actually made it by 11.10am!! it was a miracle!! So I paid the head mechanic of the shop the agreed upon amount (coz d guru was late) and proceeded to load up the bike on the truck.

On the truck all tied down

Happily, we crawled along the highway (I don't know why but the damn truck didn't wanna drive more then 70kmh on a highway) and after driving so slow it felt like we were going backwards in time, we made it to the house.

Checking the rear tyre and the look of the swingarm, I realized that the guru had not just fixed the swingarm, he improved it by grinding off a lot of access and rewelding some parts. He had also taken abit of time to lower the bike by moving the tether point of the absorbers… so there I was admiring the crossmember he made and the little chain adjusters when I got a message. It would seem my friend had taken a day to reply me with bad news and didn't bother calling. I later found out that he decided he had better things to do and he didn't bother telling me before hand. Being slightly annoyed, I packed up and left for the day thinking what else could go wrong.

It was a Sunday morning at this point and I was getting ready to go over to the house to see what I need to do to the bike. The subject of the day was "electricals". Yet I was still thinking to myself what else would go wrong. The answer: NOTHING! The wife saw I was quite unhappy about the swingarm thing coz I didn't have the tools and if I were to sand it down by hand, it would be another decade before my bike is done. As I was buying another exhaust pipe to cut up and then later at the hardware store, she told me to pick a rotary sander… her excuse: coz there will be a lot of wood work that needs to be done for the house when the bike gets moved out (that's another story for another blog btw).

Happily, I bought my sander, went to the house and sat there for half a day trying to figure out the wiring, fixing all that needs to be done and found afew fuses that needed to be replaced. I will have a major operation next week as I need to get the low tech ecu and some other things moved to a different location.

Brought back the tank to the other house so I can get the twin fuel cork done up before the weekend.

Just before I wrapped things up on Sunday I decided to test the sander. It was amazing! I had messed up the paint job on my fuel cap because I had used really crappy paint on it with no primer. And at the rate I sand things, it would have taken me forever to sand it down to bare metal. The rotary sander is so good, it removed the paint to bare metal within 5 minutes. This will be my favorite toy for awhile. Now, all I need is an air compressor and a welder…

More to come next week.


Note:
If anyone wants to build parts to mod your bike, make new frames, build a bike from scratch, please feel free to contact Ewan from E-One bikers. this is da man!
E-One Bikers
Tel: - +60126549343
Address: No 1 Blok B, IKS Kampung Pandan, Jalan Linkaran Tengah, 55100 Kg Pandan KL.

P.S. If you noticed, i never named the guy working on fixing my swingarm. Now that its done, here are the details. This is so I don't recommend the wrong place if things go bad for me. (That is unless the guy messes it up so effing badly)





By Vy

Imagine:

The weekend is here.

You wake up, get dressed, get comfy.

You pack a bad and the saddle bags with only what you need for unknown amount of days.

U hop on. The engine roars.

Riding down the highway, looking at everyone in the jam.

Noticing trees and how the air smells

You lift your visor, feeling the wind on your face, the breeze moving your hair.

You close your eyes, lifting your hands as if they were wings.

You imagine yourself lifted into the sky as if you are soaring.

That is freedom.

By Vy