Motorcycle – Page 20 – Not Your Average Engineer

February 8, 2010July 1, 2020

Superbowl Party Ride

Yesterday I got done early with my work and went out on a ride to Rick’s house to attend a Superbowl party. After the party and some Pictionary, I headed south back to Corvallis. The route took me through Scio and Silverton up the Cascade Highway to Oregon City. On the way back I used the freeways.

Total distance was 166 miles. I stopped in Stayton to buy gas where some Harley Davidson motorcycles had pulled up. They didn’t acknowledge my funny looking plastic-covered motorcycle. I took on 2.13 gallons of gas after going 100.3 miles. That gives me 47.1 MPG.

This was also my first ride with my new Honda-brand Regulator/Rectifier. More on that in another post.

My Route Map

January 31, 2010July 1, 2020

Back roads of the Coast Range

Today I blew off work for a few hours to go have fun on my motorcycle in the central Oregon coast range mountains. Out of the 150 miles I drove, I only hit really sketchy gravel and mud for about a mile total. FYI to all the sport bikes: don’t take Highway 411. Well, you can… but only if you want to have fun going up and over a tight windy pass in mud and gravel.

I filled up twice during the ride. The first fuel up I took 3.02 gallons and had driven 134.3 miles. At this fill-up I topped it off as high as I could for the coming ride. Even so, I still averaged 44.7 mpg.

The second fill-up happed about 85 miles later. I didn’t push the trip meter until about 10 miles after the first fill-up so I’m not 100% positive on the distance but it was something like 85 miles. Another top-off brought me to 1.66 gallons. That makes for 51.2 mpg. That’s not bad considering I was going slow along some sketchy back country roads.

Every time I go out and ride my PC800, named The Tardis, it’s like falling in love with the bike all over again. The Tardis might have a few nagging issues (need new clutch plates soon, back tire will need to be replaced sooner rather than later due to old rubber rot, underpowered stator, etc) but it sure is fun to ride.

In other news, I was having some trouble keeping my heated gear working throughout the ride. One of the outlets kept cutting out. I’m not sure if it’s an issue with the Heat Troller, the outlet, or the plug. Until I get some right-angle plugs for my heated gear I won’t be able to tell for sure.

My Route Map

January 30, 2010June 21, 2020

New antifreeze for the PC800

Yet again I put new antifreeze into the PC800. This time I put in Prestone Dex-Cool Extended Life. It is orange. Good thing there isn’t anything but Aluminum in my bike’s engine. The IPCRC was pretty set against the generic NAPA brand antifreeze that I had filled the bike with 500 miles or so ago. It seems that there is a high probability of that brand having silicates or borates in it. With the PC800, any silicates or borates in the coolant will slowly eat away at the water pump until it doesn’t pump anymore and you end up stranded at the side of the road with an overheated bike on a hot day.

Many of the crowd on IPCRC only use the Honda brand pre-mixed motorcycle coolant. I chose to get this Prestone stuff on the advice of a couple of the members. It explicitly states that it doesn’t have any borates or silicates in it, it was much closer and easier to buy the Prestone brand, and it was cheaper. I suppose I’ll find out if it was the right choice if my water pump goes out someday. Hope it doesn’t!

This servicing was done at a few hundred miles shy of 45k.

In unrelated news, my clutch is starting to slip when I really hammer on the throttle at high speeds and sometimes when trying to accelerate quickly through the gears. Hopefully I won’t have to pull the clutch plates and service it until I get 3k to 5k miles out of the oil that is currently in the engine. Probably around May I will do that job.