Sooo, 1 month ride report, rode to work every day except for 2 days i was down with a flat tire... not too shabby.
She's been holding up really well. The flat tire thing, duh. I replaced the tube in the 19 inch front, then i put a Gazelle 17x3 that i happend to have laying around on the rear. She gets loose in grass and gravel but handles on the road much better. Plus its a Gazelle, so like, invincible for running over shit. Kinda goofy with the mismatch IRC GP1 trials front, maybe i'll switch the front to Gazelle (do they make 19"?) and go full road-style on it.
Spokes have been an issue, the spoke nuts are all rusted.. probably had 2 flat tires with water sitting in them because all the rusty spokes are on one side of each tire... bummer... broke one, rear is a bit out of true, but not too bad.
So my commute is about 5-6 miles of stop-and-go city traffic, then 15 or so miles of wide open with occasional stop light. She doesn't mind the wide open on the way into work, but when she has to do stop-and-go after being held WOT for 20 minutes, the clutch gets a bit cranky.
I switched over to 20w50 - castrol semi-synthetic with the cruiser picture on the bottle- and that has improved clutching significantly. My clutch pressure plate is also warped ever so slightly, so it drags and shifting is a bit notchy once she gets hot. I might move up to a gear oil, because clutch slip hasn't been an issue at all, or maybe try a full-syn 20w-50... the scratch on the crank seal bushing has resulted in it eating about 400ml of oil over the last month (not a big amount, but scary when you only have 750 ml total in the 'case) and i got a wierd grinding bearing noise when it got too low to lube the trans shaft. Put in more oil and the noise has completely gone away, i think it was just a free-running gear on the shaft that was rattling rather than a spun bearing... Took the case apart and no shine in the oil.
Anyhow... running wot at 55 mph, she seems ok but the top end just isn't there. I found an old post of Roald's where he says the pipe and silencer is restricted. The pipe chokes pretty abruptly right at 10,5k rpm, and there isn't much power over 9,5 (and no power under 7k) so I'm thinking about adding a pipe. The DT pipes are all for either the older engine (screw flange) or the newer AM6 motor, so i'm thinking about one of the cheap <150$ NSR pipes, since all the GPR/AM6 pipes are 200++
Anyhow, the longer i ride it the more i'm liking it. Once you get used to riding the clutch and stomp shifting, its not bad... Kinda like... learn to love the bomb ya know. She smooths out beautifully at 11k rpm, which i hit going downhill a couple times into work, so i think bigger carb, bigger reeds and the pipe would let me stay in the porting better. With 180+ exhaust duration, you can just feel the engine wanting to pull, but getting shut down because the pipe is too long and restrictive for the cylinder.
I could probably get a cheap boost just by bending out the reed stops, but they are steel and i really really don't want to shred them.
Its always like, get a bike, its stock, get it running good... buuuut... its just not quite fast enough... so you start adding shit, pretty soon you've got an time bomb screamer that shreds parts constantly ends up breaking something major, and you park it... damn... already going down the rabbit hole! Seriously though, this cylinder is ported to rev 12, 14k all day long and the trans, bearings, and everything else are set to handle it, but they have this shitty pipe that chokes it at 10,5... having no power on the bottom end, it just makes the power band too narrow. I don't think it can get any worse bottom end by adding a pipe... maybe i'll build one of j-bot's boners and use one of those trick magura choke sliders with the NSR pipe...
fun fun fun...
