Valves are on order and ought to arrive at the parts counter of the Suzuki dealer in "three to five business days".  A canvass of local parts suppliers and websites indicated that Vesrah doesn't sell exhaust valves for the GS1100.  So instead of the seventeen dollars per valve I was hoping for, each bloody Genuine Suzuki Parts valve is $33 apiece.

I was so hoping I wouldn't have to go that route.

On a brighter note, Paul told me the camshafts were fine.  That saves me $600 right there, so I'm happy about that.

To celebrate the fact, and also because the V-Strom needed an oil change, I buzzed up through the beautiful cool California noon to the Garage for some quality time alone with tools.  A bicycle race was on its way up the highway; traffic stalled in clots moving at 15 mph.  It was time to smell the sage and mustard.

Up at the shop I pulled the drain plug and let the Strom's oilpan dribble for a couple of hours whilst I scrubbed viciously at the 1100's pipes and mufflers.  My gosh 25-year old crud takes forever to get rid of, withstanding various combinations of degreaser, brass bristles and steel bristles.  I was eventually able to penetrate to the chrome, but there is still a lot left - and the chrome underneath is pitted and rusty.  I discovered that the starboard exhaust pipe was actually broken at the bottom clamp mount; probably from that lowside on the dirt road, the one where nothing happened to the bike so it was dusted off and ridden home.  The pipe is not completely broken off; it's hanging there by about an inch of steel.  I hope it can be welded back to utility.  (Yes yes pictures would be nice but my camera is somehow the last thing I think of when planning a mechanic afternoon or morning)

One more thing. I promise not to hog the spotlight here.  Really.  For the current alignment of stars gives me more time to play with my toys right now than my dear compadre who, unlike myself, has a family and an actual life. He'll be around.

Well, after getting all motivated about a new blog concerning all things mechanical and the bittersweet labor involved in keeping our old hunks of iron street-able, I have proceeded to neglect posting anything! My excuse is too many visitors staying at our house and that fact that I am currently on vacation...but even a busy vacation hasn't completely succeeded in keeping my hands free is grease...

I showed my little brother how to rebuild a carburetor over the weekend, and afterward struggled for a couple of hours in an attempt to revive a forlorn MG Midget---unfortunately we found out that the car won't run without the air pump, which went out in the trash a few weeks ago---oh well, it was no good anyways.

Later that day an old and dear friend showed up with his new bike (new to him anyway): a battered, flat black 1999 Kawasaki Ninja 600, the one with the hottest engine from that year, with a polished frame and rims and a fresh top end. He pushed me to take a ride, and I couldn't refuse. As soon as I got out on the open road I practically wept over selling my old bike. There is nothing like being astride a fast motorcycle at sunset with a straight, empty stretch of road yawning so welcoming in front of you. It wasn't even a question whether or not to redline it at every shift---which is 14,500, by the way---you don't get a chance to ride something like this often. I backed off at 140MPH; I do have a wife and baby on the way after all...

And that's it for now; when I get home, I will relate some of the woes surrounding the rebuild of my dad's '69 Nova, which I was supposed to drive North this trip to give back to him. That car is a pain, but my love for it endures...I just don't want to be responsible for it anymore!

I unzipped the two front zippers of my convertible jacket and pulled the phone from the chest pocket.  A message showed from an unknown number.  Odd.  I pulled the jacket off and hit "voicemail".

"Hello this is Paul at Paul's Motorcycle, phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx.  When you get this message please return the call."  

I dialed. "Paul.  I'm returning your call.  What's up?"

"I wanted to let you know I got the head disassembled and there are some parts you're going to need."  Wash of relief.  He got to it.  He finally got to it. Now I don't have to get to him.  I don't have to go through the pain and agony of finding another machine shop.  Hallelujah.

"Alright, what parts?"

"The exhaust valves are toast.  At least four of them are beginning to crumble.  You'll need to order four of them for sure.  Vesrah is your supplier.  You can get them through CalCoast or through Cycle Gear, they should be able to order them up for you."

"Vesrah, eh?  I'll get all eight for you.  Do you need them before you can do any further work?"

He did.  Couldn't grind valve seats without the valves to match them to.  I promised to get him the parts asap and hung up the phone with a grin.  TIME TO START SPEEEENDING MOOOONEEYYYY!!!!! WHOOWEEEE!!

No idea, you, dear reader, have no idea how long I have waited with trepidation for The Word, the signal to start ordering fresh new parts.  No idea how many anxious weekends spent disassembling (four weekends) and wondering to myself How Much Will It Cost.  Projecting worst case analyses, scanning through parts catalogs and websites, wondering, calculating possibilities.

And now I know. One exhaust valve costs about 25 bucks.  I'm replacing all eight, which means 200 bucks.  The valve job itself will cost $320, or two months' kittied wages.

If I don't have to replace the camshafts.  If I do, a set of slightly hotter street cams (Webcam) costs about $350.

(Nobody said this was going to be cheap, although I must admit crashbox's original guess of $150 was a bit off)

So here I am, poor again but stoked.  Things are finally moving along!  Now by July maybe I can afford to take the jugs and crankshaft in for THEIR doctoring.  

In the meantime, petty cash will go toward getting the tank stripped and clearcoated, the tail piece and front fender sanded and painted, pick up some bar-end mirrors and bullet turnsignals.

...fingers drum on the desktop....

...the phone sits silently, smirking....

Paul said he'd call me Friday with the verdict on the cylinder head for the GS. Now it's Monday, and I haven't heard anything. Anything.

I suppose I ought to introduce this project properly before I go talking about it. My "other" ride (in addition to my daily driver Suzuki V-strom 650) is a 1982 Suzuki GS1100E. The 1100 was once the fastest production motorcycle in existence, and a pretty comfortable mile-eater too. It has a top speed of 141 mph (professional driver on a closed course) and I have personally put over twelve hours on the saddle at a go.

The GS has been showing some age. She began to leak oil in copious quantities last fall, and a blip to 7000 at idle would produce a nice plume of smoke. Rings, valves, lord knows what else. With over 80,xxx miles on her, last January I decided it was time.

It was not perhaps the most cost efficient decision, and sure as hell not the most time-efficient decision, but I determined to rebuild her rather than junk and replace the motor. I do not have the tools and certainly not the expertise to do much more than disassemble major parts like carbs, head, jugs and crank and then give them to someone else to finish.

So right now "Suzi" sits in pieces in someone else's garage while I run around trying to find SOMEONE competent who has the time and is comfortable with refreshing a 16v Jap motorcycle head.

Evidently such a machinist is harder to come by than I expected....

I made a discovery today.

A species of motorcycles I thought long extinct, the renowned British marque Royal Enfield is alive and healthy and still producing brand-new motorcycles according to an old design - in India.  Not only that, but they are exported to the United States, and can be purchased at your local Royal Enfield Dealer.

Well, if you don't live in California, that is.  This motorcycle and its 1940's iron single-cylinder motor does not meet CARB emissions requirements and is therefore not legal in this state.

However, Royal Enfields may be purchased in any number of other states, including my own home state of Minnesota.  There is a Royal Enfield dealership in Mankato, Minnesota, a small town where, incidentally, my grandmother was born and raised. And it somehow tickles my fancy that perhaps that dealership was around when she was a girl.  Perhaps they were around back then, selling motorcycles to corn-fed teenage boys who had saved their paper-route money for five or six years to buy one, then raced each other on Friday afternoons up and down the gravel roads, scaring the ducks.

Why would one ever want to buy one of these things?  Why? A Kawasaki KLR250 dual-sport is available for $700 cheaper at $4,200, puts out the same 22 horsepower and gets the same 75 mpg, and has a modern and thoroughly competent suspension, and is reliable to boot.

But a KLR250 hasn't been around for 59 years, and isn't produced by the oldest motorcycle manufacturing company in the world (motor bicycle manufacture began at Royal Enfield in 1901).  A KLR250 is built out of aluminium, not iron.  It has all this newfangled stuff like disc brakes, electric start, and transistorized ignition.  Rebuilding a KLR will cost more than $40, and repairing it on the road will probably require tools more advanced than a rock, a piece of angle iron, and coathanger wire. Not to mention that the front and rear tires are NOT the same size and hence are more difficult to buy in bulk.  The KLR probably can't carry a family of five like the Enfield does, day in day out, in its adopted home India.  And finally, there's no way in hell you can play-pretend holiday in England on a Japanese dirtbike with a square headlight....

10:35PM may not be an ideal time for me to be posting on imprfctd.blogspot, especially when I have a final tomorrow, and another one the following morning---but I can't resist a short note on our new space. All are welcome, and I hope we can provide some humor as well as useful thoughts on owning and driving and repairing the obscure, old, or just plain absurd. After denim.rider's beautiful intro, I'll have to sharpen my pencils for a great post, but for now, simply: cheers!

beginnings

The late afternoon sun shot a dappled beam through the orange trees onto the dusty black-white checkered floor. The garage door was open and it was almost 5 o'clock. Almost quitting time, almost time to go home. Silence reigned in the orange grove outside the shop and a springtime wind scented of citrus wafted by our nostrils. I leaned back against the weatherbeaten paint of the Volvo station wagon and cocked a foot against the rear bumper.

"So dude, we have to come up with a name for that sticker of yours."

DC nodded and pulled at the cigarette. A curl of smoke blended itself into the sunbeam's haze inside the shop.

"It's so much more than just another sticker idea though. A good name should really express what we're about. And we're about a lot of things. Simple things, old things, fixing them and keeping them running, but all the while keeping up the hot-rod spirit, adding that little bit of art into it, you know."

"You're right, we have to think of some themes; daily-driver, simplicity, homemade, but with a hot rod attitude. Maybe not quite the hot rod spirit of total performance though."

"That's not to say performance will be entirely left out of the equation. I mean, I'd like to supercharge the sedan, and you're talking about putting hotter cams in the GS."

"True, but I don't NEED more power. Neither of us needs more power just to get back and forth to work...but there is something to stripping the machine down and giving it that little bit of edge."

* * *

A few weeks passed after this conversation. Nothing would come. No good names. I couldn't for the life of me come up with a concise word or phrase that captured our attitude toward our rides....but today DC pulled me aside.

"I've got the word, dude! Try this: "imperfected" but leave out the last e."

And there it was. Homemade, cobbled together from new parts and used parts, simple and raw always with that quality of daily-driver practicality, but also with a pinstripe or two, polished rims or painted valve covers to keep alive the hot-rodder in both of us. Always a work in progress, always a new part to add or an old one to repair. Imperfect'd indeed.

And so Imprfctd.blogspot was conceived as a way for us to chronicle our projects, the blood, sweat, tears and joys...and equally important, the ideas and links and resources we come across along the way.

So welcome to the garage! Enjoy your stay, and we hope you find something fun or useful.