Wanderlust

Uhhhff I`m getting old... I`ve been meaning to write this for a full week cause I`m still feeling the consequences of last friday...


Every once in a while at summertime I get the urge to go for a night ride. I don`t take the heat too well and last friday was I believe even officially the hottest day of this summer so far. That added to the fact that I`ve been pretty stressed out lately due to several reasons I decided it`s time for another nocturnal adventure, and this time I will be needing a considerably heftier dosage than before. So I opened the google maps, looked for somewhere I had not gone to before and asked for some tips on good roads on the way from here to there on a Finnish biker forum.

I set the vector to a place called Taalintehdas which is a small town between the cities of Hanko and Turku on the southwest corner of the country, right at the seashore. Well, the original destination actually was Kasnäs beside it but never got there for reasons stated later...

I made arrangements with the wife that she will put the boy to bed so I can get going a bit earlier since there was quite a distance to be traveled, I packed the bike and took off at 8pm.

The first hundred kilometers I mostly knew, apart from one detour that I was tipped about so I rode that part somewhat spiritedly to get into the zone so to speak, until I reached the city of Hyvinkää, or more precisely the ABC service station at the outskirts of the city where I had the first stop since I can ride the bike approximately 100km at a time before I have to stretch things out for a few minutes.

After takin off again I was quite happily surprised since I have been on the station a dozen times before but never left before to the direction I was about to head this time. I even killed the music so I can concentrate more on the new road and just enjoying the views and the curves.

The blessing and the curse of the Finnish summer nights is pretty much the same thing, apart from about one or two hours it never really gets dark here at all. It`s much cooler at night time naturally and specially on the smaller rural roads the traffic pretty much drops to zero so IMO it is prime time to go riding. Having the entire road to yourself, enjoying the warmth changes on the hilltops and the bottoms of the valleys, and smelling the grass and the crops on the fields as the dew slowly sets into a vale of thin mist at the low spots. You get nothing of that when you`re driving a car.

I had never before ridden the road that I was riding, and it proved to be quite a twisty lil bugger so I took my time and just cruised around enjoying the whole ambience. And what a road it proved to be, I actually shook my head a few times after riding through an awesome stretch of curves meandering amongst the fields through the countryside thinking ok this has to straighten after that, only to discover another set of even more awesome curves following the treeline at the edge of a forest going up and down these little hills. I chuckled to myself that I would not have been surprised if I would have seen some houses carved into the hillside with round doors and a sign saying SHIRE after the next bend. Just breathtakingly beautiful!

There`s time for movies and videogames but show me a game that can beat this. It doesn`t show in the picture but the road follows the treeline all the way and beyond the little village at the left side. Not a soul in sight anywhere, just me and the road. And bear in mind that this picture is taken somewhere around 11pm. If someone wants to look from the map I`m somewhere near Vihtijärvi @ 132 or 133.

Even though I very rarely put any waypoints into the navigator I like to have it with me on these longer trips just to be able to scout anything interesting, like I did a little before I arrived to karkkila. I noticed that the main road that I`m riding takes a long right turn, which can also be driven through a smaller road through the inside, so a quick glimpse to the mirrors, no one behind, slammed on the brakes and turned to a tiny gravel road I`m surprised that was on the map in the first place. At first I thought about turning back when I arrived at a logging area where the harvesters had mangled up the road to a point where a streetbike would have had no business there, but I figured dammit I`ve been through worse, stood up and let `er rev through the barely recognisable path that once was a road. When the path cleared up and I could sit back down I had to make an another abrupt stop.

    Sometimes it takes a full tank to think straight or some other clichè would fit nicely on the sky. I actually took one pic a little further up but decided that just maybe the internet has enough of those as is...

I sat on that bench for a good ten-fifteen minutes just listening to the nothingness and not thinking about anything, until my meditation was abruptly stopped by a swarm of hungry mosquitoes that came at me like the state prosecutor so I had to pack up and get going again.

Here`s some summer night magic for you, click to get it bigger. It`s quite a feeling to stop at a roadside, have a look around and see that it`s night and day at the same time! And again, apart from the one teen merc that I had a few glimpses in my mirrors prior, not one living soul awake withing kilometers. Pic taken at 23:50

After Karkkila I more or less followed the old Turku road beside the motorway to get some distance and found several interesting places that once surely were worth stopping at, but now lay vacant at the side of the road because the motorway had killed the traffic. Several old dance places some built right at the side of beautiful little lakes now just rot to their places with no purpose.

These were a common sight as well, the gas station had been turned to automated but the station itself had long closed it`s doors. Kind of sad and yet an interesting insight to a time that once was. Tickles my ruinspotting nerve.

Tempted? I don`t blame you...

By the time I reached Perniö hunger was starting to raise it`s head and I had planned to go grab a bite at the ABC station there but it had already closed by the time I got there, so I had to ponder my next move a bit. Would I enter the Kemiönsaari island where my ultimate goal lies and risk I`ll not be getting eats for a good while yet or will I continue forward to the next city, but I had decided that I want to taste seawater on this trip so I headed left towards Kasnäs. I didn`t take pictures from the island cause it was getting somewhat dark and there wasn`t really anything interesting to photo anyway. I never actually reached Kasnäs cause my navigator, to what I had actually put a waypoint, claimed stubbornly that the only way to get there was to grab a ferry from Taalintehdas. I had looked from the maps that there is a road and was told it is quite beautiful to ride but I was starting to get a bit weary after riding for several hundred kilometers already, it was the only dark moment of the whole night and I was getting properly hungry so I decided to park at the marina, go grab a handful of seawater, take a sip, tasted salty and petroly by the way, put on my long sleeve shirt from the tank bag and took off. It was not until the city of Salo where I actually found a grill that was still open at 2:30 when I got there. I ate a burger and drank a can of energy drink while perusing the map for a while, decided since I`m about 300km away from home and it`s realy getting late I`ll be gunning through the motorways back home and took to the nearest onramp. After riding for several hours in a row at 150km/h through the slowly rising dawn on a bike with no front fairings my shoulders and back were killing me, still are as I write this actually, by the time I reached home at 4:38 after riding pretty much consistently for eight hours and 571 kilometers. I didn`t get to the 600 mark since I never got to Kasnäs but I still broke my record of riding within 24h. I gotta say a little shorter trip would have done the trick but it was well worth it. Not gonna do anything like that again in a short while though, took me almost a week to turn the rythm back to somewhat normal. Now to bed, G`night!

Regroup

Didn`t have the patience to have a day off from this, when I`m on a job I just gotta get it done or I don`t get peace from it. So after work I went back to the paint store to get a new bottle of the black primer. After I took a little spin in the car parts shops I headed for the motorway and towards home.

...which is when the skies opened. The speed limit on a motorway here is 120km/h, it was bucketing down so hard all the cars were driving 70. I`m not entirely sure have I ever been so wet wearing riding gear before. Although it was only 30-ish km:s it was NOT nice! But hey, my summer leather gloves don`t press anymore!

After a shower and a fresh set of clothes I went back to the garage armed with a new can of primer and some advice from the paint shop lady. "Paint is expensive, thinner is cheap. Use lots of thinner" she said. So I did. Brushed it into all the little nooks and crevices to make absolutely sure no residual paint stripper would still be lurking anywhere. I let them dry for an hour to give the thinner enough time to vaporize, and hit the cage with the primer again. This time it stuck on. Trying to get an even coat on a tubular 3-D object is not exactly easy, took me the whole bottle to get every single place coated. Then after the primer had dried I finally got the final paint on.

Pretty good color choice even if I may say so myself. It is called Ford Deep Impact Blue. To my knowledge it was originally launched at 2013 on the reveal of the new Mustang GT, although some other models have had it since as well. This was the actual color that my Triumph was to be painted with before I decided to go for the graphics. It, as does the multi layer candy clearcoat on the Triumph, makes a rather prestige dance with the sun being bright light blue in direct sunlight and as the light fades the color turns into a much darker version of itself while developing a faint hint of purple-ish red on the way. The true nature of the color simply does not catch on a digital picture, you have to see it in person in order to know what I mean. No idea what the mark in the last picture is, looks like a gash in the clearcoat but it is only a reflection of something.

Gonna let them dry over the weekend to be absolutely sure that the paint has properly cured, probly pack them at monday-tuesday and send off somewhere around wednesday so they should arrive around a week from now. Still gotta make that lever tube to the service stand and sure as hell am NOT going to fly sparks in the garage until I`m absolutely certain the paint has hardened.

FUBAR

Today after I got off from work I went back to the metal scrap yard to go fetch the last missing bit to the service stand. I was kinda hoping to get a stainless pipe cause it`s not gonna be painted but they didn`t have a suitable one so I settled for the "black". When I asked what will it cost the guy actually said he`s not gonna bother writing a receipt for one or two euros and said to mention it the next time. Sure will!

After that I went to the car parts emporiums to peruse some different color choices but didn`t really find anything that`ll tickle so I rode to an actual professional paint shop. First off the lady almost walked me out of there when I said I`ve used the red rust primer cause it`ll show through from all colors so to get the finish to look like what the color sheet is showing I need to spray another coat of basecoat first. Great, buy shit get shit... Now I`ll know, the hardware store where I got it didn`t have anyting else so I got that, the next time I`ll know to save that money too...

The color that I chose demands a black basecoat to show correctly so I bought a can of that, sprayed it on until I was satisfied and let it dry for a second while fetching the boy from daycare.

What awaited me when I got back wasn`t exactly a pleasant sight...

ALL of the weld seams and quite a few of the tube surfaces had "cracked" and I have no idea why. I waited till the paint was thoroughly dried, sanded one crack open to bare metal, wiped it clean and threw on another coat, and it cracked AGAIN!

The only thing I can think of is that the black primer is somehow reacting to the rust primer repelling each other, so pretty much the only thing I could do is spray the whole cage with paint stripper, make a biblical mess wiping off all of the dripping melting sticky paint, using every last sheet of the fiber paper wipes I had as well as a good half a liter of thinner.

*sigh* Back to square one... Oh well if I had to dig something good out from this is now I can clean up that one crappy weld I`m not happy with. And I gotta say LUCKY the paint corked BEFORE I sprayed on the actual topcoat cause THAT one can was NOT cheap! But once it`s painted: Missy, I swear you`re gonna LOVE the color!

Gonna ride to work tomorrow so gonna have a day off from this project, I have wednesday reserved off from work so gonna go to the city with the car to stock up on wipes, a 5l jug of thinner and another can of the black primer. Ohhh I can already imagine the smug smirk on the face of the paint shop lady...

Getting ready

Had a full day reserved for garage work yesterday so got properly cracking with this thing

The first thing was to finish welding the crash cage. I got the repaired pipe cleaned out pretty well, you can find where the weld is but you have to know where to look for it so I say that`s close enough.

That is one wide cage! Having seen that my own looks so narrow... Although it probly will not look so wide once fitted around fairings.

Now to the other project. I had been planning to do this same for my bike but as stated before the washers-on-tube-ends type fittings on the rear mount pipes will probably break off if this kind of weight would be lifted on them.

I needed some pipe so I visited this one salvage yard I had not been in before. I was very positively surprised about the service quality there and let them know about it as well. I mentioned that there is one other salvage yard which would be around 100meters from work for me but quite frankly have had so poor service there for several times I no longer want to go there, and the guy replied I`m not the first one to say that about the place. Definitely will be getting my scrap metal from this place henceforth, they have bought a full warehouse of both sheet and pipe from some company that went belly up so they have a very good selection of different sizes. They`re pretty rusty but it`s only skin deep and brushes right out with a drill and a flap wheel.

I started cutting pieces wondering what the heck is wrong cause no matter how well I try to follow the lines I always end up getting a corkscrew cut until I realized that the disc I`m using is cracked and warps. A brand new disc! Gotta be more careful when buying them from now on and bend them a little in the shop to see if they have cracks. Lucky it did not break, I`ve had a few faulty discs explode on my face which is why I ALWAYS use long gloves, full face mask and the rawhide apron when cutting, a flying half a dics can do some pretty serious damage, not to mention when the grinder bites in and jerks from your hands.

First bits cut, derusted and somewhat straightened

Ends slotted for extension nuts, threads drilled out from them and a bolt to align them somewhat straight.

Bolt fitted on the nut, and a piece of pipe fitted and plug welded on the bolt.

And the result: a swiveling "skewer".

Some more pipes and a little bit of chain later. So what is it then?

A service stand. First you fit it onto the rear mount tubes of the cage...

...stomp on the tube to lift the bike up and kick it through the leg to prevent it from tipping forward, and lock it down with the pin at the end of the chain. In the pictures the lever sits in a funny angle cause it is not the finished product, I ran out of tube so gotta go get one more piece to be able to make one long enough, this one is for illustration only cause it`s way too short. Although it does rock back and forth a little cause the leg and the lever are not exact fit to each other so there`s little play in between, but it seems to be very stable up there, and the front wheel can be lifted up with one hand so in case it needs service you can pick the front up, shove something under the bridge piece in the cage and take it apart.

The controls are still a little far but once he figured it moves back and forth like a rocking horse he had to be pried off from it :D

The finished product, minus the lever tube. That one will not be painted cause it`ll strip right off anyway so a light oiling will suffice for ease of sliding and rust proofing. I also left the bottoms unpainted cause frankly what`s the use, it`ll come right off from them too. The color choice because I happened to have an unused bottle in the shelf, I bought it for my truck but turned out the paint is nowhere near what the cap let me think so it got tossed to the side.

First basecoat on the cage. Professional quality paint my ass, the thing runs like Forrest Gump! Gotta wait until they dry and sand the runs off before spraying on the topcoat. Still haven`t bought the actual color, I was thinking of a very spesific hotrod cherry red but turned out it`s a metallic pearl color and the finishing shade is done by red candy clearcoat so the paint alone would cost nearly a hundred euros, so that is still somewhat out in the open. A matte neon green would also look kinda groovy ;D

Finally some progress

well this thing surely ain`t letting me off easy. First off getting more gas proved to be much more difficult than expected. The gas company has two kinds of bottles, the ones they rent and the ones they sell to you, the latter being meant to and mostly used by hobby welders who usually don`t manage to use the whole bottle within the rent perioid so it pays to buy the bottle and go change it as it goes out, the swap process is exactly the same.

...Unless the gas company orders a huge batch of the wrong kind of bottles and cannot provide the retailers changelings, and everyone runs out of gas at the same time! I phoned or visited every single shop in Lahti that has AGA retail spot, to no avail. Further phoning quickly revealed that the Unicyl bottles are out EVERYWHERE! Luckily help came in the form of one shop near Helsinki after dragging the shell with me for two days at work. I went to ask if they had any, and they said that they can make a deal with the gas company of another kind of bottle with one year free rent. It`s a different gas, the one I had was Mison 18 (18% Co2, 82% Argon) and the new one is Mison 25 (25/75) but since that pretty much was the only option I took it and gonna try to get through the 10 liter bottle within a year (the last one lasted two)

Garage time has also been a rare luxury lately, and because of how the house is built I can`t do noisy stuff late so one day when I happened to get from work a little early I immediately drove home and straight into the garage since the boy was at daycare and the wifey at work.

The first thing was to make the rear mounting pipes. I first tried the same method how I did mine which was to weld washers at the ends of the tubes but no matter how well you burn them together the contact surface just isn`t big enough to hold so they broke off right away, just as happened to mine the first time round. On this one however I will be needing much sturdier mounts for reasons that will be revealed eventually, so I had to think of something else. Then it hit me, so hard that I actually did slap my forehead saying how did I not think of that on the first time round! I went to a local bolt shop and bought some extension nuts and a rod of threaded bar. I would have wanted to use stud bolts but a quick phone-around later it turned out that absolutely no one stocks M12x145mm studs so the threaded bar basically was my only option. I grinded the galvanizing off from the nuts at opposite sides and drilled four holes to both tubes to be able to plug-weld the nuts in place.

Nuts plug welded and the flanges re-welded in place after removing any porous seams. I just MIGHT be imagining things but it feels like it`s slightly harder to weld with the new gas.

Getting shape. The flange weld seam seems to touch the ground but not bear weight so not gonna grind it flat. The overall design is a little bit simpler than the one I did for me, but it also means it should actually be more rigid as well since there`s less pivot points to bend from. Should have done the lower link with a flange joint to my cage as well, no idea what I was thinking making it from little tube bits...

 Not entirely happy with how the weld seams on the little cross strut came out but I fear if I start grinding them down they`ll look even worse so probly gonna try to just tidy them out a little. The shape of the cage could not be much better given the fact that it`s pretty much shot from the hip. The main rail that goes from the front to back licks the ground at pretty much the same height from the entire length. Just hoping really hard that any place won`t hit the fairings. The main crossbar probly will need a little space made to the side of the big air vents at the lower fairings but that SHOULD be the only mod needed.

Had a little oopsie with the other side rail... Long story short, rushed, followed a wrong mark and cut the tube about an inch short. Being my last bent tube I decided before getting a new one made I will try to fix it, I got it aligned pretty well with the magnets and got it to burn through about 95% so once I file the weld down no one will be the wiser once it`s painted and shouldn`t cause any structural integrity issues either.

As an ending to today`s broadcast the latest fashion tips straight from Paris! Sorry, Garage!
This summer`s hot things are raw leather and perforated sleeves, also remember proper protection for your eyes from the sun. Automatic lenses and carbon fiber pattern on frames gives a contemporary finishing touch. For a more dramatic look I`d recommend burnt metal around the eyes for a little darker shade, and the scent of the day is most definitely cutting disc number 1.0

NOT a good day at the garage...

Oh man what a weekend... We had the midsummer festival here this weekend, aka Juhannus, so friday was off from work. My wife had booked the whole weekend full of work including a night shift to get maximum pay from them, which meant that I`ve spent the lest three days practically alone with my two year old son, mainly listening to screaming in gibberish and going no don`t touch that, come down frome there, yes you will eat this, no come here, no stay in bed... YAARGH! I mean I love the kid to death but three days in a row starts to creep up in your soul...

So today when my wife returned home i immediately announced that I`m going to the shed later today and I gotta do noisy stuff so it`s gotta be before 8pm cause there`s little kids on both apartments of the house.

First off I lifted a sheet of 5mm stainless to the table that I once bought off a metal company skip along with some other bits. They`re great for getting quality stuff for peanuts, when I asked the guy after lifting a few sheets to the side what does he want for them I immediately saw from his face "nothing really but if I let you take them you`re gonna empty the whole skip" so he went aaaa........... gimme a fiver. I don`t know exactly what that sheet is apart from being stainless, but I`ll tell you it. is. HARD. Normal HSS drills hardly make a dent, I had to use cobalt drills to get holes made, along with ROCOL cutting grease. I haven`t managed to find that stuff anywhere for sale to common joes but managed to get a hold of a nearly empty jug at work some years ago. It`s great stuff cause in room temp it has this waxy substance like vaseline, but when you heat it up it turns to liquid so it holds on very well and cuts way more efficiently than any spray on foam. Also lasts forever, I melted the remains of the jug onto a glass baby food jar, got it about half full and am still using it.

So i got the center flange done along with cutting and beveling the rear mounting pipes that the main rails will attach to...

...went to test it to the bike, cursed loud when I realized I`ve made it according to the cardboard template but forgot to factor in that the flanges overlap the center bridge so it is 20mm too short so had to make another one...

...went to weld them onto the bike wondering why the welds look so awful, I`ve welded stainless to black before with no problems. At first I thought that since the vertical pipe is going to be sealed in the heating and expanding air is pushing my welds out but realized I`m not all the way through yet so that can`t be it...














Until it hit me... no hiss from the pistol...

Oh well it did last for a good two years... This however means that I`ll be needing to cut all the welds open from the flanges and grind them flat cause at least some had been welded without gas so the seams are compromised. I loaded the bottle to the car and hope I`ll have time to go swap it tomorrow.

You know, if you are what some people call a "maker", not having a project open is at the same time the most liberating and also the most frustrating time. A thinking mind NEEDS something to ponder or it starts to over rev. On one hand you`re free from the confines of any given project, but on the other you`re constantly trying to find the slightest excuse to start some side project, no matter how irrelevant, so this little thing came at the exact right place and time. I`ve been thinking about it for some time but this was... well is, it`s not finished yet, the best possible time to get stuff done since I can`t start the "el cafe" project yet for reasons stated before.

I`ve promised to make a crash cage for my friend`s bike as well since she also has a 955i Daytona, some of you might know her as Missy so will be using that henceforth. I pretty much got everything needed already apart from the two pieces of the big pipe for the main crossbar and some lengths of the smaller pipe, which I got from one metal company a few days back. A funny thing happened while getting them, I was fetching cargo at work from the metal shop and casually happened to ask the forklift driver loading my truck if they could sell me some pipe. He replied sure what do I need. I said some 50mm "black" steel pipe with around 2,5mm wall, he said no such thing exist since the closest standard pipe diameter is 48,2mm outer dia. I told him that I bought some pipe from another local company about a year ago and have a recollection of it being 50mm but since it`s not a standard size it must have been the one mentioned. He asked me if it was for a motorbike crash cage, which totally caught me off guard, I said yea but how can you possibly know?
-Cause I used to work there and I was the one that made the bends for you! Small world eh?

So I got my bits the next day and today got to do some work. I had to remove my own cage to be able to use the frame as a jig to make the new one, luckily it`s not that big of a job since my bike is naked.

Man it`s gonna be wide! but it has to be since it`s going on a fully faired bike. Which in turn causes some additional challenges since I`ve never had fairings on my bike and therefore am lacking most of the mounting points as well so I had to partly study all the pictures I could find and partly guess where the fairings go. Luckily I got some help from a user in one bike forum who took pictures of his bike for me for reference.

So Missy if you`re reading this, surprise I`m going full monty on this one instead of just the rails we spoke of  :D

One derusted one to go. I don`t know what the tool with the rotating blade is called in english, a some sort of a deburrer, but I totally love it! Something I`ve meant to buy for years but never got around to until lately when I`ve been starting to work more with metal.

A lesson lies here. Measure twice cut once, and NEVER trust anyone else`s measurements no matter how much they swear they made them the same length!

And another here. It`s neat to own every single drill extension rod and all that stuff but if you really need them like once or twice a year and can mcgyver your way around the times does it really pay to invest money and storage space to them just for the joy of owning them? Cause let`s face it when you need it you don`t remember you already got one and go buy another, done that a few times...

Gotta shave off some of the corners to be able to weld around since those square ones for some reason are like 1,5 times as thick as the thickest round washers so went for them on my own cage as well.

Little welding and grinding later the main crossbar is ready to be test fitted to the bike. Still needs further cleaning but not relevant right now.

Hmm, ran into a bit of a snag, the standard T55 T-key which I`ve used to get my cage on and off is too short...

...luckily an 8mm allen socket will hold the bolt down enough to be tightened for test fitting.

...so according to the pictures the fairing goes from here to there through that one ear I still got so if I put the pipe there it shouldn`t hit the plastics... 60 degrees flat says the gauge.

Even if I say so myself not a bad seam for someone who has had zero hours and zero minutes of welding training and has welded very little overall. That one bead got away a little in the center but I thing it`ll hold nicely. Gotta love that automatic welding rig, worth every penny of the eye watering 1600 EUR I paid for it.

Same for the other side. Looks sooo wide without the fairings but since the fixing point is so high up it has to be that way.

Perfect alignment on the first try, this is going too smoothly... I`ve done the same amount of progress in two hours what I did in a whole day with the first one, but to my defence this time round I have a vision of what to do, the last time I was kinda winging it on the go.

Designing the joining flanges. All the measurements seem to be in beercans :D

Out of curiosity I dropped the bike on it`s side to see how it falls with the crash bungs and the angle could not be better. The lower bar bends the tinyest amount from the tip but since it`s cut to length it shouldn`t be touching the gound anymore, the rearsets are safe as well as the exhaust, and the bike lifts up with minimal effort. Shite, I may have to redo my cage as well!

As a last pic for today that is more or less how the cage will look like once finished.