If I were ever to get a cruiser-type bike, it’d without question be a Bobber. There’s something to admire about their simplicity and roots. Not to mention, the act of making a bobber bike embodies the notion of craftsmanship and personal touch; whether it be in a professional setting or better yet, in someone’s garage or backyard.

Check out these pictures of a few cool Bobbers, including both hardtails and soft.

It’s been a while since I had a chance to get on my bicycle, it’d be a lot better if I could keep it consistent. Woke up this morning and rode out another usual, around the back of Coyote Hills and then to the boat and back.

While taking a break at the park, I noticed these 3 old ladies next to me. I think they were first spotting out a target, checking wind direction, etc. and that bazooka looking thing on the tripod would then unleash furious and utter annihilation with pinpoint precision. Either that or they were bird watching. Regardless, it’s cool that they were active and doing things at their age.

Some time later I ended up in the middle of a pond.

Boat. Didn’t feel like walking out to it, but you get the idea.

In motorcycle news, I didn’t do a whole lot today. When I got home, I cleaned up both of the wheels. This was a lot more work than it sounds, though. I was detailed with it, and made sure to scrub down every single piece thoroughly, including all the bushings inside the cush drive. I then cleaned up the bearings and put in some synthetic grease.

I thought I’d do this interlude and point out all the other sites under the Grand Mighty wing. I hosted these sites for friends, and of course if you’re in search for a blog made… don’t hesitate to ask me. There’s plenty to go around.

• ProjectFD.com (my old personal project journal)
• FreshLove
• Kent’s Blog
• Justin the Fatty
• It’s Showtime

Be sure to check them out, they’re all more interesting than my site.

I continued progress on the CBR today, going through a few tasks. I’m purposely going slow with all this, not only to be meticulous, but also because I’m still waiting on some key parts… I received the body fairings last week, but I got sent the wrong stuff: ’09 upper and lowers instead of ’07-’08, and a supersport tail instead of the superbike tail I needed. That, and I still don’t have an exhaust… so no point in rushing now.

I started off cleaning up the bike some more and taking care of the hole the exhaust servo left in the tail. I mixed up some resin and slapped a piece of fiberglass cloth on there.

I also decided to get the oil change out of the way. Draining the old stuff… ugly and brown.

In with the new and clear Synthetic Repsol 10W-50:

Next, I swapped out the front sprocket with the new Renthal 15T. Definitely some nice machining on Renthal’s part.

I bought this Samco Radiator hose kit from the U.K.:

And proceeded to put on most of the hoses. There is one hose on the right side of the bike that goes through the frame into the middle, which proved to be the trickier of the bunch to work with. I changed it out when I had the gas tank up and the intake out.

All of the OEM hoses were on tight, they needed a freight train to pull off. Much more force and strain than I felt was necessary, so I did it the easy way by cutting and splitting them off. Doing the reverse and slipping on the Samco hoses was far easier.

Next up, it was time to get a bit more dug in. I decided to tackle the PAIR system removal. What is the PAIR system? Honda CBR’s have this valve that opens at a certain RPM and injects the exhaust port with atmospheric air. This essentially masks the real emissions coming out of the exhaust, thus making the environment that much cleaner. Unfortunately, I’m not the biggest advocate of green. Well, at least I recycle?

To get started, I unbolted a couple bolts around the tank, and raised it up.

Underneath the tank was the ECU, upper fuel rail, and the air box. I started going through and unplugging and taking off all the necessary items. Once the 2 “lids” or upper portion of the airbox was removed, I was given this view of the velocity stacks and air filter…

… which both had to come out. Then finally the lower intake tub could be persuaded out along with a rubber air dam.

Now I had an opening to the PAIR system, it’s the spider looking thing with the hoses in front of the throttle bodies.

Once all of that was yanked out, the 2 holes that were left behind needed to be blocked off.

One of the hoses that went off the PAIR system went into the lower intake, which I plugged off.

I should also mention that while everything was out, it gave more room in the middle of the bike and where the lower fuel rail was. I took the opportunity to install the Power Commander unit, since it’s connectors piggy backs off the lower injector connectors. The speed sensor was also in the vicinity, so I took care of the SpeedoDRD too. Since I’m going to be changing my gearing, the SpeedoDRD will let me recalibrate my speed to keep the speedometer accurate. No pictures of these, but it was straightforward.

Everything went smooth up to this point, but putting back that lower intake tub was a huge pain in the ass. The rubber air dam had to be situated completely, which was finicky. Wrestling in that big plastic piece definitely led to a lot of words that shall not be repeated.

Before I decided to jump off a building, it eventually went in. Next, I put in the new and red BMC Race Air Filter.

Eventually everything went back on and I could close that chapter of the build.

While surveying the bike, I noticed this strange can that was tucked away underneath the rear suspension:

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later that night I suspected it could potentially be inconsequential… thus meaning it had to be removed. I did some researching and found out it was an EVAP canister, yet another emissions related component to make the bike street legal. However, this canister is only found on bikes in California.

This was a big face palm moment because that meant all the work I had just done putting back the intake assembly, had to be taken back off. All this just to shed about 1.75 lbs, but nonetheless it had to be done. Weight is weight, and I wasn’t going to go halfway with this build.

Once I got all the intake stuff off again, I got access to the lower middle part of the bike again where this 5-way solenoid sat:

The middle hose originally led to the EVAP, and the other 4 smaller hoses went into nipples on the throttle body. After getting rid of the EVAP hose, I plugged it off. Preferably, I would have removed the 5-way all together and plugged off each of the nipples on the throttle body individually, but the space down there is so cramped and tight it was not possible.

To get a bit more room around the canister, I decided to go ahead and just take off the entire exhaust.

That thing weighed a ton with all the heat shields… I also removed the exhaust Servo from the tail while I was at it, more on that later.

Here is the EVAP junk removed.

The intake bits went back on smoother this time since I had good practice already… and with all that done I lowered the gas tank back down. I definitely got some new callouses on my hands now.

When I returned home from Virginia, I was greeted with a nice box from SuperBikeSupply… and its contents inside:

There’s still a handful of stuff I have not received yet, but this will keep me busy for a while.

I decided to get the tire situation taken care of first, which meant taking off both wheels. I already had a stand for the rear, but had to go out and buy a front stand to get the bike completely in the air.

Since I was taking off the rear wheel, I figured I’d loosen up the front sprocket now.

I used the metal handle bar from my floor jack and wedged it between the wheel and swing arm with towels. I read about people just putting the bike into first gear and using the transmission to loosen the front sprocket nut. I’m not down with the idea of putting that much stress on important drive train parts, so with the bar method, all the stress is put naturally onto the chain.

Once that was taken care of, it was time to get rid of the stock chain. Since I wasn’t going to be using it anymore, I took an angle grinder to it.

Grinding off a pair of pins didn’t really work, so I just switched to a metal cutting blade and that made quick work of the chain.

Eventually both wheels were off and I could take them to get some proper rubber installed.

I found a guy who races in AMA and mounted tires for a good deal out of his garage in Pleasonton. The previous day, I bought a set of Pirelli Pro Slicks from someone in Dublin.

The front tire went on no problem, but once the rear tire was mounted and air put in, we realized there was a puncture hole… This put me in a pinch, but luckily the guy had a set of Dunlop 211s that he was willing to sell because of my situation. These were also the United Kingdom made Dunlops, not the US ones. After the Dunlops were put on, I drove over to Dublin to return the Pirellis, and found him in his garage just as I pulled up. I didn’t exactly get a full refund, but I did get a set of Pirelli SuperCorsa Diablos (without holes) for cheap.

I ultimately amassed this pile of rubber in my garage.

I actually ended up just selling the Diablos… and I’m still trying to get rid of the stock Dunlop Qualifers.

With the tires taken care of, it was onto other important matters…

So, this was like, a week ago… Kind of going off the top of my head about the experience. Overall, I thought Richmond was a cool place. As always, the East Coast seems to have a tendency to be hot and humid, and Virginia was no exception.

I didn’t land until almost midnight. The hotel I stayed at was baller, check out this main hall thing:

I was starving, so I went outside to have a look for some food. The downtown area had a portion of all brick road.

I ended up buying some hot dogs, and just ate it outside. There was this questionable looking alleyway nearby, which was interesting.

The job in Virginia was only a day, so I was back home on the third day.

Here’s a picture outside the window of the hotel.

I went to a Chicago’s UNO while I was there for some food. I forgot the name of this dessert, macademia nut cookie something, but it was super long. I think the longer the name a food is, the better it is… because this was delicious.

This Deep Dish pizza wasn’t bad either.

Aside from the inactivity on this site for the past week, I am going to try and get things back into gear.

Starting with a totally new layout. I feel that this one is much more modern and aesthetically pleasing, while still retaining minimalistic qualities that I look for.

Post wise, I have a lot of catching up to do

I’ve been eagerly waiting this moment.

Today, I got to do some wrench turning again in the garage. It was almost therapeutic because thankfully nothing went wrong. Here is my bike.

Here is my bike after only an hour’s worth of work.

Abdicating the nonessentials.

I posted those parts up yesterday on a local Motorcycle forum, and had someone message me about them. He and his friend came by before I was finished disassembling everything to check it out. We agreed on the price, and they were picked up again later in the day. Very awesome I was able to offload this stuff right away.

The project has started, stay tuned as I go.

Aside from the abhorrent start to the week, things got a lot better.

However, the lingering horridness of losing my passport decided to carry over into the week. I tried on Tuesday to go renew it, and I drove all the way into San Francisco to the Passport Agency. My stay there was probably 5 minutes. I went in, only to find out that the lazy asses said they were closing “soon” and wouldn’t let me submit an application. COME ON, you’re not closed yet, do your damn job. So I basically just went there to get some forms handed to me that I could’ve gotten locally. Then I decided to go to the Post Office in my city to do the passport application, only to find out they close at 12PM and are only open like 3 hours a day. So I drive over to Fremont’s Post Office, but it was too late there as well.

Next day, I go back to my city’s Post Office. I get there at 11:45 but the place was still closed. No biggie, the one in Fremont is open till 3PM, so I go back there. I arrive shortly after noon, only to find out the person went on a lunch break until 1PM. I then wait until 1PM, then 1:10PM, no one. I couldn’t take it anymore, my biggest peeve is unpunctuality.

Realizing the tires I had ordered from ProBikeKit a month ago were never going to arrive, I decided there was no choice. I had to give in and buy yet another set of GP4000S tires. Since I was waiting for some retard to slowly get back to work, I decided to make a trip to the Sports Basement in Sunnyvale for them. The place was huge, like a Costco version of REI.

I get my tires, and arrive back to the Post Office at around 2PM. Well, the lady working at the passport office is back, but there’s a short line. This line might as well had 5000 people because the worker there was so damn incompetent. Slowly walking around while chatting to people. It took almost 40 minutes to get through 2 people. When I finally was able to get near the counter, I start reading this message that said you could only pay with a check. Well, obviously I didn’t have a checkbook with me because who the hell pays with checks.

I was able to get on the saddle when I got home and do a quick ride which added some relief: around Fremont, over the Dumbarton Bridge into Palo Alto, back across the Bridge, and back home.

Try number 3, I got back to my city’s Post Office extra early, with a check book, and was finally able to turn in all my documents and such for a new passport.

This is the part when things finally start to get better for me, thanks to my friends. I went to the driving range.

Then I got mauled in front of Olive Garden by none other than Mr. Freshlove.

The next day (yesterday), I went on a ride with my neighbor and Justin. We climbed up Pine St. and went down the long descent on the other side. At the end of the hill, apparently one of the turns had so much stress on Justin’s front wheel that one of his spokes literally snapped off the head. He got picked up, neighbor and I continued. My bike had been making an annoying clicking sound so I stopped by REI to check it out, but didn’t produce any useful results. A few more miles later, my neighbor’s bike gets a flat. I rush back home, and while trying to take shortcuts, I get lost in some neighborhoods. I also got cut off by some stupid ass teenager in his car that was looking around all over the place, except his mirrors. He makes a right turn and I had to lock up the brakes. He still didn’t notice me even after that, MORON.

I get home, then go on a rescue mission to pick up my neighbor in my Van. Get back, put one of the rear bench seats back in, pick up some friends, and went over to San Jose for some Fixed Gear bicycle Sprints on Bassett street. I obviously don’t have a fixed gear anymore so I was sort of  just there for the hell of it. Better than staying at home. Still cool though. The event was smaller than last year’s.