In the past few weeks, I had to have more realistic expectation of my summer plans. While I wanted to go to Big Bend national park in Texas, it is 2000 miles away. Mean while I'm spending a week around the mountain side of the blueridge to Tennessee in July. My original plan set out from here to the dragon, along with my friends, and take off from there towards big bend. I would already be 500 miles in and would make my extended trip just another 5 days of easy riding. But I built the ducati for the dragon, and the plans to loop the dragon and back around, would bring be closer to home than west. Which means I would have to go out for nearly a 3000 mile week, and then swap on my BMW and head west for two more. It's not so much an ambitious undertaking, but rather overself indulging.
This September I'm goin to California for my boys wedding which adds to another vacation. Money is not an issue, but my time seem to be more and more limited each year. As I said to a bunch of pe staff at my former school KMS, "I have to cut down on my hobbies." Of some of the top to do list
1.) finish the basement apartment completely and fix the flooding issue.
2.) take care of my dental and medical things that I have put off for a while
3.) build a online portfolio and website for my book.
All these require not a day or two, but several days if not weeks. And on the bottom of this list is
4.) build another car and change out the e30 for something larger.
If work ends this year at June 18, and I leave for a week and come back at June 25th, then work 3 days and leave for another 20 day vacation across the west. I'll be back late July, only to start work again in August. If I'm lucky, I may have a few days to spare. None of which can suffice the time to complete any of the above checklist.
I've been putting off the ducati for a while, valve adjustment was a black art, or rather something I never done. Doing the forks was a black art, so is the rear springs. These are all things I have never done on this bike, and to put it aptly, I was finding the courage to tackle it. There was a few learning experiences, 1.) the rear spring is the same coil over spring as a car. In fact. The same part number for eibach that is use on JOM coil overs.
Thanks to Jeff, now I feel evens dumber. I paid 110 to racetech, who buys the same exact spring from eibach. The spring can be had all day with the same part number for 65 dollars.
To add insult to injury, thier fork springs are also someone else's spring. I don't know who, but I didn't really want to find out. The part number is not apparent due to it being an internal spring.
So after some persepherating I finally got the balls to just wing it. With some ingenuity from phaedon we bolted two lag screw on the 2x10 beam of my house and made two hanging hooks. Add on some ratchet ties, and removal of the exhaust I was able to get my bike indoor, and up off the rear wheel.
The swap was pretty easy, and the preload set up winded was still not enough to unload the spring. I used some c clamp to unload one and install the new one.
I was done in about 2 hours. At first, the initial spring rate seem comparable to the yellow stock spring. The stock spring has just only slightly look like it is progressive. The coils seem the same size. But after loading the preload 20% the stiffness was apparent.
Next morning I got another snow day and worked up the confidence to do the front, which is even more foreign to me.
I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was a lot easier than I thought.
There were some logistical back and forth, but I both fitted with 2 mm extra of spacer in addition to the extra weight spring. The oil from the fork was golden, given only 4000 miles on the clock. I end up using BMW fork oil 7.5 wt. which really look like royal purple fork oil if you ask me. Same color, same consistency.
I slap the bike together in 2 hours doing everything about as slow as possible with millions of double checks.
Bike now sits a whole inch or so higher.
Then... I was like, why not just do the whole thing with valve adjustment check.
So I did.
Of course I could not get the last bit out... And when I disconnected the feed, a gallon spilled out all over my hands. Fml.
Then the black art was unveiled. Super confusing for about 3 hours. I learn one part look at it for a while, learn something else, then something else. After 3 hours and some, I finally figure out the gist. Then after another hour, I understood what I was doing.
And just like that, the black art is now just something I can do in two hours.
Life is about problem solving. It always is about figuring out the puzzle. Nothing is impossible or too hard. Information needs to be digested overtime, and understood. As each piece fit together it became easier and easier.
Then you have the revelation moment of "why didn't i do it sooner".
As it stand it would seem I need to plan a few weekend trips rather than a 20 day cross country this year. Next year, I'll be in Europe with the guys, maybe he year after I can trek across the west once again with Phaedon and Jeff. Now that is something I'm looking forward to.