Ari Rankum
NAFO Karting Champion, 2012
I spent the day wrenching on my machine. First up, the Fred H. progressive throttle pulley mod.
I went to Home Depot for 12 gauge copper wire. It turns out they have single-conductor stuff, and it's 28 cents a foot. If you take that to the self-checkout, the dude there gets so flustered trying to find the code, he tells you to just take it. So I did. I also picked up some Goo Gone and some Blue Lock-Tite.
It turns out I have the same metal ruler as Fred. So I used his picture to fashion the best damn copper hook I could. I thought, instead of doing this barbarian style, with a hammer, I'd use my super fancy (do you see it creeping in) Dremel tool. That way, I could form the taper on the inside of the radius, the way it should be. When it looked perfect, I went out and disassembled the bike. When I still couldn't see anything that looked like Fred's pics, I took out most of the air induction stuff. I grabbed my one pair of hemostats (I left the other pair in some poor bastard in the la Drang Valley, in 1968). What the hell? There are two different types of pulleys on the 2006? This damn copper hook will never fit. I go back inside. Oh - centimeters. Damn. Where's my snips? Where's my Dremel tool? Razzle frazzle.
After an hour, it becomes clear I never should have left those hemostats in that dude. I can't place the hook over the tang on the throttle pulley to save my life. Okay. Screw this.
While I'm under the tank, I decide to undo the center spring. That comes off with no problem and does the 360 everyone has mentioned. Not satisfied, I forced the spring completely off the tang. This actually takes a bit of fussing (did I just use that word?) to get it off (or those?). The throttle still returns fine without it.
I also decided to take the slack out of the throttle cables. I took most of it out at the throttle pulley, but I was quickly running out of threads on the adjuster because there was so much slack. So I tightened the lock bolt with a thread or two to spare and took the remaining slack out at the hand grip.
I figured that most of the work for a TBS had been done trying to do the Fred Progressive Pulley mod, so I decided to do another TBS, even though I'm still under 4K miles and I've already done one. Why not, maybe the Barbarian Jumper Mod from yesterday made a difference. Besides, I just wanted to see the mercury getting thucked out of the Economy Carb Tuner one more time. It turns out that all 4 cylinders were pulling a little bit higher, but were all within 10 mm of each other. I decided to decrease them all to 240mm since the gauge reads high and I need a feeling of accomplishment after failing at the Fred mod. So I line them all up really close at 240 and slap the bike back together.
Then what'd I do? Test ride!?!?! Of course, right? NOPE. Not me. I put all the tools away and washed the bike.
Yep. I'm gay.
I went to Home Depot for 12 gauge copper wire. It turns out they have single-conductor stuff, and it's 28 cents a foot. If you take that to the self-checkout, the dude there gets so flustered trying to find the code, he tells you to just take it. So I did. I also picked up some Goo Gone and some Blue Lock-Tite.
It turns out I have the same metal ruler as Fred. So I used his picture to fashion the best damn copper hook I could. I thought, instead of doing this barbarian style, with a hammer, I'd use my super fancy (do you see it creeping in) Dremel tool. That way, I could form the taper on the inside of the radius, the way it should be. When it looked perfect, I went out and disassembled the bike. When I still couldn't see anything that looked like Fred's pics, I took out most of the air induction stuff. I grabbed my one pair of hemostats (I left the other pair in some poor bastard in the la Drang Valley, in 1968). What the hell? There are two different types of pulleys on the 2006? This damn copper hook will never fit. I go back inside. Oh - centimeters. Damn. Where's my snips? Where's my Dremel tool? Razzle frazzle.
After an hour, it becomes clear I never should have left those hemostats in that dude. I can't place the hook over the tang on the throttle pulley to save my life. Okay. Screw this.
While I'm under the tank, I decide to undo the center spring. That comes off with no problem and does the 360 everyone has mentioned. Not satisfied, I forced the spring completely off the tang. This actually takes a bit of fussing (did I just use that word?) to get it off (or those?). The throttle still returns fine without it.
I also decided to take the slack out of the throttle cables. I took most of it out at the throttle pulley, but I was quickly running out of threads on the adjuster because there was so much slack. So I tightened the lock bolt with a thread or two to spare and took the remaining slack out at the hand grip.
I figured that most of the work for a TBS had been done trying to do the Fred Progressive Pulley mod, so I decided to do another TBS, even though I'm still under 4K miles and I've already done one. Why not, maybe the Barbarian Jumper Mod from yesterday made a difference. Besides, I just wanted to see the mercury getting thucked out of the Economy Carb Tuner one more time. It turns out that all 4 cylinders were pulling a little bit higher, but were all within 10 mm of each other. I decided to decrease them all to 240mm since the gauge reads high and I need a feeling of accomplishment after failing at the Fred mod. So I line them all up really close at 240 and slap the bike back together.
Then what'd I do? Test ride!?!?! Of course, right? NOPE. Not me. I put all the tools away and washed the bike.
Yep. I'm gay.
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