Local ride
Wed Aug 10, 2022
(~102 miles)
During the LDX rally several weeks back, my GPS cradle crapped out, refusing to provide reliable power to the Zumo XT. I’d ended up taping over the electrical contacts and using the USB port for the second half of the rally and the few rides I’d taken since then. Surmising that the problem was once again a loose crimped connector, it would likely require disassembling half the plastic cowling on the ST in order to properly investigate, diagnose, and fix the issue. With a couple of trips upcoming, I needed to get things addressed this weekend. But first, there’s barbeque to be eaten!
It had been a while since I’d been out for some decent Q, so I made an effort to attend the New England Riders bike night event being held on a Wednesday night at a new BBQ joint in Sterling MA. After signing off from work promptly at 17:00, I hit the rush hour on the I-495 belt to scoot north. Upon arriving at Davis Farmland, site of the locally famous cornfield MegaMaze, I finally made the connection with the name of the restaurant, Davis BBQ. This enterprising farm has been branching out to different business lines over the years including the maze attraction and a huge farm stand. Now it seems they’ve entered the fo’ real restaurant business, with a newly constructed modern facility on their property with indoor/outdoor seating and plenty of parking.
The restaurant was expecting our group and had kindly reserved an area of the parking lot for motorcycle parking only. Being midweek at a restaurant on a rural farm, the place wasn’t exactly packed, but NER had a pretty good showing for a weekday in central Mass, with maybe 20 or so bikes lined up as the early evening sun played hide and seek in a large cloudbank.
I was a bit late, but I said hello to a few other latecomers in the lot as we wandered up into the restaurant. The place was modern and clean as a whistle, being pretty much brand new. You order first here before finding a seat, so we found our way to the counter at the back of the place. There wasn’t really a line so a few of us did the “After you, Alphonse” dance as we needed a chance to look at the scrumptious menu options before ordering. I took note with joy that they have a Tofu Bowl listed on the menu, the first Q joint I’ve seen that understands the challenge of eating out with a vegetarian. 😉 If the food turned out OK, I’d have to come back with Char sometime.
Burnt ends are usually pretty tough to find around here, so I opted for a platter of ’em, along with some roasted veggies and the saliva-inducing Fried Cornbread with Honey Butter for sides.
I found a table seat outside with a couple other riders, Charlie & Bill, later joined by another gent named Matt. We introduced ourselves and chit-chatted until the food came out, looking mouth-watering, and tasting even better.
The meat was delicious, though not the best ends I’ve eaten. Everything was good, but those fried cornbread squares really stole the show – absolutely melt-in-your-mouth yummy! A couple of the other guys opted for the bowl-type dishes of pulled-pork or burnt-ends with other delectables mixed in, and they seemed to enjoy their meal as well. This place will definitely bear revisiting to sample more of the menu!
After eating, I mingled a bit to talk up folks I knew at other tables, as the evening wore on. The skies looked a bit threatening, but so far no rain was forthcoming from the big clouds. Riders began leaving for home, and we stragglers finally did the same, just as the sun was setting behind the clouds, creating some beautiful colors in the western sky.
Ed and Debbie Conde had attended, so I followed them from the restaurant, chatting via comms out to 495, where I said farewell and turned south towards home. These weekday gatherings are sometimes tough to get motivated for after a long day at work, but very much worth the effort. Thanks to NER member Mike Paradis for organizing that event!
Thur Aug 11, 2022
The following day after work, I began to tackle the GPS wiring issue. First I tried removing just one of the lower cowls within the front wheel well, to see if I could reach up in there and reconnect whatever was loose. The connection felt snug and jiggling it didn’t change the GPS behavior at all, so I knew a deeper dive would be required. I then worked on removing the plastic from the left side of the bike to get at the wiring nest within the nose cone. Very quickly, I could see that the connectors were fine, so I began tracing the wires and found…this:
At some point, I must have tucked this little bundle of GPS wires a bit too close to the powered windshield roller mechanism. I think they probably got caught up in that, chafing the wires and resulting in intermittent power problems. Then perhaps things got aggravated by that terrible stretch of bumps on I-81 in New York during the rally, finally breaking the cable strands enough to prevent any reliable power.
After taking a close look at the damaged upper portion of the Garmin cable, I learned that it’s a special cable with concentric wire strands, rather than two running in parallel. This wasn’t something I could crimp back together, so I’d need to replace the harness. Ordinarily, this revelation would have been accompanied with grumbles and many curse words for the lost riding time while I waited for the part to ship. However, it just so happened that a friend had sold me an extra harness the previous week, for my new spare ST. Sweet, that meant I’d be able to get things fixed up this weekend!
However, the cable was actually lower on my stress meter by now. After removing the plastic from the bike, I’d noticed that the left cowl stay bolt was broken off again inside the main frame of the bike! Egad.
There are two of these bolts, one on each side, that attach the thinner steel frame that structures the nose cone of the ST to the main aluminum frame. This is now the third time one of these bolts has broken off, and the second time on the left side. Unlike most of the rock-solid design that went into the ST, Honda, in its wisdom, decided to attach the front cowl stay using two skinny and under-spec’d M6x45 bolts, which seem ridiculously inadequate even for a stock setup. With all my extra wiring, the Stebel horn, and the cruise control servo all adding weight to that front sub-frame, I’ve never been surprised that they aren’t up to the task. Why Honda, whyyyy!?
The last time this happened on the left side, I made a right mess of things while trying to drill out a starter hole in the tiny bolt in order to get an EZ out started. My mechanic friend Jeff came to the rescue that time with the necessary bits and bobs, not to mention a higher dose of confidence and expertise. After grinding and pushing the stub of the bolt all the way through into the frame, there had been some widening damage to the hole, but he’d re-tapped it and was able to get the bolt to thread back in. That had bought me another year and a half of riding.
Jeff wasn’t immediately available this time around, so after watching several YouTube videos and reading online for tips, I decided to track down better tools for the job before getting started, most notably some reverse drill bits. I got funny looks at my local Lowes when asking for the reverse bits, so I ended up ordering a small Irwin extractor set from Amazon. Thanks to Prime shipping, I had it in hand by Saturday, along with a couple of these hollow-center bolts, which I’d seen a guy use online to help center the starter hole into the embedded bolt. I also picked up a spring-loaded center punch tool.
I figured that due to all the damage that had already been done to this hole (with more to come), I might have to get WAY outside my comfort zone by upsizing to an M8 bolt. That meant getting the proper drill bit and metric tap sizes and actually drilling out the hole in my precious bike frame to the correct size. 😅😬 Just in case things got that desperate, I ordered hardened M8 bolts from both Fastenal and Amazon, hoping one would arrive sooner than the other.
I doused the hole with Liquid Wrench on Friday while I waited for my supplies to arrive. On Saturday, I took some deep breaths and got to work, slowly and carefully. To say that I was nervous about fucking up my bike frame would be an understatement. It quickly became apparent that the center punch was useless for making a dent in the hardened bolt stub, so off I went to Lowes again, this time investing in a steel punch and 5lb sledge. That did the trick, making a nice mark in the bolt surface.
While the hollowed-out bolts couldn’t quite thread fully into the hole, there was enough of an indent to keep the bolt centered while I drilled into the punch mark that I made. That made all the difference in getting a pilot hole created. The extractor bit, with persuasion from the sledge, grabbed it quickly and with careful application of vice grips, the bolt stub came spinning out. Success!
The beefy new M8 bolt (top) should be much sturdier than the stock M6 bolt from Honda.
Now I could see inside the hole pretty clearly and didn’t much care for it. Some threads were still visible, but overall the damage done during both extractions, plus the fact that three of the stock M6 bolts had already snapped gave me little confidence them. I decided to re-tap the hole for the larger bolt and hopefully never face this problem (at least on this side of the bike) again. You can see the difference when comparing the bolts side by side.
I made a trip to Ace hardware and picked up a few of the M8 bolts, not wanting to wait for the ones I’d ordered online. I also searched unsuccessfully for a larger diameter stainless steel bolt sleeve used to stand the cowl stay frame off from the main frame a few centimeters. That would also need to be replaced or upsized. Ace had something close, but not exactly what I needed, and I couldn’t find one online. I ordered a couple custom-made sleeves from a fabricator in the UK, but delivery wouldn’t be for a couple weeks. I decided to just drill out the inner diameter of an OEM sleeve in the meantime.
I haven’t tapped a hole in metal since shop class in high school, but my machinist friend Chris happened by for a visit while I was working on the bike Saturday. He talked me through the process enough that I felt comfortable giving it a try. Metal is like artist’s clay to Chris, and I never fail to be impressed with his knowledge and skills in working with it. It actually went very quickly and easily, without much fuss at all. Once I’d committed myself to it, I carefully drilled out the hole in the bike frame with the odd-sized bit from an M8 tapping kit I’d picked up at Lowe’s. Then I tapped the hole, using plenty of cutting oil. Voila!
Drilling out the sleeve was a bit of a pain, trying to balance the need to grip it with my vice while not crushing or deforming it’s cylindrical shape. Slow and steady wins out here too, as well as drilling in from both ends, since the bit kept getting stuck. Eventually, I got the inner diameter hollowed out enough to slide the bolt through. Mission complete!
I felt more confident in the frame attachment now and was relieved that I’d resolved both issues before my trips. After buttoning up the plastic, Bison Spanker is ready to travel once again!
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Davis BBQ and Bike Maintenance
Local ride
Wed Aug 10, 2022
(~102 miles)
During the LDX rally several weeks back, my GPS cradle crapped out, refusing to provide reliable power to the Zumo XT. I’d ended up taping over the electrical contacts and using the USB port for the second half of the rally and the few rides I’d taken since then. Surmising that the problem was once again a loose crimped connector, it would likely require disassembling half the plastic cowling on the ST in order to properly investigate, diagnose, and fix the issue. With a couple of trips upcoming, I needed to get things addressed this weekend. But first, there’s barbeque to be eaten!
It had been a while since I’d been out for some decent Q, so I made an effort to attend the New England Riders bike night event being held on a Wednesday night at a new BBQ joint in Sterling MA. After signing off from work promptly at 17:00, I hit the rush hour on the I-495 belt to scoot north. Upon arriving at Davis Farmland, site of the locally famous cornfield MegaMaze, I finally made the connection with the name of the restaurant, Davis BBQ. This enterprising farm has been branching out to different business lines over the years including the maze attraction and a huge farm stand. Now it seems they’ve entered the fo’ real restaurant business, with a newly constructed modern facility on their property with indoor/outdoor seating and plenty of parking.
The restaurant was expecting our group and had kindly reserved an area of the parking lot for motorcycle parking only. Being midweek at a restaurant on a rural farm, the place wasn’t exactly packed, but NER had a pretty good showing for a weekday in central Mass, with maybe 20 or so bikes lined up as the early evening sun played hide and seek in a large cloudbank.
I was a bit late, but I said hello to a few other latecomers in the lot as we wandered up into the restaurant. The place was modern and clean as a whistle, being pretty much brand new. You order first here before finding a seat, so we found our way to the counter at the back of the place. There wasn’t really a line so a few of us did the “After you, Alphonse” dance as we needed a chance to look at the scrumptious menu options before ordering. I took note with joy that they have a Tofu Bowl listed on the menu, the first Q joint I’ve seen that understands the challenge of eating out with a vegetarian. 😉 If the food turned out OK, I’d have to come back with Char sometime.
Burnt ends are usually pretty tough to find around here, so I opted for a platter of ’em, along with some roasted veggies and the saliva-inducing Fried Cornbread with Honey Butter for sides.
The meat was delicious, though not the best ends I’ve eaten. Everything was good, but those fried cornbread squares really stole the show – absolutely melt-in-your-mouth yummy! A couple of the other guys opted for the bowl-type dishes of pulled-pork or burnt-ends with other delectables mixed in, and they seemed to enjoy their meal as well. This place will definitely bear revisiting to sample more of the menu!
Ed and Debbie Conde had attended, so I followed them from the restaurant, chatting via comms out to 495, where I said farewell and turned south towards home. These weekday gatherings are sometimes tough to get motivated for after a long day at work, but very much worth the effort. Thanks to NER member Mike Paradis for organizing that event!
Thur Aug 11, 2022
The following day after work, I began to tackle the GPS wiring issue. First I tried removing just one of the lower cowls within the front wheel well, to see if I could reach up in there and reconnect whatever was loose. The connection felt snug and jiggling it didn’t change the GPS behavior at all, so I knew a deeper dive would be required. I then worked on removing the plastic from the left side of the bike to get at the wiring nest within the nose cone. Very quickly, I could see that the connectors were fine, so I began tracing the wires and found…this:
At some point, I must have tucked this little bundle of GPS wires a bit too close to the powered windshield roller mechanism. I think they probably got caught up in that, chafing the wires and resulting in intermittent power problems. Then perhaps things got aggravated by that terrible stretch of bumps on I-81 in New York during the rally, finally breaking the cable strands enough to prevent any reliable power.
After taking a close look at the damaged upper portion of the Garmin cable, I learned that it’s a special cable with concentric wire strands, rather than two running in parallel. This wasn’t something I could crimp back together, so I’d need to replace the harness. Ordinarily, this revelation would have been accompanied with grumbles and many curse words for the lost riding time while I waited for the part to ship. However, it just so happened that a friend had sold me an extra harness the previous week, for my new spare ST. Sweet, that meant I’d be able to get things fixed up this weekend!
However, the cable was actually lower on my stress meter by now. After removing the plastic from the bike, I’d noticed that the left cowl stay bolt was broken off again inside the main frame of the bike! Egad.
There are two of these bolts, one on each side, that attach the thinner steel frame that structures the nose cone of the ST to the main aluminum frame. This is now the third time one of these bolts has broken off, and the second time on the left side. Unlike most of the rock-solid design that went into the ST, Honda, in its wisdom, decided to attach the front cowl stay using two skinny and under-spec’d M6x45 bolts, which seem ridiculously inadequate even for a stock setup. With all my extra wiring, the Stebel horn, and the cruise control servo all adding weight to that front sub-frame, I’ve never been surprised that they aren’t up to the task. Why Honda, whyyyy!?
The last time this happened on the left side, I made a right mess of things while trying to drill out a starter hole in the tiny bolt in order to get an EZ out started. My mechanic friend Jeff came to the rescue that time with the necessary bits and bobs, not to mention a higher dose of confidence and expertise. After grinding and pushing the stub of the bolt all the way through into the frame, there had been some widening damage to the hole, but he’d re-tapped it and was able to get the bolt to thread back in. That had bought me another year and a half of riding.
I figured that due to all the damage that had already been done to this hole (with more to come), I might have to get WAY outside my comfort zone by upsizing to an M8 bolt. That meant getting the proper drill bit and metric tap sizes and actually drilling out the hole in my precious bike frame to the correct size. 😅😬 Just in case things got that desperate, I ordered hardened M8 bolts from both Fastenal and Amazon, hoping one would arrive sooner than the other.
I doused the hole with Liquid Wrench on Friday while I waited for my supplies to arrive. On Saturday, I took some deep breaths and got to work, slowly and carefully. To say that I was nervous about fucking up my bike frame would be an understatement. It quickly became apparent that the center punch was useless for making a dent in the hardened bolt stub, so off I went to Lowes again, this time investing in a steel punch and 5lb sledge. That did the trick, making a nice mark in the bolt surface.
While the hollowed-out bolts couldn’t quite thread fully into the hole, there was enough of an indent to keep the bolt centered while I drilled into the punch mark that I made. That made all the difference in getting a pilot hole created. The extractor bit, with persuasion from the sledge, grabbed it quickly and with careful application of vice grips, the bolt stub came spinning out. Success!
The beefy new M8 bolt (top) should be much sturdier than the stock M6 bolt from Honda.
Now I could see inside the hole pretty clearly and didn’t much care for it. Some threads were still visible, but overall the damage done during both extractions, plus the fact that three of the stock M6 bolts had already snapped gave me little confidence them. I decided to re-tap the hole for the larger bolt and hopefully never face this problem (at least on this side of the bike) again. You can see the difference when comparing the bolts side by side.
I made a trip to Ace hardware and picked up a few of the M8 bolts, not wanting to wait for the ones I’d ordered online. I also searched unsuccessfully for a larger diameter stainless steel bolt sleeve used to stand the cowl stay frame off from the main frame a few centimeters. That would also need to be replaced or upsized. Ace had something close, but not exactly what I needed, and I couldn’t find one online. I ordered a couple custom-made sleeves from a fabricator in the UK, but delivery wouldn’t be for a couple weeks. I decided to just drill out the inner diameter of an OEM sleeve in the meantime.
Tapping successful!
I haven’t tapped a hole in metal since shop class in high school, but my machinist friend Chris happened by for a visit while I was working on the bike Saturday. He talked me through the process enough that I felt comfortable giving it a try. Metal is like artist’s clay to Chris, and I never fail to be impressed with his knowledge and skills in working with it. It actually went very quickly and easily, without much fuss at all. Once I’d committed myself to it, I carefully drilled out the hole in the bike frame with the odd-sized bit from an M8 tapping kit I’d picked up at Lowe’s. Then I tapped the hole, using plenty of cutting oil. Voila!
Drilling out the sleeve was a bit of a pain, trying to balance the need to grip it with my vice while not crushing or deforming it’s cylindrical shape. Slow and steady wins out here too, as well as drilling in from both ends, since the bit kept getting stuck. Eventually, I got the inner diameter hollowed out enough to slide the bolt through. Mission complete!
I felt more confident in the frame attachment now and was relieved that I’d resolved both issues before my trips. After buttoning up the plastic, Bison Spanker is ready to travel once again!
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