A Satisfied Mind

A SATISFIED MIND

UP FRONT

Allan Girdler

Amazing device, the human psyche. Just as the Eastern masters tell us what we're mad at isn't what we're mad at, so does it follow that what gets us upset isn't what gets us upset.

One recent Saturday morning I was riding my XL250 down the highway, thudding along at 60 in the slow lane so as not to become a hood ornament and I found myself reflecting "Drat. This thing still doesn't like to start, the forks are topping out, it's overweight and underpowered and always has been, maybe it's time I traded her in on a newer model."

Such thoughts had never crossed my 1'nind before. The flaws, sure. The bike's been a not-terribly-good machine since new and a lot of progress has been made ince 1972. And the hard starting's been with me for a year or so, ditto the problem with the front suspension. Familiar facts and a new turn of mind. Why?

On reflection, being disappointed in my bike had nothing to do with the bike. In stead, what I was doing that morning was riding into the scrubland behind a neigh boring town. I was on my way to visit my truck which, at that time, was dangling over the edge of a trail, 100 feet from the bottom of a steep hill where tow trucks feared to tread. My son, whose name will e withheld so as not to embarrass him, had gone off-roading. He's a good driver. i-Against that he's brave as a lion and has the confidence of youth, which led him to drive the truck into an area better suited for motocross. He zigged to avoid the ditch and zagged over the berm, truck tilted on its balance point, two wheels in the air, leading in one of those "Uh, dad • ." telephone calls.

Good news. The second wrecker driver I approached was a man of True Grit. No, there was no way to yank the truck out the way it went in. However period, as Henry Manney says, he could squeeze past and winch from the front. He got the truck skewed toward the road. He worked the winch, I steered. He cursed, I cajoled. (As all bikers know, machines have souls and respond better to kind treatment than abuse.) Up and out she came.

Back to the bike, in a better frame of mind. Vivid imagination again. I am a constant reader of Cycle World, naturally. But I don't always use what I know. For as long as the engine's been hard to start I've been searching for some obscure and diffi cult flaw, like maybe a short in the ignition that only grounds when you use the kick start or something.

Forget it. Back when I put in the big bore, high-compression piston, I rejetted the carb, just like it said in the re-jet arti cle in the March issue. I began with the main jet, then the needle position, then the pilot jet until I had it pulling perfectly at any rpm, any throttle setting.

Too small a pilot jet, the article said, can make cold starts difficult.

Off to the store, for the biggest pilot jet in the catalog.

It fired on the fourth kick, not perfect but the best it's done for as long as I can recall. Aided by hindsight, I know that

what I had done is get rid of a plaguing richness just off idle. That's a function of the slide cutaway-quoting from our arti cle again-but because there are no op tional slides for this carb, and because I was afraid to experiment with the only slide I have, I cured the wrong slide by using the wrong pilot jet. Two wrongs shifted the problem to a different place.

Which also means I haven't got the jet ting right yet and won't until I can find a used slide on which to experiment but never mind. It's just like a rattle. Having one doesn't bother me nearly as much as not knowing what it is.

With two salvations, my state of mind had enjoyed a marked improvement. Dur ing the next several days, right after grounding the kid for a month, a sentence even he felt was fair, I thought about the forks: What had I done just before they began topping out?

Well, first there were the new steering head bearings, the tapered rollers to re place those dratted loose balls. That itself couldn't have done it. But. While the forks were off, I took advantage of the oppor tunity to replace the seals. That wouldn't do it, except that I had drained and re filled the forks...

And when I first tried the front end, it felt soggy. Like molasses. Aha, I thought then, I have overfilled, so I drained off some fork oil and they worked better.

Except, I reconstructed, while doing some other maintenance after that I dis covered that both stanchion tubes were bent, a leftover from my last attempt at trials. The topping began when the tubes were straight.

Oh, I said while everybody in the office thought I was busy with what I'm paid to do, wait. I have been filling the forks with the amount of fluid listed in the shop man ual. But my forks have a kit. They have more travel. There is more room inside there. > As it says in every suspension article I've ever read, what you get with not enough fluid is not enough damping. You can tell because the forks top out.

Now we are clicking on down the path of enlightenment. I drained the forks, again and this time in went precisely 175cc of #20 Kal-Gard, measured in the* graduated tube we have in the shop for just such scientific work.

The front end felt just right. Because it was a lovely day and lunchtime I didn'£ tackle the vacant lot, the one with the canyon down the middle, conveniently located next to our office. I rode off to a* really neat hill I know about, a long and steep one. The topping was worst on uphills, under power, so I reckoned to put the solution against the worst possible prob4, lern.

In the process of discovering them, I' violated two natural laws.

1) Never go hillclimbing wearing gray flannel slacks.

2) Never lose your nerve halfway up a hill.

The slacks are my best. While I was working on the forks, in fact, the publisher's secretary walked past and said How nice you look today, making me glad I'd worn them.

I know this hill. What I hadn't done is see it since the winter rains. I came round the corner, slammed through the sandy stretch, whacked the throttle open* charged over the first ledge, looked up . . . O! A whopping great rain rut, just where I planned to go.

Like a fool I jammed on the brakes, stopped just short of the rut and fell sideways, into nettles and pricker bushes and that funny grass plant with the barbs on it, Me, the gray flannel pincushion.

I dragged the bike sideways, got turned around, bump-started on the way down and rode around to the other side of the hill, the easy one. Good for morale.

Right. I had already issued myself a challenge, which I accepted without flinching. Back to the flat ground, then back across the sand and onto the hill, full power on.

Plump-Plump and I was across the rut, both wheels on the ground and running straight as a die. Roll back for the ripples, over the crest—hey! It's a false crest but the XL doesn't falter. The front end comes up with that wonderful added power from the big-bore piston, the forks don't top and we float over the dip and beyond to the* real crest and the top of the hill and what do I care about having my slacks full of barbs? The kid is safe and sorry, the truck is fine, the engine will start and the forks are better than new.

My bike. I think I'll keep her.