Decent video off their website showing some accessories for the 2017 CB

https://youtu.be/F1IVZco0KZY

I like to ride in the winter. This means that it's cold and salty when I ride sometimes. I do not have a drain in my garage which, incidentally, is not heated. I would like to get some of the salt and grime off of my bike, but using water seems to me to be cumbersome at best. Any suggestions? Special cleaning products? Techniques? I'd love to hear them!

Not like I need another bike . . . but I found someone who REALLY wants to buy my Moto Guzzi (so I can keep the motorcycle count at six, not more). On Thursday I called the salesman (think he's actually sales manager; not sure) who sold me a KLR some years ago and told him I was interested in a 2017 EX. He had sold the one I sat on a couple of months ago, but said that he'd have no problem getting one from the Honda warehouse.

It's supposed to be here some time near the end of January (not generally good riding weather in southwestern Pennsylvania). I think maybe it's good to have something to look forward to at this time of year . . . rather than the immediate gratification of picking it up in May . . .

I do not believe I've ever even ridden an inline four during the 39 years I've been riding and roughly 400K miles. Seems to me that in 1979 or 1980 my friend was riding the 1976 CB750 owned by his uncle, but I doubt that with only a year or two of (untrained) riding experience, I would have ridden a big bike like that.

My first bike was a beautiful cherry red and chrome 1971 CB450; think it's time to have another pretty Honda! I have a tankbag and factory service manual on order and I'll wait until I have the bike to see what else it needs to fit me properly.

This forum has a lot to do with pushing me over the edge to actually buy one; well done!

I know that people come and go all the time on forums of any type. I don't get too worked up by this as I myself have been very active on some forums only to halt my participation for a variety of reasons. Sometimes this is due to a lack of interest and sometimes it is due to moving on to to other forums, and sometimes well who knows. But on a forum populated by motorcyclists, I do sometimes grow a bit more curious, wondering if someone who is no longer active posting here has perhaps lost interest (in this forum, in the CB1100, or possibly in motorcycles all together) or sadly perhaps something more unfortunate.

I started thinking about this again last night when I was searching for some older content and noticed a number of personalities that were once quite active here but no longer are. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who has such thoughts. Now if this were a really large forum with out so much of a "family feel" to it, such a thread might be pointless, but on a forum this size, who knows? The odds of a reply are probably still slim, but you never know.

Now anyone can go look at another user's profile to see when they were last active, but I was thinking about trying something a bit less impersonal. So I'll kick things off. (By the way, I could easily name many more personalities, but figured that I'd let others jump in.) Maybe some of these folks will respond, or perhaps someone here knows them personally and can provide and update of whether or not they are: Still riding? Moved on to another bike? Doing alright?

So what ever happened to: HikerToo?

He was pretty active here for quite a while. I'm hoping that all is well with you HikerToo. If you see this post, maybe you can let us know how things are going.

Does anyone know the lower fork tube measurement in inches and or mm? I need to order some fittings to install some Denali lights I have left over from another project.
Thanks

My bike received new suspension as a gift for Christmas - Santa was right 'on the money' this year!



He must have been watching when I took this photo of how much travel is being used on the front end from a reasonably spirited ride through the local hills.



With the front end using all of its travel the only thing left to absorb those nasty bumps is the front tyre. It became somewhat 'stepped' and a bit worn on the right side 'cos of the camber of the road. This tyre was finished well before 9,000 km.



With a few buddies around to watch, drink beer and heckle whilst I spun some spanners the suspension upgrade got started.
First step is remove the handlebars, wheel, guard etc. and crack open the damper rod bolt in the bottom of each fork. Best to drain the oil into a container and not all over the floor - 1st bout of serious laughter from my observers!



Then drop the front end and separate the fork assemblies.



Now the tricky bit of removing the valving from the bottom of each stanchion. These little suckers were hard to get out as I only had access to a dremel tool and hand file. Got to grind away the rolled edge of the stanchion until you see the inner sleeve of the valve assembly then punch it out from the other end. As it began emerging from the stanchion it separated into several pieces and the smaller components flew out at a great rate of knots hitting the garage ceiling causing me to duck for cover - 2nd bout of serious laughter.





Now clean up all the components (bushes, stanchion and fork bottom) to get out all those pesky little filings. Reassemble the forks with new fork seals minus the valving component. I used the same bushes as they are less than 10,000km and not worn.

The Andreani cartridges have 0.94kg/mm springs which may be a little 'heavy' for my weight and application (no track work). As you can see below the cartridge assembly is slightly shorter in overall length to the original spring/spacer/damper rod assembly.



There's a good youtube video showing this modification (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV80or1DN1Q) so I won't go into all the details just a few of the highlights.

Inserting the new cartridge and locking it in with the damper rod bolt and copper washer was easy 'cos it didn't spin when being tightened. Next you remove the fork cap, spacer and spring from the inserted cartridge. Then dry fit just the fork cap to the cartridge to set its depth by winding in the damper adjuster 4 turns such that it fully closes the internal damper valve in the cartridge - same for both the compression and rebound sides. Wind up the lock nut to the base of the fork cap and slide up the 'O' ring to hold it in position. Now remove the fork cap and fill the fork tube with fluid. Using my trusty 2mm 'T' handle hex key and some plastic tubing with a syringe I made a depth gauge. Remove excess fluid to leave a 125mm air gap with the stanchion bottomed out in the fork lower. Slip on the spring and spacer and now the fun bit of trying to compress it all such that you can wind on the fork cap to where it meets the lock nut which was pre-set earlier. Much fumbling, spilling of fork oil and cursing to get the fork cap on - 3rd bout of serious laughter from the peanut gallery who were fast approaching ex-buddy status!



Now just put it all back together. I put on a set of Metzeler Z8 Interacts which are available in Australia in the correct sizes ... ah, don't you just love the smell of new rubber!



Those Andreani fork caps have a serious amount of 'bling' going on. I'd prefer something a little more subtle if there was a choice.



Everyone's seen how to install the rear shocks so here is a pic of the Gazi units hooked up and ready for preload and damping adjustment. Those decals may just have to come off!



Initial suspension settings per manufacturer's recommendations are ...
Forks:
preload - 4 turns in from fully out
compression damping - 2 turns out from closed,
rebound damping - 2 turns out from closed.
Rear shocks:
preload - 1cm compressed from fully extended to give 45mm sag,
compression - 5 clicks out from closed,
rebound - 10 clicks out from closed.

New suspension needs to do 1000km before the seals are 'worn in' and they work smoothly with minimum stiction. On my initial ride everything felt way too harsh which is a factor of me being used to the original suspension and the new suspension manufacturer's 'racing' application recommended settings. I also used Motul 10wt fork oil as the recommended OHLINS fluid was not available ... perhaps 5wt might be the better choice. Anyways, a little twiddling of the damping settings made for a very nice ride over the local bumpy roads. Revised settings as follows ...

Forks:
preload - 2 turns in from fully out
compression damping - 3.5 turns out from closed,
rebound damping - 3 turns out from closed.
Rear shocks:
preload - 1cm compressed from fully extended,
compression - 8 clicks out from closed,
rebound - 10 clicks out from closed.

Riding the same roads but at a slightly reduced pace (respecting the fresh rubber) resulted in a 20% reduction in front end travel and much better absorption of the sharp edged bumps (high speed dampening).



Santa must have invested heavily in these gifts but I can say they are great value. The improvement is already quite dramatic and it's only going to get better when they wear in and I've 'tweaked' the settings.

On the way to work this morning, saw a gentleman on a 2103 red/silver model heading west on SR 20, at the intersection at Hwy 77 in Ebro...he waved even though I was on my Triumph Scrambler

Nice ride dude!

I've been doing my homework leading up to the upcoming bike swap I'll be doing with VLJ where he will finally get some seat time on a CB1100 and I will ride a bike that, until last night, I knew nothing about.

First impression...the XSR sounds like a great bike, but its "neo-retro" styling doesn't make it stand out from the crowd enough for me. I think the neo overwhelms the retro. And calling it a 900 is misleading considering it's only 847cc. Why isn't it the XSR850? Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

The XSR is 110 lbs lighter than the CB and despite 25% fewer cc's its HP and torque numbers are the same or higher than those of the CB. I have very little trouble throwing the CB around with my 200 lbs....the XSR has got to be a blast on twisty roads.

ABS and traction control? I have to drive my wife's car to get behind an ABS, and to me traction control is feathering the accelerator until the rear differential stops freaking out. I'm unsure how I feel about these features.

This is going to be fun.

For anyone interested here is a dyno run of brand new stock Z900RS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtp4C6y8R44

101.36hp@8620rpm
66.68tq@6970rpm

Looks like thing is going to be a real bike. I've said on several sites that I'd buy a Guzzi adventure bike if they built something like this: I wonder if I fit it?

http://discoverv85.motoguzzi.com/en/