ChronoTech Corporation

For most of the summer, I haven’t been able to ride my motorcycle because of electrical problems. The bike starts up fine, when it’s being jumped, or the battery is at full charge, but I can only charge the battery by hooking it up to an external charger.

The reason for this is because, for whatever reason, the charging system isn’t working.  I decided to replace the rectifier, and seeing that mikesxs.net had a solid-state rectifier/regulator, I replaced the regulator at the same time. I also installed a new wiring harness. I took the bike out in the driveway, hooked it up by jumper cable to my truck battery, and started it up. I removed the jumper cables and…

No joy. It died as soon as the connection was broken. I looked over the wiring guide to the rectifier regulator, and noticed that I was supposed to ground out a wire that doesn’t connect to the new unit. It’s the ground wire for the alternator rotor. So I grounded it and…

I ran out of time to work on the damn thing. It got dark, and I had to head to work anyway.

So, that’s the story so far. I’m really hoping that hooking up that ground wire worked. And if it doesn’t, I really hope that replacing the brushes on the alternator is sufficent to get it working again, because if it isn’t, I’m looking at spending US$149.99 on a new rotor, and US$199.99 on a new stator for the alternator. That won’t be any fun at all.

At least I have an idea of what’s wrong. That’s something, right?

Yeah, I know. It’s been about four months since I last posted anything in here. Last time I wrote, I was bitching about my tiny motorcycle. Well, the tiny motorcycle finally let me down, and broke down in the Wal-mart parking lot at Rio Bravo and Coors Blvd here in ‘Burque. Not the greatest neighborhood. After hanging out at Wally World for about six hours, my sister came and picked me up. About an hour later, my buddy Joby gave me a ride back to the bastion of all that is unholy in retail with a truck. We loaded the bike up, strapped it down real good, and off we went. Joby’s excellent use of slipknots kept the bike from shifting around altogether. After doing this much of a solid for me, Joby goes on the list of people I’m willing to help dispose of a body.

The funny thing is, after spending 700 bucks getting the CT-2 running, I really have no particular desire to get it running again, except to get into selling condition. There is a good reason for this. About the middle of January, I bought another bike. This one is far, far better than the last one. It’s a 1979 Yamaha XS650 Special. It’s a much bigger bike, and on this one, I can actually go on the freeway. I even have the potential to get speeding tickets now, as the new bike can pretty easily do 95, and if I drop it into 4th gear and open the throttle all the way, I can probably get it up to around 110. This is really freakin’ scary – which is probably why I haven’t broken 100 yet. With my self-proclimation as a total wuss out of the way, I can move on to all the things that make this bike so freakin’ awesome.

The first bit is the fact that the engine is fuckin’ bulletproof. Literally. One could shoot bullets at this thing, and still expect it to start. That’s the second thing. This bike has two starting systems – a kickstart, and an electric start. I use the kickstart when it’s cold, because it always, always starts up by the third kick. When it’s warm, the electric start works just fine. I expect by summer time, I’ll be able to use the electric start all the time. The last bit, is the fact that this bike gets great gas milage. It gets roughly 55 mpg with normal use, and I expect with a little bit gentler of a hand, I could probably get up to 65+.

That leads to the one drawback of the bike. It only has a 2.9 gallon tank, so it has a range of about 165 miles between fillups. I’m planning to get an aftermarket tank that holds 3.9 gallons, which would get my range up to a respectable 220 miles. Which still isn’t enough to get me from  Fallon NV to Ely NV at night, when their are no gas stations between these towns.

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But, hey, what can you do? There aren’t very man places in the United States where one can actually go more than a hundred miles without a gas station – and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, because it costs me about 9 dollars to fill up my tank. You try going 165 miles for $9 dollars in your bigass SUV. Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Of course, all this wouldn’t be complete (at least for me) if I hadn’t already managed to drop the stupid thing. The worst (best?) part is that I dropped going around a corner coming off a stop sign, at about 5 miles an hour. That’s what a little bit of water, some sand, and a motorcycle tire can do to you. And, of course, I managed to drop the whole damn 600 lbs. of the bike on my knee, and bruised the fuck out of it. But that won’t stop me from riding it – it’s too damn much fun.

Spring Break is coming up, and I’m planning to ride the beast out to California, to take it up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway, for the undereducated) and then to Castro Valley CA, to visit my Enforcer buddy Mojo. On the way over, I’m stopping at the House of Blues in Las Vegas to see Flogging Molly. All in all, it should be a damn fine trip.

P.S. Road rash fucking hurts. So do bruised tailbones.

About five months ago, I made a deal with my dad. He agreed to let me have his 1972 Yamaha CT-2, and I would pay to fix it. So about a month later, he dragged it down from Abiquiu to Albuquerque. So far so good. At the time, I had no money to fix it, so it got parked in my sister’s backyard until the end of August.

I finally had the money to actually fix the bike around then, so my dad drove back down, and we took the bike to a local bike shop. About the middle of October, the bike was actually finished, so I rode the bus up to the bike shop and picked the thing up.

Now keep in mind… this is an old bike, and before October, I’d never ridden one. So one thing I was not particularly aware of is this: When the fuel feeds by gravity, it’s very important to close the petcock after you shut off the bike, or else it will flood. Flooding, obviously, is bad. What’s worse, is when you don’t realize that your bike is flooded, and you start fiddling with the carb to try to fix it.

This does not work. What it does do, is allow (in the course of fiddling) dirt to enter into the carb, and to allow that dirt to gum up the throttle, making it stick all the way open.

Motorcycles don’t like this much. Because they can’t start with the throttle all the way open. It just doesn’t work. It pretty much does the opposite of “work.”

So, for about 2 or 3 weeks, I was without motor transport. This is okay, really, because I’ve been without motor transport for more than 2 years. I can cope.

$34 dollars later, my carb is cleaned by the shop. The motorcycle runs better than it ever has before. I haven’t gotten a chance to take it on a good cruise yet, but I’m thinking I’m going to go down to the valley and ride around in search of a decent New Mexican restaurant, assuming such a thing exists in Albuquerque.

The real lesson is this: When you take a spark plug out of the engine, and crank the engine to see if you have spark, it is inadvisable to be holding the spark plug up in the air. Because if you do, you become the ground for that particular circut. Ouch.

I learned this the hard way, but am not any worse for the wear.

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