jeremyblanchard | blahg

motorcycles, technology, music, business

Raising the forks on a 2006 Yamaha FZ1

Posted on | March 6, 2010 | 3 Comments

I have been wanting to adjust my suspension for a while now but haven’t made the time. Well, this week the wife and kid were out of town so I had some extra time. I did a fair amount of reading. My primary resource was a page on moto-racing.co.uk.

That article walks through the setting up of suspension and what the various settings mean (ie. Preload, Rebound, Compression, Damping…) and also gives some suggested measurements.

The other thing that caused me to adjust my suspension now is the feeling that I was fighting with my bike, see previous post. I wasn’t fully pleased with how the bike was handling but being somewhat inexperienced with sport bikes I needed to do some research first. I had heard of raising the forks to change the geometry and wanted to give it a try. This article made it seem so easy, and you know what it was.

I used my digital gauge and measured the starting point of my forks. You will notice from the pictures that they were not even. My right and left forks were at .8mm and 1.35mm respectively. Perhaps not that big of a deal but when changing the forks by as little as a few millimeters, 0.55mm seems like a lot. In the end I raised the forks an average of 4.4mm to end up with a height of roughly 5.5mm

I am amazed at how much difference 4.5mm makes. The turn ins are so much lighter. I may end up lowering the forks 1 to 1.5mm if I don’t get used to it in the next month or so. It is a lot easier to turn. Evasive actions, ie. avoiding pot holes, are much less work now. I feel that I have lost a little bit of stability in the turns but that may be partially due to my learning curve with the newly lowered front end.

Further suspension adjustment:

My bike would tend to skip a bit when going over bumps, especially when accelerating. After reading the first article I linked to I decided to reduce the rear shock damping. (see chart for specific settings) This helped tremendously. My rear tire doesn’t seem to skip and hop anymore when going over bumps.

On the front forks I have only adjusted the preload. I need to study more about recognizing the affects of Rebound and Compression damping before I start playing around with those too much. I performed the “zip-tie” test, as I am calling it, and found myself, after several adjustments cycles, adjusting the preload all the way out. I am now at minimum preload and I still have too much room according to the zip-tie test. I guess this means I need to ride harder. If only there weren’t so many other vehicles in my way. This may also change slightly with subsequent Compression and Rebound adjustments.

For those of you looking for a frame of reference for setting your own suspension, I am 5′9″+ and I weight about 185lbs with all my leathers and helmet on. I ride relatively moderate to moderately-aggressive (I do live in Boston after all) and I do mostly urban and back roads riding.

Don’t be afraid of adjusting your suspension. It could be just the thing that makes riding that much better.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.

Ps. Here are my routes from the two days of testing.
Day 1: http://bit.ly/a6×8X5
Day 2: http://bit.ly/aOTaiK

  • Share/Bookmark
Category: motorcycle
Tags: > > > > >

FZ1 Rake and Trail

Posted on | March 4, 2010 | 1 Comment

I want to do a complete suspension set up on my 2006 Yamaha FZ1. I need to get somebody to hold up my bike while I take measurements and make adjustments. I have been feeling like the bike doesn’t quite handle as easily as I would like it to.
I started looking into trail and rake and comparing various bikes. After looking at my results, I may want to raise my front forks a bit to decrease my rake angle after I do my suspension setup.

Have a look see.

  • Share/Bookmark
Category: motorcycle
Tags: > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Album Review: Joe Pug – Messenger

Posted on | March 3, 2010 | No Comments

The other day I heard Joe Pug on WUMB and was intrigued. The song was Speak Plainly, Diana.

First let me step back and say, Yes, I was listening to the radio!

Since my wife and I choose to subscribe to Rhapsody I am able to listen to Joe’s album without having to pay any extra for it. I gave it two good listen throughs and here are my takeaways.

The title song is perhaps the best on the album. It’s upbeat and has an intersting melody and phrasing similar to Patty Griffin and The Crash Test Dummies.
After the title song the next six songs are barely worth listening to. The second song, How Good You Are is the best of those six.
The last three tracks on the album are worth listening to for sure. Disguised as Someone Else has an interesting story reveal at the end. I wasn’t sure why he would want to be someone else until the very end.
Bury Me Far (From My Uniform) is held up by its melody and structure but also has an interesting and compelling enough story.
The final track, which is the same as I heard on WUMB, is really only worth listening to because it is upbeat. The story isn’t super compelling.

Conclusion: Overall, a good effort by a young Joe Pug. I would suggest writing more uptempo songs. I realize this isn’t easy for many folk singers, me included, however, the two uptempo tracks on this album really hold it together and make it worth listening to.

See Joe Pug at Great Scott in Alston, MA on Thursday March, 4th at 8:30pm.
http://www.joepugmusic.com/

  • Share/Bookmark
Category: music
Tags: > > > >

Motorcycle Brand Complexity

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

I’ve been thinking about why Harley-Davidson had a significant negative Net Income for the year of 2009. My thinking led me to look at the number of models that H-D has. They seem to have very few engines and very many models per engine. This seemed like a slow moving and high cost product strategy.

From that initial idea I decided to look at the number of models offered by the various motorcycle brands. Since H-D is a cruiser only company I tried to break up the motorcycle market into ‘cruiser’ and non-cruiser or ’sport’. I took the number of families the company groups its bikes into, plus the number of different engines it offers, plus the total number of models it touts. The families are the least important of the three, since families are largely a marketing decision and therefore slightly arbitrary.

What I was left with was a general idea of product complexity per brand.

As I expected H-D is the most complex of the cruiser brands, yet I was surprised to see Star so close behind. The problem with the complexity of H-D products is the narrow band of its appeal. Star is very complex as well, however, Yamaha Motors, Star’s parent company, is a much more diversified company than H-D, especially after the closing of Buell. If large displacement cruisers fall out of favor, as they did in 2009, H-D is really far up the creek without a paddle and with a hole in their boat.
Victory, H-D’s main competitor, is much more focused in it’s product offering. Indian is a competitor but not a strong one due to their market position, however, we can see their ultra-focused product line: One family, one engine, seven models.

Complexity in the ’sport’ market, as it is here defined, is less troublesome since it includes many different riding styles and applications. As I have defined it, the ’sport’ market includes any two wheeled vehicle that is not a cruiser/retro style bike. This includes, super-sport, sport, touring, motocross, scooters, and so on. Since there are many sub-markets to the sport market risk is spread out over many different types of consumers.

I started this idea thinking about H-D, so that is how I will end it as well. H-D is introducing too many models that are very similar. I suggest cutting out several models. For example the Nightster and the Forty-Eight are so similar, why not have a base model of something similar to the NIghtster then having customers opt in to having it modified to the Forty-Eight.

Since, in general, H-D owners are so quick to customize their rides, the strategy I am explaining is a hybrid of what already takes place. Currently, consumers purchase an H-D then use after market parts to make it “their own”. This strategy would be similar only there would be fewer base models to choose from initially, yet with a few changes of parts, performed locally at the dealer, the consumer can have the base model modified to one of several base+ models.

This won’t be an easy transition for the company nor for the public, however, with such a high level of complexity H-D stand to have drastic lows like it did in 2009. By example, producing a Nightster plus some Forty-Eight parts, tank, mirror…., is a lot cheaper than producing and stocking inventory of both the Nightster and the Forty-Eight.

I wish Harley-Davidson then best of luck in coming years. With proper leadership the company should be fine.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.

  • Share/Bookmark
Category: business, motorcycle
Tags: > > > > > > > > > >

Symtec-Inc Grip Heaters

Posted on | February 17, 2010 | No Comments

For Christmas, my step-father got for me a set of Symtec-inc grip heaters.
This was entirely coincidental. I was going to purchase some grip heaters for myself at some point but he beat me to it. The installation was fairly straight forward and I covered it all in earlier posts: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

I took my new grip heaters out for a trial run in 34F cloudy weather. It was windy, salty, and of course cold. It took a few minutes for the grip heaters to warm up and it took me much longer to get used to the feeling of warm palms. I rode for over an half hour and was still not used to them.

The short story is, they help, but they do not solve the problem.

In fact, I wonder if my fingers felt more pain due to the contrast between my warm palms and cold fingers. I did notice, however, that I retained more mobility in my fingers through the ride. In other words, my fingers didn’t get as stiff.
They were easy enough to install and were cheap enough that I am glad I have them, however I intend to get a Gerbing jacket liner and glove liner if I intend to ride all year round in the future.

  • Share/Bookmark
Category: motorcycle
Tags: > > > > > > > > >
keep looking »

  • About

    My Photo
    husband, father, singer/songwriter, grad student, motorcycle enthusiast, consumer technology geek.

  • Categories

  • Tag Cloud

    accessories Apple blog BMW cold ducati eBay electronics fuel economy FZ1 Garmin gloves Gmail Google grip heaters GT1000 Halloween Harley-Davidson Honda iCal iPhone joe rocket Kawasaki maps Martha's Vineyard Monster MotionX motorcycles music Nightster R1200R Rhapsody ride rifle sportster Triumph USB video Vulcan wife windscreen wiring XL883 XR1200 Yamaha

  • Life’s Photos