Not much biking going on

As you might have noticed: I did not update the blog last week. Partly that's due to me being busy, but mostly it's due to the weather. It's not been very nice on the days that I had time, so the bikes remained in the shed. Here's a short photo story of my past 2 weeks or so:

Winter near the village where I grew up in the Dutch river area (Betuwe)

This is what we do over here when there's ice: We go skating. En masse. Millions of people spend there weekends on the ice or took days off from work to go skating. I did a few trips myself.

A friend of mine bought spikes for the tires of his Super Motard

He asked me if I wanted to come and take photos. Hell yes :)

Last weekend the weather finally improved and it started to feel a bit like spring (although now it's grey, wet and cold again). Those are not birds, they are dogfighting planes! Impressive to see!

Almost as impressive were the signs of nature waking up for the coming spring.

But the singes of spring are there, hopefully the weather will improve soon. I have some very interesting photo shoots planned with bikes that (yet) haven't made it to any blogs, so they'll be BMW Cafe Blog exclusives :)

Acewell 4453

I was planning to do a photo how-to on installing the Acewell, but it's so simple that photo's would make it look way more complicated than it is. The Acewell comes with a wiring diagram, every wire has a color and a function. For instance: The wire that goes to the Oil LED is light gray. If you look at the wire diagram of a CB750 K2, you will see that on a K2, the color of that wire is red-blue. Just connect those two. Do that for all the wires of the Acewell and that's it. You don't even need to be technically inclined to be able to do this.

Note the exhaust end cap. I realized I've not yet posted photo's that show it properly, so here it is. I welded it on to make the exhaust sound a bit more civilized. I made it out of an ashtray and it works perfectly. 

The unit is slightly larger than the mechanical tacho that used to be on the CB. I decided to move it to the middle, where I think it looks best. 

One of the functions is the volt meter, here showing 12v at approximately 1100 rpm.

The RPM needle gives the 4453 a bit more of a classic look than the 2853. A big plus in my book.

The weather is terrible and the bike is really dirty. I'll make some better photo's as soon as teh weather clears up a bit.

The mailman brought me a present

So.... What is it?

It's my brand new Acewell ACE-4453-AB!!!

I've had the Acewell 2853 on my BMW and I LOVE that unit, it is fantastic. It is all you need in one, small housing. It has a tacho, a speedo, all the idiot lights and cool functions as maximum speed, maximum RPM, 2 trip distances, gear shift warning etc... etc....

The Acewell 2853 on my BMW 

So I really, really wanted one for the CB that so far has only been sporting a simple speedometer. When Acewell brought out the even classier looking 44XX series, I definitely wanted one. It is not for sale in the Netherlands (yet?), so I got it straight of Acewell. I later found out you can also order it at Dime City.

I left the plastic on the screen for protection, that is what makes the screen look a bit pale, but it isn't. It looks fantastic, very well put together.

I just assumed it would be similar to the 2853, except form the cool  rev counter part. I was wrong. I just finished reading the manual. It's AMAZING! Here we go:

It has:

-   All the cool gadgets the 2853 has (rev counter (digital), speedo, maximum speed, ODO meter, 2 trip meters, average speed, riding time, total riding time, RPM warning indicator (shift light), clock, fuel meter and all the idiot lights. 

- Rev counter (with a needle)

- Oil temperature meter

- Air temperature meter

- 50 laptimers

- Laptimer remote (for on the handlebars)

-  "fuel gauge off mode" (I missed that a little bit on the 2853, since none of my bikes have a fuel sensor)

- adjustable background lighting color

- a way more elaborate display that allows for much more information at once than the 2853 display

- a voltage meter (I am very, very happy with that. Anyone with a Honda will be ;))

In short: I am going to love this thing even more than the 2853! Can't wait to install it on the CB. I hope the weather will clear the asalt of the roads soon, so I can test it.

    

Bill Costello's BMW

Just over a year ago I posted a fantastic video on a bike restoration, made by New Yorker Bill Costello. Bill contacted me last week via this blog an was so kind to send me some more photo's and info on the bike.

The bike is a 1958 R50, 500cc and 26 HP. Bill's farther bought the bike when it was only 2 years old. Bill's father was involved in a pretty bad accident in 1969 and was never allowed to ride the bike again, so it just sat in the garage. When Bill's farther passed away, Bill decided to completely restore the bike. These words don't do the restoration justice, again, just watch the video.

I hope Bill can pass this bike on to his children and they to their children. This bike is worth way more than just money. I'll stop writing about it, just enjoy these photo's:

And the helmet his wife gave him for Christmas:

You can contact Bill via his Youtube channel.

Winter in Holland

Winter has hit us unexpectedly, but hard. Last Friday we had the lowest temperatures measured in 27 years. For people that are not familiar with the Netherlands: This country is very flat and has a lot of water. So freezing temperatures means: A lot of ice. Every time this happens a kind of ice-skate-fever breaks out in the Netherlands. So the bikes will remain in the shed and I'll be on the ice the next week or so.

Hanging out