Mark Meisner's CB

Check this beauty out!!

It's not completely finished yet, you can follow the progress on Mark's blog.

Update

Sorry for the last two posts. I need the reserve some space for non-bike related (my study) stuff. It will be useful in the future. 

I am working very, very hard on a brand new website, until it's up and running, this blog will see fewer updates. More on this soon!

Very cool W650 custom

I've posted a link to Lars' blog, Brauchi's bikes, a while ago, but his W650 is now as good as finished. A great bike combined with some photography talent results in this:

Great work Lars!

Check out more of this bike and some great photography on his blog.

Vincent's Ducati

A while back Vincent, the guy I built the Virago and the CX500 chopper with, bought a Ducati Cagiva Pantah 650. He sold his Yamaha R1 for it and that was a wise decission. The Ducatis isn't even finished yet, but I'm pretty sure he's already done more miles on it, than on the R1 in 3 seasons....

Although the bike is not finished yet, it is taking shape nicely. At this moment it has custom made exhaust pipes with modified mufflers, Emco air filters, air-supension at the back, a CX500 C gas tank, a seat made of a CX500 C gas tank, Tomasselli clipons, home made headlight and license plate brackets, after market headlight, Honda speedo and a seat made by the same guy (Raymond) that did the seat on my CB750.

Vincent took the Ducati for a test ride yesterday, while I tried to fine tune the Virago

As I said, it's work in progress. Heat shields on the exhausts are on his to-do list (though it's not a big problem)

And the engine needs some tuning (it's running a bit lean). 

All in all the bike is great fun and is nearly ready for the summer season.

We also did a short video, time was running out a bit and I filmed it from the Virago which was a surprisingly hard platform for filming (it's way easier on my BMW or the CB). The engine noise you hear is 100% the noise produced by the Virago, shame, cause the Duc sounds great too!

Bikes at the Vehikel swap meet (March 2012)

I needed to get the BMW up to temperature to set the timing (see the previous blog post). At the moment the Vehikel swap meet is going on only a few minutes from my house (see my report from the Vehikel swap meet last December: Vehikel). I don't really need any parts and the entrance is quite expensive, so I just went there to have a look at the bikes parked outside.

Conditions were far from ideal, so the photo's aren't that great, but some of the bikes were really interesting:

Aihead bean can: Lubricating the timing weights.

My Beemer has been running a bit irregular at idle lately. It would usually idle too high (1300-1500 rpm), which after a while would drop to rpm's as low as 800.  A short google search revealed that sticky timing weights might be the problem.

The part responsible for the timing on an airhead sits behind the front engine cover:

You see why the call it the 'Bean Can':

The bean can has a little hatch on the top which you can remove with a thin screwdriver, exposing the weights:

And than it's just a simple matter of lubricating them with an oil that's friendly to the plastic parts inside the bean can.

Note 1: You set the timing of an airhead by rotating the bean can. So it's advisable to mark the exact position of the bean can before you remove it so you can put it back exactly the same way. I would also advise you to check the timing afterwards. I have a strobe light, so I can check it dynamically. It only takes a few minutes this way.

Note 2: Don't forget to disconnect the battery before removing the front engine cover. Contact with the diode board of this cover while the battery is connected, might cause expensive damage to the diode board.

I took the BMW for a short ride afterwards and the improvement is significant. Idle rpm is now nice and stable.

The CB in motion

Still working on a video. It's more work than you might think. This is some of the raw footage I shot yesterday.

Acewell 4453: A short video of some of the functions

The title says it all. I made a short video showing some (not even all!) of the functions on the ACE-4453-AB:

One of the very, very cool other functions is the possibility to warn you when the oil temperature get's too high. You can manually select a temperature at which yuo can let the unit automatically warn you. That warning looks like this (I set it at only 60 degrees celcius for demonstration purposes):

Not something you're likely to miss.

Look what the mailman brought: Lowside Syndicate No 7!

Fresh from the mailbox: Lowside Syndicate Magazine number 7, featuring my BMW! 

I'm really happy with that, it's a very cool magazine. Very tasteful photography and some great stories/profiles. And I'm not just saying that because I am in it.

Sorry for the crappy cellphone photos. If I scanned them so you could read it, it would feel like (and probably would be) copyright infringement. Just buy the magazine ;)

Issue 8 is just out, so if you get the chance: grab it at a local distributer or order it from their website.

I also got a Acewell speedo cable/sensor. Note: it is the cable for a ACE-2853, it will not fit on the ACE-4453 without some (easy) work. The connectors are different, so I cut the connector of the magnet-sensor that came with the Acewell 4453 unit and connected it to the wires of the sensor. I tested it and it works fine.

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.

    

Hanging out

Motor-magazine best readers photo of 2011

I submitted this photo for the motor-magazine best reader's photo 2011 contest:

Guess what?

That was a pleasant surprise for me, first prize! I'll get to go along with their professional photographer for a day, I'm petty excited about that since I'm always eager to learn!

90% chance of rain

That's what the forecast said. Didn't see a single drip. It was INCREDIBLY cold though. But I had a great time riding the CB :)

Found some unpaved roads again

Did a photo shoot with Vera (in this photo) and Simone. I'm used to shooting machines, animals and objects, it was a pretty new experience to work with people. It's not as easy as some people make it look. Learned a lot and we had a lot of fun.

BMW walkaround

I was going through my videos and I realized I've never posted this one..... Hope the weather will be like that again soon!!

The last one of last week's shoot.

BMW cafe racer