Wild Angels, Live...

Got this album for Christmas, obviously for the cover. Speaking of covers, it's what the band does with '50's and '60's rock standards. They're enthusiastic and sometimes hit the notes on the right beat.
But the cover is interesting, did they shoot this during an intermission on race day? Did they borrow these speedway bikes? Do they know what they're sitting on?
I couldn't get past the first paragraph of hyperbole in the liner notes, but I may try again later to see if it answers any of these questions...

Wild Turkey!

Sorry, not the bourbon, the bird. This flock came up to the house while I was trying to get the XR200R rear wheel back to something resembling round and true. More work on that after I return from Sweden!



I took the YZ for another ride this morning, it's running great. I'll need to do some minor jetting changes but I think it could probably go the way it is now if I had to.
The next challenge will be to see if the front ice fender will leave enough clearance for the front brake line. Last year I had the 19" spool wheel on it. It's going to have the 21" wheel and brake this year.

Progress on the YZ125

I've finally been able to spend some time on the YZ125. Got the engine in the frame on Thursday, but then the rest of the day was spent putting snow tires on Volvos. So today was the day to finish up and get it running.

You'll no doubt remember that I blew up the top end at Lake George last year as a result of a bad crank seal. I took the opportunity to "rebuild" the engine at that stage, fresh crank bearings and seals, fresh tranny bearings, fresh piston in the already freshened and bored top end. My only concern was that the tranny didn't feel great when I put it back together in the cases, so I was a bit nervous about how it would shift.

Here's where I was this morning.



It was not much work to get the rest of the bodywork on, fill fluids and give it a once over. It started up on the 3rd kick. Encouraged, I proceeded to do a few laps of the driveway. The tranny felt just fine, so I was relieved. In fact, the bike felt great all around. I rode it in the upper woods a bit, and some easy passes up and down the driveway. I'll run it through a few more heat cycles before I mount the ice wheels.

Since the gas tank graphics were completely shot, I decided to pull the rest of the graphics off the plastic. I may just run it this way, or get a black seat cover.

KTM Wheel

You'll recall that I bent the front wheel on the EXC during the Black and Blue Enduro. Well I thought I had a good replacement wheel, but it wound up not working out. In the mean time I got a new "take-off" rim and laced it to the old hub. I borrowed a truing stand and dial indicator and got started with the wheel truing process.
Since I don't do this very often, it takes me awhile to re-learn the routine, but I finally got it pretty close.
One of my frustrations was finding any specifications for radial and axial runout. I finally found a site that claims that the OEM specs for most new wheels are .015 to .018 for either dimension. I've gotten this wheel within that, so I guess I'm satisfied.