After a week of complaining about sweltering 95 degree heat in Florida, I flew home today with the hope of taking my CL200 out for a spin.  No dice.  The temperature at the Akron airport was 46 degrees when we landed and it’s still raining.

I think this week if it isn’t raining I’m going to start trying to get both bikes up to my office in Mentor for the Winter.  My wife is bitching about my using the entire garage for the bikes.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for posting while I was out, and also for the comments and new users.    I think we have about 33 members now.

I’m going on vacation tomorrow morning. I probably won’t do a lot of posting while I’m there, so everyone PLEASE feel free to help keep the site lively by visiting and of course posting. We’d all love to know what some of the newer members are up to.

Thanks guys!

Brian

I’ve come up with a new idea to help us be an even stronger community of vintage bike riders.  The community parts box.

You know how everyone has a box of miscellaneous parts that you don’t really need, but don’t want to throw away?  Imagine if we could all dig through each other’s boxes.  The whole idea of this is that the parts are FREE for other members to take off your hands.

I am going to impose a few rules to keep things fair and to avoid the inevitable person that takes and never gives.  Rules are as follows:

1. You must be a member of vintagebikeriders.com to participate.
2. Vintagebikeriders.com, it’s owner(s), and anyone affiliated with the site bear absolutely no responsibility for any transactions that take place under this program.
3. The “parts box” is virtual – you hold the parts that you’re offering and if someone asks for them, the manner in which you hook up is up to you.
4. You must have at least two working parts offered in order to aks for someone else’s.
5. On your honor, if you do receive a part from the “parts box” you will give vintagebikeriders.com one dollar.  That goes to help support the effort in the event that this thing gets popular.
6. If you take a part it is to be used on your own bike.  You will not take a part from the box to sell UNDER  ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
7. If you take a part and then no longer need it, you will return it to the box.

If you have a part to offer, please just email bt@vintagebikerider.com with as much information as you have, such as the part number, what bike it’s for, description, condition, a picture if possible, etc. We will manage the list of parts and if it becomes popular we will create a more formal parts database.

Click HERE to visit the parts box

Today was an exciting day on the CL200 front.  Last night I took the jets out of the carbs and cleaned them again.  The left carb’s jet seemed ok visually, but you could tell it wasn’t passing as much air (when out of the carb) as the right carb’s jet. 

I was lucky – that did the trick and I fired it up this morning first thing and FINALLY it was running properly.  No sputtering.  So, I took it to the HD demo day event in Mentor.  Round trip plus some riding around Mentor, it went 82 miles just fine.  Now, I guess I’m a vintage bike RIDER and not just an owner!!!

Also, the new float arrived today.  I could tell right off that it was more narrow than the old one.  From what I recall when ordering it, the original part number was superceded by a new number, so I’m guessing somewhere down the line they started making them more narrow. 

Right away from blowing air into the fuel line with the air compressor, I could tell this was working better.  Last night when I had the carbs apart, I did the same thing and air was still getting through when turning the carb upside down (in theory closing the valve).  With this one it was air tight.

The picture above is my nightly parking ritual for it – letting the overflow tubes drip into an empty water bottle.  I have them in there tonight too, but I’m hoping to find the bottle empty by morning….which will mean that this problem is solved.  I put the new float on the left carb – the right one will need one too, but it only drips a drop or two overnight.  The left carb was dripping 4 or 5 ounces (on the water bottle scale).  One other thing worth noting – this new float (which came with a new pin) moves much more freely than the old one.

I couldn’t get a good picture, but here is the ideal Harley douchebag and a prime example of why so many of these guys drive me to want to chew off my arm.

We were up at Starbucks on Hudson with the kids grabbing a coffee before getting the kids home and in bed.  What to my wondering eyes should appear?  It’s that Harley douchebag I’ve been avoiding all year! 

Yes, in full pose, HDDB pulls in (of course with loud pipes), is far too cool to break his pose to acknowledge any other person in the parking lot, and just to make the moment a perfect Kodak moment, he got off his bike once before remembering that he forgot to leave his blue LEDs on for all to notice his expensive machinery, and proceeded to go back and LOOK like he had a reason for getting back on the bike….then turned on his LEDs before going on in.

Red doo rag?  Check.  Loud pipes?  Check.  Cooler than Vanilla Ice pose?  Check.

On another note, the guys up at Western Reserve Harley today were actually a pretty decent bunch.  Will write more on that later.