Robin: Check one. All right, we're good to go? Yep. Yes. Hello, everyone. I'm Robin Dean. And I'm Travis Burleson. And I'm Tim Clark. And this is the Writing Obsession podcast. Coming at you! Today, we'll be talking about rejetting a V-twin carburetor, charging electronics on your ADV bike, and the beautiful and lovely BMW K75, or K100, 85 to 95, or 82 to 92, depending. The Writing Obsession is seeking sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given two focus mentions toward the start and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group writing tour, which is scheduled for spring of next year. Dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour, seven writers will cover seven states in seven days. Starting in late April of 2018. It's a twisty sport touring getaway of epic proportions. And we hope you'll sign up. More information about that tour is available via thewritingobsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under travel in our navigation menu. So, Travis, what's been going on this week in the land of Travitron?

Travis: Not a whole lot. I'm still working on my little moped that I bought. The Pintus 1978 JC Penny Pinto II. So I don't know, did we talk about that last time? I made a seat for it.

Robin: No, we didn't get to the seat. You were thinking about doing it. You were wondering if you're sewing machine would be able to get through the leather. Is it faux leather or is it the real deal?

Travis: It's vinyl. It's like gripper vinyl that I got. Yeah, and it goes through the old Kenmore 58 rotary sewing machine, goes right through it. So, because I did the French seams on it, on the side. And then, you know, so when you have the French seam, that's three layers. And then when you're stitching the top, that's a four. So four layers of vinyl went through with no problem. So and then just kind of made some foam, cleaned up the seat pan, put it in. It's, you're supposed to, originally it uses like that chrome strip that grows around the base of it. And then it pops through these little splay pins.

Robin: Sort of like a reinforcing tin or metal.

Travis: Yeah, and it's, I think the original one's aluminum, but you can get them in like chrome, like rubber chrome, but they look like, they look like, you know, they're plastic, but they look like chrome. But yeah, then there's a channel in there that holds little, like kind of brads that punch through the fabric and through the seat pan, and then you flatten them out on the back side. But those are expensive and hard to track down. So I just use stainless steel screws from Home Depot, just washers. Heck yeah, man.

Robin: I mean, can you even see those things?

Travis: Yeah, you can, but they're like nice shiny stainless steel, like they look good. So I did that and rebuilt the seat. I redid the front wheel, so took the bearings out, because too, it has like loose bearing.

Robin: Now, are these the same bearings that got scattered?

Travis: Yes. Did you find them all?

Robin: Or did they arrive?

Travis: No, I bought new bearings.

Robin: Yeah, they're cheap.

Travis: Like, I bought like 100 ball bearings for like five bucks, you know? Because yeah, it's like your old bicycle where there's just a cup, and then there's just, there's no, nothing to hold them in except the grease.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: So I did all that and cleaned up the brake assembly, took it all apart, scrubbed it, painted the outside of it, greased, re-greased all the moving parts, put it in, you know, sanded out the drum, sanded off the brake shoes, and rebuilt the drum brake on the front and put it all back together. And then I pulled the exhaust off the other day and dumped about, I don't know, a cup and a half of just like carbon dust out of this old 1970s two-stroke exhaust that I'm sure has never been apart decarbonized.

Robin: Oh yeah.

Travis: So I gotta get in there and clean that up.

Robin: No, man, you just gotta, you gotta do Bubbles Harley, man. You gotta, gotta get it revved up really high on the center stand until it wants to like detonate. When the engine's glowing, that carbon, it's going away.

Travis: It's going away, yeah, exactly. You're the all-Italian tune-up.

Tim: Has that motor got enough juice to heat that pipe up that much? No, no.

Robin: It's a single, I would imagine. Well, it's a two-stroke, let's not forget.

Tim: Oh yeah. Just don't put any oil in the fuel and you'll definitely solve the problem. Fire-breathing dragon, yeah, no oil in the fuel would be sending the piston down that pipe. Yeah.

Travis: So I did that. I haven't gotten to it much in the last couple of days, just been too busy. I did take the front fork apart, which is weird, man. It's like, it's not, I imagine this is what like Walmart mountain bike forks are like when you take them apart. They're probably better. Like there's no, so it's, it looks like this, like to look at it, it's an upside down fork, but it's not like a sealed fork with oil. There's no damping. It's just like there's a, there's a rod in a tube with plastic bushings and the whole thing's just packed with grease and then there's a, and then there's a spring at the top and that's it.

Tim: Tim and I, Tim, did you see the, did you see the photos of this too? No, I haven't seen the photos of this yet.

Robin: I think we've all experienced that vintage two-wheeler of any kind where it's got a gold wax inside of it. It's supposed to be the grease, but it's just turned into like a bronze colored. Oh yeah. Crusty snot that's inside the, you know, and I remember we had a C100 for a long time that I still miss, gave it to a good person or sold it off to a good person. And it was, it had some nasty 1960s lubricant. Lubricant. It's just nasty.

Travis: Yeah. So it's pretty, it's pretty basic, but I'll read that. They do sell, you can buy like proper fork and they're not that expensive. They're like 150, 160 bucks, but I don't think it's, uh, it's quite necessary for what I'm, my purposes.

Robin: So, but at the same time, you're still, I'm looking at your notes here. You're also thinking about a paint scheme. So it is, the scooter is definitely, well, the moped is worth a job, but maybe not necessarily a complete front end rebuild. And you could, you could probably put mountain bike parts on that thing.

Travis: It'd probably work. Um, yeah, yeah. So I got to take the forks apart and clean them up and put it while the innards are out. I want to maybe paint it if I'm going to paint it. And that's, I was trying to decide what, what do I want to keep it, just leave it alone and keep the patina some slight rust coloration or, um, kind of paint it silver, which is what it is now or gray. Uh, maybe it was silver 30 years ago.

Robin: Well, I can't speak for Tim, but I bet you that both of us would like to see you get like a, a turbocharger on that thing.

Travis: The, um, you can't get the, the big bore kits. So you can do the, you can upgrade the whole crank assembly and do a big bore kit. And it's like a couple hundred bucks. Like it's not too expensive, but that's what I paid for the whole bike.

Robin: 70 CCs is more than the C100 is. And I don't know why the super cub was labeled the C100 when it was a 50, well, a 39 CC, uh, step through motorcycle.

Travis: Yeah. But, um, yeah, so, um, but, uh, yeah, there was, um, there's a set of shocks on treat land, which I think we might've talked about last time, a moped parts supplier that are marked down a little bit and they're black with a high vis colored spring on them. So I was thinking about doing like the FC 10 paint scheme and like painting, like getting those shocks and painting the wheels high vis and making the rest black. What color would you pick? Is that like yellow? Yeah. Like the hot, like high vis, like lime yellow.

Robin: Oh, so, but it is lime. I'm just worried people will mistake it for a Kawasaki Ninja.

Travis: Oh yeah. Well, you know, it's not that Emerald green. It's a, it's, it's safety vest green. Um, so it'll match my jacket. So when I ride my stops, when I ride my moped with all of my, uh, adventure motorcycle gear on, you know, it'll, it'll color match. Um, Oh yes. And then that's about it for the moped right now. I got to just keep tugging away on it, get the front end apart. I did clean up the handlebars and put the new controls and stuff on. Uh, but I got to get it apart, get the front end apart, clean it up, paint it. I'm going to paint it. And then I'm going to do the backend and then I'm going to drop the motor off, do the frame, start putting it back together. I don't think I need to disassemble the motor per se. I think for now it's got tons of compression. So it's a, I think the innards are.

Robin: Yeah. One of those don't not broken. Don't fix it.

Travis: Yeah. Or next year, uh, you know, I might have an excuse to split the case on it, but, um, we're going to make an excuse. Yeah.

Robin: Right.

Travis: We're going to put, we're going to put a big board kit on it just for the fun. You ever do any sweet jumps? Yeah. I would do some sweet jumps on it. I thought about maybe getting, cause I got to get new tires on it. The, the date stamp on the title is 1980. And then they're just like visibly cracked. Um, like they, they hold, they are surprising. I think it has new tubes, but are newer tubes.

Robin: Just do a Burt Monroe on it. Get some shoe polish and just turn them into slicks. I would pay you, I would buy you two track days for you to take that thing to one and actually write it on the track. I don't know if they have a prerequisite about that, but it'd be beautiful.

Travis: They might, they might not let me.

Robin: I mean, I love the low displacement stuff just as much. It's cool. I, it really is, but it'd be fun to just torture the other racers on our, our sixes and show up in full leathers and, um, sorry, turning like signal in every curve.

Travis: Hold your hand up. Superman it just like chest on the chest on the seat. Um, but, uh, yeah, that's, uh, we'll, we'll get there. Uh, it's a, it's a, it's a winter projects. I don't want to go too fast because it's November and I got till March.

Robin: Oh yeah. So slow brush strokes, a happy little cloud, a happy little tree, happy little, uh, paint job.

Travis: Um, but, uh, yeah, then it's, I gotta winterize the Honda probably, or at least like put gas in it because the gas tanks mostly empty.

Robin: Oh, is it? Okay. Well, I mean, at least it'll be easier beyond that. You don't have to, you don't have to run it until it's dead and then drain the float bowls and then pull all the nozzles.

Travis: Yeah, it's injected. I just want to get good gas in it. It was like, get some stable in it and drive it around and get it hot and change the oil and do all that noise on it. Even though I'm like 3000 miles from the recommended interval, cause the 8,000 miles service intervals, but that little 700 takes a gallon of oil. But, um, yeah, that's it. That's all my stuff is just the, the moped tinkering and then getting the NC put the bed for the winter. Uh, what about you, Tim? How's your, uh, how's your, uh, what's it been a week and a half? Oh, we did it just last week.

Tim: Yeah, this is good. Um, not been a whole lot going on other than surgery. So I did go ahead and get the surgery on my ankle, get the plate in there. So I will be setting off metal detectors and they got the right foot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I went in there. I put, I actually did. I marked it on my left ankle. It said, not this side. And then on the right foot, fix me.

Robin: Beautiful.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: We all had our fingers crossed.

Tim: They had a laugh about it. They said, no one actually does that even though they joke about it. Yeah. And apparently they, apparently this is something they do to almost everybody post surgery. The surgeon who does it comes in and talks to you and how's it, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Do you want to go home? I have no idea that this actually happened other than people told me it happened because apparently it's like we had this discussion before anyone hit the record button in my head. So, okay, here, injection. Good night. So I've been on oxycodone for most of the week since my surgery on Thursday. And apparently I impulse shop when I'm on oxy. What'd you buy? I bought a rifle, a rifle, a line. A 30, 30. Yeah. 30, 30. That's cool. All right. A lever, a lever action or both. A lever action, 30, 30. So what are you going to hunt? You're going to hunt a, what are you going to do with the lever action? 30, 30. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing. One of my friends posted up and he was selling things off because he needs cash. And he shattered his collarbone a hundred times and he can't hunt anymore. So yeah, it's just too much kick for his shoulder to take.

Travis: So is that lever action 30, 30, like a 10 round? I can't even remember. Are you going to, are you going to practice your old West, like cocking it by like spinning it by the And just for the sake of, we know this is a sports, this is a sports motorcycle's podcast.

Robin: In the end of this story, he is going to mount it to the front forks of his Africa twin.

Tim: It is adventure.

Robin: Yes.

Tim: Well, the guys were joking. My friends were joking about, you know, I needed to get a pony and you know, to really outfit my cowboy theme. I'm like, my drugs are not that strong. Buy a pony.

Robin: Okay. Well, I'm looking at your notes here. It talks about batteries, charging gadgets. Looks like you've got some concerns.

Tim: Yep. I did do some shopping and some things. Well, before what I had was just this tiny little battery backup.

Robin: Oh, let's see. I've got the very same one. I know this one.

Tim: Yep. This is the anchor brand. Yep. It's just really nice. Tiny, tiny thing. Yeah.

Travis: It's like the size of a, like pack of cigarettes or a, yep.

Tim: So they're a solid USB charge. Yeah. It's wonderful to not ever have to worry about your phone going dead. But what I found is, you know, and this is going to be more tied to the adventure guys than the sport touring guys, because if you're out camping, you're not around outlets. You got all your gadgets and everything goes dead.

Robin: If you're an ADV guy, you are a sport touring guy.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. So, and the thing is I've accumulated a lot of gadgets. I'm a gadget guy. So I've got my camera, my GPS, my phone. I've got my Bluetooth communicator on my helmet. So I'm listening to music. Sometimes I'll bring my tablet as well. You know, if I'm going to do some typing. So I've got all these gadgets and I've got one battery backup with one output.

Robin: For anybody out there listening is wondering about this anchor device, particularly, I just pulled this one, which I have not touched in three, four months, four months and that, and now it doesn't.

Travis: Oh, there we go.

Robin: Oh, yep. Fully charged after three or four months, still ready to use. Back to you, Tim.

Tim: What I did is I bought the big brother of that that has two power inputs. So you can use two charges at once to charge it very fast. And it has three USB outputs. And I think this thing is enough to like charge my phone like 15 times in a row.

Robin: Easily. If you have that and like a, like a four port USB hub. So if you have, then you have a total of six ports, two of which are fully powered and the rest would go to low voltage. So you could charge your phone through the hub. You can charge anything low voltage through the hub. And then you've got the two extra outlets that are like just ready to blast out power.

Tim: Yeah. So if I'm doing GoPros, whatever, I've got this, you know, and I can just, the nice thing is I've set it up so I can charge it under the seat of my bike while I'm riding, you know, it's just charging off the battery tender plug. And I stop at the end of the day, set up my tent, pull the charger out from under the seat, plug everything in. It's good to go in the morning. No worries.

Robin: Can I, can I plug one of our posts? Of course. If you go to theRidingObsession.com and in the top right hand search box, you type in auxiliary power relay. We have an article that goes deep into what you need to do that. It's not very difficult. It's a, it's keyed power and it's a multi-port system that it's come in quite handy for me personally. With that Africa Twin, you're going to have more than enough room to do something like that.

Tim: Yeah. That should have a lot of power overhead for charging, heated gadgets, all that stuff. So that's kind of been the big thing is, you know, opioid induced shopping.

Robin: Opioid induced dream motorcycling during the beginnings of the winter. You broke your leg at the right time, my friend.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: Well, maybe a, maybe a week or two, too early, until after the big trip. But yeah, we'll get that. So that's my big thing. How about you, Robin? What's going on?

Robin: You were talking about the power supply issues that you are getting creative with. And it's kind of perfect circumstances that I'm right now. I'm reading Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon. So I read Jupiter's Travels, which has probably jumped to the top of my list of favorite long distance motorcycle travel books. Dreaming of Jupiter, I was thinking that it was going to, you know, I don't, I didn't, I couldn't find anything motorcycle related to read this winter that I hadn't read already. I thought, all right, well, I'll check this out. Immediately in, you start to realize he's going to do this again. Not only is he going to do this again, this is 2001. His original trip was 1973. He's going to do this again. 2001 is the year he starts working out the details on it. He is 70, I'm, I'm wrong here. He's 70 plus years old. That's, that's definitely the truth. I'm going to say he's 71, 72 years old, but the man is 71, 72 years old. And he's going to ride a motorcycle around the planet again. And the, the right now I'm in the chapter, he's, he's sort of going through that, the stage of trying to find the right bike. Now he's got all this, this backing, all these companies that would like to help him out. And the biggest issue he's come up with now that he may or may not have a ride in mind is the charging systems. So he's concerned about how is he going to charge? He's going to bring a laptop. He's going to bring a heavy duty camera, professional photographer, all that stuff. And it's just a matter of what is he going to do to maintain the battery charge in remote lands? You know, the man went through, I don't know if he went through Mongolia, but yeah, he went through some pretty heavy noise. So I'm loving that book.

Travis: And back in the seventies when there wasn't a lot, there was even less in some of those places.

Robin: You remember our discussion about scramblers last week? And he was on that, he was on that 73 triumph. I mean, that's exactly what we were talking about. So that's a one thing that's big in my life right now is just enjoying the off season to do some reading. I did space out. I, I made room for our motorcycle. We got a motorcycle trailer this year, never had one, really happy we bought it. And now it's in the garage. There was some concern as to whether or not it was too high to go in there. Like it was going to scrape the ceiling and it did fit. It's a good thing too, because it's been out all season with the rain. And so we got a sand and rust and rust-oleum, some sections. Are you going to use the rust-oleum bed liner? That's not a bad idea though. I feel like that stuff's a little bit powdery.

Travis: Uh, the overspray, be careful with the overspray. The overspray will get in kind of, it'll, you know, the overspray will dust, which, but when you put it on though, it like, it binds so good, even to like raw bare metal. Okay.

Robin: That's a good sign.

Travis: And it's super durable. Yeah. I really, I love that. That's my go-to for kind of everything is the rust-oleum bed. Cause I actually, I actually put it on some of the, I actually put it on some of the truck bed for Laurel's work truck.

Robin: Yeah. What it's actually used for.

Travis: Yeah. Cause her, that like, you know, the edges, the top, the top rails of the bed would get all, we're getting all chipped up from like putting stuff in and out from the side of the truck. So I did that and it, uh, they look great. And the best part is, is it as if it gets scraped, you just go and it looks fine.

Robin: That's what I was going to say. Anytime there's any damage to that truck, you can just relayer it, right? Just like, Oh, that got damaged. What do you mean?

Travis: And it's that textured finish. So like it hides scratches and imperfections. You don't have to make it nice. It's great.

Robin: I think my downside came when I've splayed, we talked about this last week too. Plastic chrome.

Travis: Yep. Yeah.

Robin: I put it on plastic chrome because the Hawk GT's, the front ring around the front headlight is black by default and I wanted it to be black. So I sprayed it onto this plastic chrome and it, it kind of started flaking off. I kept on having to repaint, repaint, repaint. Cause there's no rough surface for it to stick to.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. If it's, if it's like a chrome plated thing, it's, yeah, you can't, that's the, um, so the gas tank of the Pinto, the moped, like the, like the top half is chrome, but you can't like chrome plate half of a thing. So it's all, it's all chrome. And then they just painted over the chrome. Yeah. And all the paint just flakes off.

Robin: You can't paint on chrome. The bed liner didn't like that with that rim. And so I was concerned about, well, you know, probably what I'm actually going to end up using is Rust-Oleum semi-gloss because yes, it's paint. Yes, it's Rust-Oleum. That's always good. That stuff just works. But it, uh, because it's a semi-gloss, it looks neither, it looks like it neither belongs there nor doesn't. It just kind of, it just kind of fits.

Travis: You don't notice it disappears.

Robin: Yeah. It disappears into what needs to happen. Uh, so I finally winterized the bandit, which has been a long time coming because it needs repairs and he's a lot, but I don't want to work on it yet. I want to disrespect the Hawk GT for a while. So I just, I got all this stuff that I know I can do with the bandit out of my way. The Hawk GT is going to be my winter ride and there are things I want to do to it. I know how to work on the bandit. I don't know how to work on the Hawk GT and I don't care about the Hawk GT anymore. So I'm ready to just go to town on it, which was originally my plan for tonight was to be in the garage and start getting, I was going to have the carburetor ready so that we could chat and do the podcast while I went through the motions. Have you guys as a committee, you know? Um, but you know, I got really hungry. So I ate pumpkin pie for a pumpkin pie and rum for dinner. And now here we are, I'm standing upstairs in my loft. Um, the bandit needs some love. I did not put the image into the notes here. I did send them to myself. I'll save these for the next podcast. We can talk about it. So cylinder one is rich. Cylinder two, a little bit rich. Three looks normal and cylinder four is getting the chalk. So I've never had the carburetors off of the bandit before, not once, but I'm concerned and I don't doubt that it was like this regardless of my exhaust change. And in fact, the gap on the plugs, it was drastically different on two plugs. They went really wide. Um, so I don't know if I was just high revving too much because I did treat it with some disrespect this season.

Travis: But did you burn, did you burn down the, um, what's it called? The sparky bit?

Robin: The diode?

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: I didn't, I don't think so. It's no, the diode is still intact, but the, the actual, the, what is the bit that hangs over it?

Travis: The conductor? The ground. Yeah. The ground or whatever. There's, there is names for that.

Robin: Yeah. It didn't, it was the part that was seemed really flexed, but you know what? Those, they've got probably, I replaced iridiums two years ago, so they've got like 30,000 miles on them. Maybe I'll just swap them out.

Travis: Um. Oh yeah. I don't know how to, I don't know how, how the iridiums degrade. Um, cause I know just like using a, uh, you know, using a spark plug, the actual electro, that's what I'm looking for. The electrode, um, you know, it just oxidized, like it just disappears. Like the, the, the metal will, well, it goes completely foul. It, the metal literally just burns off because it's so, it's so hot. Um, the iridiums probably can take a little bit more.

Robin: They're designed to handle up to 40,000 miles.

Travis: Because they're iridium, the, the, the metal, but they're also a lot smaller. So I'm sure it looked, you know, something, something like that when it was, when it was, when they're completely shot.

Robin: Uh, just to, you know, it's the, it's what I think about whenever I'm at home is those diodes. All right. So that brings us to the, uh, updated site features and developments. Uh, bear with me here. I try to make this quick. We're making some drastic changes to our homepage.

Travis: Uh, the homepage is going to have, is it going to have, uh, the hamster dance now?

Robin: It is most definitely. Cause we're new and hip. We know, we know what the kids are talking about.

Travis: We know what the kids cause because it's 2004. We want the hamster dance.

Robin: Heck yeah. We're making drastic changes to our homepage, which is currently only display, displays and about us type of text. Uh, soon it'll show our most recent social media activity and a YouTube post or the latest YouTube videos that we've added along with a category based navigation scheme. This is both designed to update people on the fly and get our search rankings going a little bit better with Google in terms of what our site offers. Uh, the previous layout is still there. All you have to do is visit the writing obsession.com forward slash articles to view our latest write-ups and the previously known blog role fashion. As for the podcast, dear prospective sponsors, we now have a podcast listener statistic system. So you can actually get the figures for who's listening and when I'm still looking into ways to make those statistics public on the site. If you're interested, visit t r o dot email. That's tro dot email as in the writing obsession. That is all, which arrives at, I had a list out here as being project object. I wanted to get my hands dirty with the carburetors and I'm going to need you guys for that because yes, have I taken, have I taken a carburetor apart before? Many times with this particular bike in particular, this particular bike in particular, particularly.

Travis: Yeah. Did that was, that was to participate in the particulate participation um, purpose for the Travis was there the first time there was a lot of particulate matter, particularly in the particular areas.

Robin: So we'll skip my noise for the moment, unless there's anything I can think of to really talk about. We'll just keep this moving along. We don't have an interview for this week. We are going to be doing something with field correspondent, Margaret Dean, uh, for the next episode, I hope. Uh, and that brings us to Tim, you should take the reins, man. What's up with the new kit? Tim Clark's going to introduce us to some news, new gear.

Tim: Uh, this is very much related to my recent purchase of the battery charger. And I actually would have held it up, held off on what I bought if I had looked into this afterwards. So this is part of the solution for charging gadgets while you're camping and away from electrical outlets. Can I say something Tim? Yeah.

Robin: This is the way to go. This is so much better. I used to buy like, uh, particularly built USB ports and they had these special internal fuses that could not be replaced. So you had to swap them out every time you had to get a new one. Yeah. This makes it so much, it's just ground and positive. It's, it's SAE.

Tim: Yep. Yep. I've struggled with those beasties before. So we're talking about the battery tender USB charger. Yeah. Little hookup thing because everybody's, even the dealers are tying in battery tender outlets now.

Robin: Okay.

Tim: Make them easier to get to those batteries. Yeah. Like, um, I bought my bike from Ingleheart. They had one sticking in under the seat, ready to go. Even though the battery.

Robin: Not, not the Becky kiddo who we did an interview with last year. Was that Travis?

Travis: Uh, yeah. Was it the spring or was it last year? I don't remember. It's not, it's not. Probably spring. Check the podcast archives. It's there.

Tim: Yep. So, and the funny thing is because of course the battery for my CB500 is right under the seat. So if I'm plugging into a battery tender, I could have just plugged right into the battery, but it leaves this solution open to me. So, so I'm using this little USB SAE to USB port after the battery tender makes. Yeah. Deltran. Deltran. Thank you. I always forget. I always think about the brand name and not the parent company.

Robin: Unless it's the, the Mexican knockoff. Cause there is a Mexican knockoff.

Travis: I love this. I have this, I have, I have the same thing on my, on my NC700X. I have that same unit because my, um, the battery on the NC700 is up like where the, it's in front of the frunk, like right up on the, right on the front of the bike. So the, my charger is actually comes up right up by my charging SAE cable comes up right up by the handlebars. So I plug it in there and then I plug in my phone and put it on the handlebars.

Tim: Nice. So it might be one of those things. If you get really excited about it, you can run it into the frunk or something like that.

Robin: It's so simple. You just run an SAE line, plug that in, and then you can, you can do that almost anywhere on the bike.

Tim: Yep. So I haven't found it to be that big a deal to charge this off my bike during the day because you know, start and stop and your battery is going to be just fine. Um, it's pretty much like if you leave that thing, plug that backup battery plugged in overnight is when it's going to really put you, put your starting at risk in the morning.

Travis: Yeah. I mean that's the difference too, is like doing that backup battery pack versus like charging your phone. Like you would definitely put your phone in or your, um, you know, you're, you're seeing a headset and you can plug that in overnight while the bike's parked and you're camping and you're charging, uh, what, like 2,400 milliamp hour battery.

Robin: It's extremely low voltage. Yeah.

Travis: Off of like, off of like a 400 amp hour battery. Yeah.

Robin: If anybody's wondering, you don't, it's just like with your GPS antenna on your phone, when it comes to charging low voltage electronics off of your motorcycle battery, it's going to start in the morning with your GPS antenna on your phone. That is a completely different antenna than your data. You're not using data when you have your GPS active on your phone. It's triangulating based on the, you get my point.

Tim: Anyhow. Yeah. So the whole reason I'm digging into this is because if I'm in my tiny little tent, I want to use my phone, not have it sitting on the bike plugged in. Yes. So I'm using the backup battery. I'm plugging that in and taking the whole mess with me into the tent where I'm charging my helmet. I'm charging my camera. I'm charging my phone. Um, but when I started digging into this, I started looking at these micro start, these things that can jumpstart your bike.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: So these are going to do the same thing as your standard phone battery backup, but have that high amp output that can start the bike. And they're a little more expensive. I got my, my phone battery backup on sale for like 50 bucks. It's so much overkill for what I'm going to be using it for. It's ridiculous, but it's got that three USB outputs. Now the, the cheap one that I put my, the link on here, um, that one is just has a single output, but it's about a hundred bucks. If you buy a straight from other website, I'm seeing the next model up from that or the same price on other websites. So we're talking about a hundred dollar investment. You've got something that can jumpstart your bike. If your battery goes flat and you can do all those same things with two USB outputs to charge your gadgets in your tent and starts getting more important. When I'm looking at buying the Africa twin with the DCT transmission, since you cannot push start that bike at all, no chance at all. Nope. It does not start. It's drops into neutral with a flat battery from what I understand. Um, so yeah, so the con of using this, using it through the SAE port and stuff like that is that it doesn't have a ready-made SAE output. So I was thinking you could take another dummy SAE. Uncle wire, strip off the leads and clamp directly on those leads. And you got a direct access to your battery there and jumpstarted that way.

Robin: This other one looks good as well.

Travis: You got the lithium portable power pack. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's the two there. There's the anti-gravity at this one. You're talking about, it's about a hundred, um, which I'm like, I'm trying to just compare specs on this, which is, so it's a 300 amp peak, um, 150 amp, uh, kind of, well, maybe not constant power, but like standard power rating seven and a half amp capacity. They say 7,500 milliamp capacity. I don't know. That's, I don't know why they did, why they do that seven or amp hours.

Robin: So seven and a half amp hour, a lot of it comes down to storage as well.

Travis: So, um, in our, in the, on the website, that's the capacity as amp hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: In terms of, uh, the website for the writing obsession, we actually, uh, we offer the jump, uh, sorry, it's the jump box pro 600. We discussed that in an article. So on our actual page for this podcast, I will list all three of these. You can read the article about the jump box pro look at the reviews for the battery tender, portable power pack two, as well as Tim's, uh, was this your choice was the anti-gravity.

Tim: I liked the anti-gravity. It's a nice, slick, compact thing. It comes with its own carrying case has the built-in flashlight, which is just super handy.

Robin: I think it comes down to the dimensions. So the jump box pro I have the jump box pro, which is pretty killer, but I think it's probably just barely slightly bigger than the one that you're showing in this one.

Tim: Yeah. That anti-gravity sport model is so tiny.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: It's like the size of your phone, but a little thicker.

Travis: Nice. Yeah. I'm trying to see what the capacity is of. So the, the, uh, the anti-gravity seven and a half amp hours. I'm trying to see what the Deltran battery tender portable power pack actual capacity is. It looks like it has a little bit higher cranking capacity, 400 cranking amps.

Robin: Well, the jump box pro can start a six cylinder car.

Tim: Um, well that's, I think the, the anti-gravity one was claiming it could start a V8.

Robin: Well, okay. Fine.

Tim: That's him.

Travis: Cylinders, maybe a three and a half liter European VA, but can it start an eight liter? We're not talking about a tomato juice.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: Start a freaking diesel. It's not starting your Mack truck. No.

Robin: What are those engines that Dodge uses the, um, you Cummins engines. Yeah. Until they turn over a Cummins engine. Is that depends on the displacement, you know? Yeah.

Travis: If we want to turn this into a dye trial about engine specifications and get, I can totally go down that path and start.

Robin: I can start talking about diesels if you want, because I got them. I would say no, but there was no question mark. It was just, I'm going to start talking.

Tim: All right. So one of the big points is like, if you, if the choice is between a little jump pack and a tow, this is super cheap. Nice. This is less risk than flagging down the redneck off the side of the road. I got there. Yeah. Yeah. You may or may not be the hillbilly whisperer that you think you are.

Robin: This is one of them. They're inject ion models.

Travis: Yeah. I mean, a hundred, a hundred bucks. You'll be lucky if you get a tow for a hundred bucks or, you know, or less.

Robin: So I've seen them go for as high as 300 bucks. Well, either way, uh, that will bring us over. Do you got anything more you want to add to it?

Tim: That's my whole thing.

Robin: We're going to go model focus with Travis Burless and Travis, you're up what year make model. Are we learning about this round?

Travis: So I want, I wanted to discuss the, um, the BMW K 75 because it holds a special, it holds a special spot in my, in my heart and in my loins. Maybe, I don't know. Um, it's, uh, it's just one of those bikes. That's just so cool. And I've, I've seen a couple come in, come and go, and I've never had the money to, uh, to get one. Um, but they're just so, I don't know. I think they're so cool. You guys can pull up, pull up some pictures. Yeah, man. I just Googled.

Robin: These were the first future. This is like the first 80s style bike I ever saw that was like, that does not look 80s to me.

Travis: They look good now.

Robin: They look good today.

Travis: And they're super, they're super, they're generally pretty reliable as long as they have, you know, they have their foibles like anything else and they have their, their BMW exit centricities. Um, but too, we're talking, so the, um, you know, they first came out with the K 100, which is the four cylinder.

Robin: Okay.

Travis: So it was a thousand CC, we had a 990, whatever, something CC. That was 1982. Uh, the one hundreds ran until 92. So they ran for 10 years. Uh, the 75, which was a three cylinder came out in 85. I didn't know that. Uh, 95. Yeah. So the 75, so this is like the 75. So the 75 is notably smoother than the four. Um, uh, it's lighter a little bit because it's otherwise that the chassis is almost exactly the same between the two bike. Uh, but it's a little bit lighter. It's smoother. Like there's less in vibration, um, because the three cylinders got 120 degree, uh, crank, uh, which would you just standard for a three cylinder? Like the, so all the 120 degrees, three cylinders, 120 times three is 360, right? So they're all a rotation away from each other to balance. And then there's a counter, there's a counterbalancer, um, to manage that because when you're doing that, there's never, you know, when you have a four cylinder with 180 degree crank, it's always two pistons up, two pistons down, right?

Robin: You're always going to have a gap there where there's a little bit more weight in one direction than you want.

Travis: Yeah. So with the, uh, with the, um, the three cylinder, there's a counterbalancer and a counterbalancing on, um, the, uh, on the crank or weighted like counterweighting on the crank. So that's that smooth. And it's a lot smoother than the, than the 100 is, um, or the 1100 that followed that even. Um, and, uh, I don't think they just look good. Like they just have this kind of like, there's definitely some 80s-ness about it. Like the gauges look 80s.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: I feel like, I feel like the things that always let bikes down are like gauges and turn signals.

Robin: Once in this year, you see a dusty octagon, you know? Yeah. Regan administration.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, so those look 80s, but like just looking at the bike, like the profile of the bike. Yeah. It could be, it could be a brand new bike.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: And these things too, like late, late, we're talking late 80s, fuel injection, ABS.

Robin: They do all that? Yeah.

Travis: Heated grips. Crazy.

Robin: Default heated grips with fuel injection, ABS, and a nice modern profile. That's pretty sleek. It basically was, uh, it has a little bit of a spider bike quality to it. Like the original 80s Spider-Man motorcycle. Uh, just the, the visual profile when you, it's not a good from afar type thing. It's just when you are afar, it still looks beautiful. It's just an elegant profile in general. But at the same time, they're not that hard to find. If I remember right, they're hard to buy. They're hard to buy.

Travis: Yes. But they're not hard to find.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Who would want to sell that? Well, especially like the straight K75, I'm not a big fan of, uh, but like the T or the C, um, or the RT that have the fairing on them and the bags, I think look really good. I think the naked looks a little funny.

Robin: Well, yeah, the, the ferret is the one I think of with a spider bike gag.

Travis: But yeah, the ferret, the ferret definitely looks good. And it's, it's a flying brick, right? So that's the thing is it's a, it's a inline, inline tipped on its side. So the pistons move parallel with the ground and it's shaft drive. Um, you know, it's so like one cylinder one is at the front of the bike, cylinder three is at the back of the bike. Um, or four, if you have the 100, uh, which I mean, BMW used up until very recently that layout for the K bikes until the six cylinder came out. Um, but yeah, it's just, it's so, it's such a good, cool design. Like especially for a shaft drive bike where you have, you have a downdraft fuel injection there's the intakes on the top of the engine.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Exhaust is on the bottom.

Robin: Gravity is your friend.

Travis: And then you have your crankcase and then the power is just coming straight out of the crankcase. You don't have to turn anything 90 degrees. You know, the power doesn't have to turn 90 degrees to, to get to the rear tire. So, um, but once it gets to the rear tire, it does, but that has to happen anyway. So, but it doesn't turn 90 degrees to make the shaft and then turn 90 degrees at the tire, like the, like the, um, like a, uh, a standard inline, uh, motor profile would. And I, they just, they just look cool. They've always, they've always, I thought look cool. They're tiny. Like they seem when I don't want it, they're surprisingly small and compact and just handle and look cool.

Robin: You know, that made me want to ask you, I was looking at the bike in the photos because from a two dimensional standpoint, they looked like they might be too tall. But if with a little bit of work, would that be a contender for your wife? Is this something she might consider? She would not, she would not like the look of this.

Travis: It's way too, it's way too, I mean, there's this Googling BMW K75. There's some very pretty custom versions of this are beyond, are beyond my meddling. Um, but, uh, but as far as a standard bike, it's like way too, like utilitarian and square, square, square in a literal and figurative sense, I think for her.

Tim: Yeah. She's looking for something a little more stylish and a little more flashy, sleek and curvy with a little bit more power.

Travis: Yeah. They're a little heavy, but like with that, that flat motor laid on its side, they're all the weights super low. So yeah.

Robin: Low, low center of gravity.

Travis: Yeah. And they're just, they're just, you know, and they're, they're, they're quite reliable where they there's, there's some common fly balls like that early fuel injection. If you don't take care of it, make sure the wires are all good. You can have issues with it. Make sure the injectors are clean. You can have some issues with it. But other than that, they're, they're pretty, and they lack a lot of the, um, some of the weird later BMW design eccentricities. I was helping our friend Jeff, you know, Jeff Walla, the Don Coyote. Tim knows I'm talking about, you know, Jeff, the guy rides all winter long. He's got two BMW, two 2006 BMW F650 GS Dakars. And I was over at his garage yesterday helping him work on one. And just some of the things that BMW did to put that bike together, like make no sense. I was, I feel like this is a little more straight ahead. There's still some weird stuff, engineering solutions, engineering solutions. Um, but, uh, I don't know what are you guys' opinions on the, on this bike? I don't know how familiar you are, but I mean, it's very similar to Bob, you know, Bob Pieda's, he had a K1100.

Robin: K1100 is quite the different animal. Similar, yes. Similar, no. Similar, I mean, it's the same basic engine and frame architecture. It's a K. It's a K. And the beauty, one of the beauties of BMW is that if nothing else, if you don't like what you're dealing with in terms of the chassis, you know that the engine could probably go in a different chassis. But, uh, yeah, this particular bike stands out.

Travis: The 75, the 100 were the first not boxer twins that BMW ever made.

Robin: Yeah, it's an elegant bike. It stands out. It's, it's a simpleton ride that is still sleek. It's sporty, you know, Tim, what do you think?

Tim: You know, I, from what I've heard about them, I've got a couple of friends that have had these that they're rock solid, reliable, you know, maintenance. I don't remember anyone complaining about them like they do some of the other bikes. Um, yeah, it's, it's a good basic, you know, everyday ride.

Robin: That's why I was focusing on the fact that, yeah, you can find them. They're easy to find. You can definitely find them, but to buy one, that's a different animal. It's a different situation.

Tim: Nobody wants to sell that. Yeah. I fall in love with them. Do not want to part with these.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah. And there's a, there's a couple of things. Oh, that was one of the things is the shaft. You really have to make sure that like basically every time you change the rear tire, swap the grease shaft, you take the shaft out and you re-grease the splines.

Robin: Yeah. Wow.

Travis: And there's some guy on the forum somewhere that'll redo your, uh, your shaft so that it doesn't lose the grease. So basically what happens is the, um, the greet, the way that the shaft is hollow, the drive shaft is hollow and the, the grease will creep up the shaft and out of the splines. Um, and there's a guy who will take your shaft and weld a washer into it basically.

Robin: So that qualifies as a total, a total loss system.

Travis: Yeah. Welding a washer inside it stops the grease from creeping and keeps more grease in the other spine so they don't eat themselves. Nice. Pretty damn clever.

Robin: The BMW K75 or the K100 depending on what you're interested in. We're going to put some links up where you might find a reasonable rate. If you wanted to buy one through eBay, we make a buck off the commissions on that kind of thing. So of course, I'm going to do that. Um, which would normally bring us to our listener questions, but we have no listener questions this week. We did last week, the week before that, just as you know, we're having a mellow one this round.

Travis: If you have any questions, obviously we're super knowledgeable. So, you know, you just need to, if you have questions about your Cummins diesel motor that you want to swap into your, uh, and I'll tell you this, Travis, very super, super nodule.

Robin: Travis is ultra knowledgeable. Tim is, he's exponentially equal in knowledge and I, myself am pretty good at faking it. So no, no questions.

Travis: Robert has enthusiasm.

Robin: Yeah, I'm energetic. Email your questions and concerns if you have any to podcast at TRO.email. That's podcast at TRO.email for the Writing Obsession, or you can call us at 224-358-3010. And now if you want to, we can goof around with Mess Alamodo. Everybody got Facebook open?

Travis: Uh, yeah, I can.

Robin: Crack open Facebook and then it's time for this week's Mess Alamodo brought to you by...

Travis: The super slick, ultra badass motorcycle mega posse of incredible power, power, power, power.

Robin: Just like the real thing. It's just like a real delay. Thank you, Travis, for posting this video about how to read a motorcycle spark plug, because I'm going to need that. One of our members posted a link from the Goldwing groups about a bucket list of top roads to ride in the USA. One of the roads on that list, now a lot of people do this. Oh, it's amazing. We got to make a list. Somebody already did that. We'll make another list of the same ones, but we'll do them in a different order. This one in particular is pretty good, except that they mentioned Skyline Drive. Tim, tell them about Skyline Drive.

Tim: Skyline Drive would be absolutely amazing if it was not 35 miles an hour and heavily patrolled.

Robin: It is so boring.

Tim: Well, I have ridden that before. We did it with a group, and it does get entertaining in some sections. It really does.

Robin: It's a paranoid good time. Yeah, yeah.

Tim: It's just if you ride it in a spirited way, you will get a ticket. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Robin: That's not true.

Tim: You will get pulled over.

Robin: You will be informed about the option of receiving a ticket in the future.

Tim: Yes, yeah. There's nowhere to run, so don't even think about it. There's limited access. They'll just call ahead and have someone waiting for you.

Robin: You ever watched a national forest ranger do a 17-point turnaround with a giant suburban? We stopped and watched this poor guy.

Tim: We waited for five minutes for that guy to come get us.

Robin: That's why we got the warning. He busted an Austin Powers. It must have taken up half of the time we spent waiting.

Tim: It's like chasing this down with a steamroller.

Robin: Oh, man. RevZilla. I would call him a competitor if we were anything. RevZilla turned 10 years old, so I buy my stuff through them a lot. I got to say, that's pretty solid.

Travis: They were rated one of the best retail places to work for, I think.

Robin: Yeah, they're good folks, and they hire out, too. There's a blog that my wife used to follow extensively called Gear Chick, and she was doing such a good job of writing for the motorcycle industry that they swept her up. I said, why don't you just come work for us? You can do exactly what you're doing. Steady paycheck. But we'll pay you. She was making it. She was making it already. They saw her as valid competition, not to their financial model, but definitely somebody who they'd be better off having with them, and they hired her. I mean, that's how these things happen. She was already doing fine. Her blog was enormously successful on the financial side. That's nice. Photos of Gold Wings with Barkles out the freaking wazoo. I, yeah. Oh, sorry. The taste, it's in my mouth.

Travis: Yeah, it's like a Mods. It's like a Mods meets Gold, like the Mods are now in their 60s, and they decided to do this to a Gold Wing instead of a Vespa.

Robin: Yeah. There's so much space. There's so much glitter. So much shiny. Oh, it's so wrong. It is so wrong. Take that to a track day. See, I'll take that, and then, Travis, you bring the moped. We'll get Tim on like a combustion engine unicycle and just ruin the day. Well, on that note, TheRidingObsession.com is seeking sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given three focused mentions towards the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for spring of next year. Dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour, seven riders will cover seven states in seven days starting in late April of 2018. It's a twisty sport touring getaway of epic proportions, and we hope you'll sign up. More information about that tour is available via TheRidingObsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under travel in our navigation menu. That's our episode for this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things sport, touring, or universal to motorcycling as a whole. For The Riding Obsession, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: I'm Travis Burleson.

Robin: And I'm Tim Clark. Safe travels, everyone. Hello, everyone. I'm Robin Dean. And I'm Travis Burleson. And I'm Tim Clark.