The garage is a lonely place without the bike. Today in Park City was amazingly warm weather. Great for riding motorbikes in short sleeve shirts. Not so great if the business you are in is skiing. Last Friday, Deer Valley Resort had all guns blazing, with fan guns blowing copious amounts of snow as far up the mountain as you could see. Today, it was 65 degrees and sunny. I see a pattern developing. This is turning out much like last November. There’s no doubt the snow will come, just a question of when.
The garage is empty, because I scrambled home at lunch and rode the KTM across the way to the local folks at Summit Honda. They don’t speak Austrian, but are nice enough and agreed to install a new Regina chain for me, since I don’t have the correct tool to replace the rivet link. While I was inside, my bike created quite a ruckus outside. There were four or five guys hovering, checking it out, eyeballing it, sizing it up. Summit Honda has a 2001 KTM LC4 they took in trade a while back (which I wrote about), with 1,700 original miles. Apparently they couldn’t sell it for awhile since they didn’t have the title, but have that all worked out and it’s back on the floor. It would be a sweet bike for someone looking for a good dualsport.
Finally, for all of those who are bored with my infrequent posts, occasional rants on cycling dopers, (all two of you, according to Dave Fields), I will start to post writings by fellow itsallaboutthebikers. Sully is on the hot seat. Let’s see what he comes up with. The pressure is on. Maybe while I’m in Boston for a consumer ski show, Sully will come through. If so, I’ll drink a pint of Guinness for every post he writes. Or three.
I embarked on some maintenance and repairs of my KTM recently, and came to the conclusion that this whole internet thing, you know, blogs, and forums, and email, and websites and all, it’s really something. I would have been lost without the online community on KTM TALK, a forum for KTM owners and enthusiasts.
The basic issue: when you replace worn out sprockets on motorcycles, you generally need to replace both the back and the front. If both get worn to to the point where they start to resemble shark’s teeth, instead of symmetrical triangular profile, then you probably need to replace the chain as well. On high-end racing bicycles, road and mountain, you usually replace the chain frequently enough to avoid wear on the front chainrings and rear sprockets clusters. A new Campagnolo front chainring on my road bike costs more to replace than both front and rear sprockets on my KTM motorcycle. Go figure. The lighter the part, the more you pay. Chains, on the other hand are cheaper, and you can make cool hippie bracelets out of old ones, which is nice if you are a hippie. Go figure!
Back to the motorcycle: Both front and rear sprockets looked like shark’s teeth, so it was time to do the job. I used an online parts finder at KTM Cycle Hutt to open up a schematic of my bike and order the part online. This is the same system the local chumpshow uses to find and order parts. The parts showed up in a few days, free shipping, and I was excited to rip into this project. The problem is, the front sprocket I ordered didn’t resemble the worn one that was on my bike. That’s when I consulted the community on KTM TALK. Ask a question, get an answer. It turns out there is a thing called a “dampened front sprocket” with a massive rubber bushing that sandwiches the metal sprocket. These are only put on new bikes as a sound dampener to ever so slightly reduce the operating noise inherent in these Austrian-made gas-powered rattlers. They also do not appear on the KTM online parts diagrams. The replacement sprockets do not come with the rubber, because, once the bike makes it into the good old U.S.A., why does KTM care if it’s a little noisier? Point is, if I didn’t have KTM TALK, I’d still be scratching my head wondering what to do about these two rubber pieces that look like cross-sections of a hockey puck. I’ve had great luck finding answers on ADV Rider as well, and it seems like the good resources there also cross over to KTM TALK. Just a heads up, y’all. The world wide intraweb thing is pretty cool.
What do two Utah ski industry marketing guys and neighbors do when it’s Indian Summer in a ski town like Park City, Utah, on November 1, with opening day less than a month away, and nobody is booking expensive ski vacations because the nation’s economy is in the crapper, and people are losing their jobs left and right, and a graph of the last 60 days of the swings in the stock market looks like a topographical map of the Rocky Mountains, and the only thing that can save us is a big snowstorm, and we’re not even really sure that will get people to start booking expensive ski trips to Utah? What if those two same guys drank a brazillion (that’s George W speak for a shitload) beers the night before while their kids were out collecting little bite size candies from neighbors and/or perfect strangers, which means doing anything productive around the house with a hangover is pretty much out of the question? Why, go for a single speed mountain bike ride in our backyards, in Round Valley, of course. Thanks, Jay, for kicking my butt and exorcising the liquid devil right out of my bloodstream. Let’s hope the temperature drops, the snow starts to fly, and that’s the last good and dry mountain bike ride in these parts until after ski season.
Jay Burke, holding the Round Valley Trail, Park City, Utah. Photo by Moto.
After 8,000 miles, the 640 Adventure was ready for new sprockets and chain. The teeth on the rear sprocket look like shark fins, ditto on the front, and after what happened to Darth on the last few miles of Loop the Lake (had to leave the Blue Angel on the side of the road and ride bitch with Stanton), I decided it was time for some preventative maintenance. I bought all my parts online from KTM Cycle Hutt, located in North Dakota, after a bad experience with the KTM dealer out in Draper. After counsel from Bart, I realized I needed to do the chain too, so I called Cycle Hutt to try to squeeze the chain on my order, but it had already gone out. The sprockets showed up before the weekend, but the chain didn’t, so this project will have to wait a few days. Stay tuned for a report. Instead, I decided to install new turn signals, taken off of Darth’s KTM 450 EXC-R. These are the stock “pointy” ones he took off after adding tiny micro LED turn signals. That was before he crashed while trying to ride wheelies. He probably wants these back now. This job required taking off the front mask, clipping some wires, and getting jiggy with the soldering iron, but after putting it all back together, they work just fine and the whole setup looks pretty slick.
Video posted on Youtube from the Day 1 of Loop the Lake. We started in the rain, and the ride from Einstein’s in Olympus Hills to last gas in Cedar Fort was about as hairball as it got all day.
Since it’s October in Utah, that means it’s cyclocross season. It also means it can snow in the mountains pretty much anytime. That makes for some nasty conditions. Cross is hard enough as it is. This photo pretty much sums up the emotions that one feels after being in oxygen debt for an hour straight. Winning feels good. Second place sucks.
2nd place is the first loser. Here, two team mates share the love.
Nato posted a whole bunch of images from the 2008 edition of Loop the Lake. It was supposed to be a larger group, but the weather paired the group down to a hearty few: Darth, Obi-Ben, Esteban Frito, Moto, and Stanton (sorry Stanton, we need to think up a good road name). Below are a few of my favorites.
This section of dirt was hairball greasy. A few spills were had. Photo: Darth.
Obi-Ben, and the venerable KLR along the Golden Spike. Photo: Darth.
Stanton on the big bike, cruising along the railroad bed. Photo: Darth.
Darth and Esteban, heading out of Wendover. Photo: Darth.
Honestly, I can’t remember where this was. But it was cool. Photo: Darth
There always seems to be a “band photo”, for the next album. Photo: Darth.
The absolute “money” shot of the whole trip. Photo: Darth.
If you want to see all of Darth Nater’s photos, view the latest batch at Motodelicious.
Here is a video of cruising along on the old Golden Spike Railroad bed. It’s barely wide enough for two bikes with panniers, you have to watch out for old rusty railroad spikes, and the work-around routes that divert you around old trestles can sometimes be interesting. This is from Nato Cam, mounted on the Blue Angel.
We are back safe and sound after a soggy but rewarding Loop the Lake. A full report will follow, once we get all of our video diaries compressed, images collected, all that kind of digital stuff. But first, here’s some Monday morning commentary from our friend Dave Z:
Darth Nater has been anticipating the arrival of his new bike. He ordered it over a year ago, and after waiting patiently, it finally arrived. Or did it? When they opened the crate from BMW Motorad, this is what they rolled out. It seems the economy has caused BMW to slightly alter the original design of the new F 800 GS. The good news is the new model gets slightly better gas mileage than originally projected. It will be fun seeing Darth roll into Wendover, all pimped out with his new ride.
