Iron Maiden Voyage!

So my plan of a Saturday ride went down the tubes. Instead I spent the day with my wife and daughter, enjoying the 21° Celsius (70 F for my American readers) at the Steveston Quay (pronounced “key”) watching the fishing boats and having fish n’ chips and ice cream… what a great way to kill a beautiful afternoon!



I had my maiden voyage pushed off until Sunday. No biggie! The weather wasn’t quite as nice but there were pockets of sunshine. I began the day with an oil change. This was a Drastic mistake! The folks at Canadian Tire thought it would be cool if they put their two stroke oil in the same column as their 4 stroke oil for bikes with a wet clutch. So as I went to put in the last bit of oil I noticed the color of my oil was BLUE! I’m not sure what would happen if I were to run my bike on a mixture of regular oil and 2 stroke oil, but I’m really not ready to find out. So now what? I have to drain this oil out and go purchase the expensive stuff (double the price) from Lordco. Am I ever going to let them have it at Canadian Tire.




I noticed a bit of an exhaust leak from one of the header pipes. My solution for this was to swap out these pipes with my 750 Seca dual exhaust. What a difference it will make to the look of the bike. Unfortunately, the frame of the 650 Maxim will require some modification to the placement of the kickstand before I can put these pipes on. So there was a whole lot more wasted time. The nice side effect of having the pipes off was that for the first time I didn’t have to fight to take the oil drain plug out. Very nice!




Now two hours later than I had planned I finally made the decent down my new driveway and out onto the open road. Now, for those of you who have followed the story from the beginning, you’re probably asking yourself, “When did he get his motorcycle license?” The answer to that question, to quote Judas Priest, is…”Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law!” I’m a rebel. I’m a rebel, living in the suburbs, with a young family, and a mini-van. I’m a rebel living in deep cover, trying to blend in to the establishment I’m rebelling against, until my day comes. To the casual observer I am indistinguishable from “THE MAN!” Little do they know that I’m secretly and silently leading a one man grassroots conspiracy to bring “THE MAN” down. Don’t be fooled by my pro-establishment outer shell.

My ride took me out to the highway where I opened ‘er up. I forgot what it was like to feel 140km/hour winds trying to tear your grip from the handlebars, the feeling of semi-trailer dust peeling away the skin around your glasses, the sharp sting of bugs pelting up against your skin. What a GREAT FEELING! I managed to put 100 clicks on the bike and made my way home. Most of that distance was on the highway but I did put a little bit of city driving on the odometer. I rewarded myself with a half liter of beer when I got home and then did a compression test on my cylinders. Even with all the pep in the bike, I had no problem leaving traffic in the dust; I was still testing out at around 100psi compression right across the board which means time for an overhaul. A fresh engine should be around 150psi and you should rebuild your engine below 120psi. I can’t even imagine how fast and efficient this bike will be after a ring and valve job, I’m really looking forward to it. In the meantime though she seems quite reliable and I’m going to do my motorcycle skills test on her before I rip the engine out. After all the money I spent on miracle cures and oil there really is no way to beat doing things right. I’ve already started buying the necessary equipment to do the overhaul on eBay so I should be able to get this done on the cheap. We’ll see how bad things are when I rip the engine apart… I can’t wait.