Wow, I didn't realize this site was up and running, everything looks fantastic! Some of you might remember me from Kinja, although I did go pretty dark for its last few years. Unfortunately, my hard drive with my archived posts took a dump leaving me with me idea of where I left off, so I guess its time to start from scratch!

Hi, I'm decay and I have a hoarding problem. When I'm not posting about the latest motorcycle I've impulse bought, I'll probably be talking about all the things that broke on my $200 miata. I like 90s garbage, motorbikes, 90s garbage motorbikes, and scooters.

As for what I've got right now, there's my infamous $200 miata. Going on 5 years now since I pulled it out of the woods. Have some "decent" mods on it now, hopefully I can put together an update post in the next few days.

I've got my "nice" Miata, that I grabbed at the end of 2019.

I've also still got my import "fancy camry" JZX90

As for bikes, I think I hit a high of 11-12 at some point in 2018 when craigslist was still viable. I am currently down to just 5

I've got my Africa Twin. I planned to do a long road trip in 2020, but yeah that whole pandemic thing, so I've pushed that to late this summer.

I've still got the 701, easily my favorite bike to ride of the 70-80 I've owned over the years. Something about a 320lb bike that's actually got power is amazing on the right road. I fell in love with these ever since the Sean Macdonald "sell whatever you own and go buy a 701 supermoto" review back in 2016. He wasn't wrong, it's that good.

After that I've got a Grom, which will probably be replaced in the next few months if my pre-order on a Trail 125 gets filled

And Ive got a ruckus too!

That about does it, thanks everyone for reading and I'm looking forward to participating in this community!

Threw in a lowball offer on a Vespa GTS a couple days ago and forgot about it, apparently no one else bid and now I have a Vespa

Only seen pics so far, but looks like minor left side damage and thats it.

Couple months ago, I got rear ended at a light and crunched the back of red a bit.

I was pretty sure it was going to be a total loss (not that that matters, would have kept it anyway), but apparently miatas are worth too much to total these days. Their insurance cut me a check and I did the responsible thing and bought turbo parts.

1.8 swapping and turboing this thing will probably be my summer project since I'll be riding motos far more than I'll be driving. FWIW between the insurance payout and selling a few extra parts I had, I am now completely cost neutral over 5 years of owning this thing.

Been a while since we had a crappy Miata update! If you all remember from old Oppo, about 5 years ago I picked up one of the roughest Miatas and have been limping it along ever since.
(How it was when I bought it)

Since then, and after doing the clutch it needed, I've been slowly adding whatever cheap parts I could find to it

Currently as it sits
Raceland Header (it was free pls dont judge me)
Racelend Coilovers (they were free pls dont judge me)
Avid 1 wheels (heavy, but look pretty good)
Torsen LSD
Hard Dog Ace Roll Bar
Ebay spec Jeep LED headlights
A lot of stickers
and whatever wear items were needed

Last year I added an Arduino based standalone ECU

I've been struggling with some cold start issues and tip in bogs ever since, they existed to a lesser degree on the factory ECU, but only got worse switching to the standalone. It wasn't terrible and I was able to drive around it for the most part.

With the ECU telling me actual numbers from sensors, I found out over the winter that my thermostat was stuck open. Changing that caused the system to finally see some pressure and led to a leak behind the water pump. Angry about a 20 minute job turning in to a much longer one, I kind of just let the car sit for the last couple of months.

Finally got in to change the water pump (while in there timing belt, tensioners, seals, etc) over this past weekend and found out why it had been running rough.

The timing has been set wrong for the whole time I have owned the car. Specifically, the intake cam was 1 tooth advanced from where it should have been. Oh, and the water leak? The previous time someone was in here, they neglected to install one of the 4 water pump bolts.

(yes, this is how you are supposed to set timing on a miata)

Getting everything back together it would not even idle on my old fuel map. Had to start from scratch and re tune everything. A few days of logging and re tuning and I have it good enough. You can see the current fuel map on the left and the last one I saved with the timing off on the right. Its a pretty drastic difference!

It still has fine tuning needed, and I get to re do all my winter cold start maps, but so far it is running/starting/idling better than it ever has since I bought it (go figure)

Took the GSXR that I put back together to a track day today, it and my first. Had a blast, lots to learn about riding a sport bike vs my supermoto (body positioning and riding style are totally different), but overall I'm really happy with the progress I made.

Plus it didnt blow up! I was pretty sure the bottom end was going to give up after the amount of copper in the oil on the first change... but its still running well with no weird noises or knocks. I figure if the motor can live though a solid hour and a half of high RPM high load operation, its probably fine.

Its been waay too long since I impulse bought a motorcycle, so I took steps to correct this yesterday and bought an Aprilia SR50 Factory. Have not put much time on it yet, but it's impressed me so far. Totally stock as far as I can tell, and I hit a top speed of about 54mph. Engine is a direct injected two stroke (although I doubt its running anywhere near the pressures of modern direct injection systems) and it has the coolest dash ever fitted to a scooter

More progress on the basket case GSXR 750, got the head back on and all the valve clearances set

Got it installed back in the bike and everything wired up (minus the shitty piggyback ecu)

Gave it its first start last night

Ran into a few issues, some connectors I'd missed, trouble codes were helpful in troubleshooting those. The two big issues I ran in to was the crank position sensor being installed backwards by the prev owner, that probably took me about an hour to find since it installs both ways easily. The more serious issue was that i could not get it to build oil pressure. Couldn't get the pressure light to go off with just cranking, so gave it a few short start and run cycles with no luck.

Tested the pressure sender to make sure that and the wiring was still good (hoping that it was just a bad sender and not the motor actually having zero pressure), but everything appeared to be operating normally.

Finally, after figuring that it had sat so long that the oil pump was airlocked and dry, I took out the closest galley plug to the pump and squirted some oil in there to manually prime the system. With that I finally got pressure to build up.

Running video!

Next, I'me going to take it all back apart and run the wiring more cleanly, everything is thrown together right now just to make sure the motor would run, now that I know it does I can go back and take my time on the assembly.

We had a brief break in the terrible NW 2022 rain, so I decided to check out a demo day that Livewire was putting on at my local HD dealer.

As far as I know, the "Livewire One" that was here is the same as the old Harley Livewire, sans HD badging and shedding about $8k off the MSRP.

Demo format
This is one of the few demo days I've been to where one is simply given a bike to go out and ride, no lead riders, no routes, just go out and play. Not sure if this is reflective of a very high degree of confidence in their hardware, or that the people at an HD event wont take unnecessary chances, but in any case I took one out for a pretty hard 30 minute unsupervised ride.

Riding experience
I've ridden most electric bikes at this point and they all had the same flaws, none felt as fast as they should, and they all hit a pretty hard acceleration wall at 70mph (just like Teslas do). The livewire is the first Ebike I have ridden that doesn't. I did a wot pull from 70 and it pulled HARD through about 105 before I had to let off (crowded highways). It'll chirp the tires from 0-30, if I had dug deeper into menus, I'm sure it would spin rear tire through 30 with TC fully disabled. Despite weighing 550lbs, it feels quite a bit lighter, corners and rides pretty much right in line with most sport oriented nakeds.

I kept hearing that HD did it right on this bike, and now after experiencing it, I have to agree. Its a fun engaging and quick bike to ride. I still think it's a little expensive at $22k, but its a LOT closer to where it needs to be in the market than when it was introduced at $30k.

Also, it does wicked burn outs

Been shopping Rocket IIIs for a few years now ever since I had this kind of torque on my VTX1800 roadtrip bike. One finally popped up on CL for the right price, so I grabbed it. This makes 8 bikes, so my collection is starting to look like it did in 2018 all over again.

Thats a 240 width rear tire btw

Got the Vespa delivered last weekend, and its in much nicer condition than expected

Started right up, appears to be up to date on service and runs fine. It's missing a few things I need to replace, but overall I think I did pretty well for what I paid. There was a scooter rally over the weekend and It did about 120 miles without any signs of problems.

I wasn't expecting to like this thing as much as I do. Its fast (fast enough at least, I had it to about 85mph), comfortable, and fairly efficient. I think I might hold on to it and replace the 2 stroke vespa.

Install heated grips in the field and send it

@Vampire-queen Well I grow reapers, so pretty hot

That is the perfect color for that car, I love it

@Peter_Black
I agree with everything @AMGtech said.

A trip on a bike is a full experience, a trip towing bikes is a series of points with 12+ hour stretches of monotony in between.

damn son, I'm apparently at 12 vehicles now

@AestheticsInMotion Oh I absolutely cant wait to try one of these, not really a sportbike fan, or a 4 cyl fan, but I feel like it might be different in a small motor bike

@Eury Its true, my 701 sumo is smoother than my Africa Twin, my old SV650, or any other single I've ever ridden. Its maybe a little rougher than my old street triple R, but its honestly splitting hairs. I love it, it's my favorite bike of the 100 or so I've owned in total.

@AestheticsInMotion funny, there are probably half a dozen or more 701 sumos within a couple miles of me. I always see them out there.

@CarsOfFortLangley my dude, my guy, I've had the sticker since 2018

@Roadkilled Eyy another cold hands haver.

@CarsOfFortLangley Thanks for the tag, but sadly, I can't do any outdoor winter activities due to the Raynaud's, the danger of frostbite even in full gear is too much of a risk.

@Qaaaaa Yep! that was me. Had a Mark ii tourer V (1jz-gte manual)

@TheJWT Of those that 150 Crown would be my pick, love me some big body Toyota VIP cruiser