Mr.H: How a motorcycle evolves over time

[Sidecar Bob]

I've been out on Mr.H 3 times (total 140 Km) and the garage floor is clean & dry.

Most of that driving was related to picking these up.

Tour Glide mufflers.jpg

When I put Mr.H together in '95 I connected a set of Harley mufflers to the original GL1100 headers with off the shelf car exhaust size adapters. That worked but they blew the exhaust onto the bottoms of the saddlebags.
By the time I added the sidecar those headers were starting to rust out; The best ones I could obtain at that time were better but not great so brazed up their (smaller) holes and brazed on straight pieces of exhaust pipe to move the same mufflers back a bit. This looks and probably works a bit better and the bags don't get quite as dirty.
Those headers have had growing holes for a couple of years and those mufflers are starting to show their age so I have been plotting replacing the whole system for a while now, including acquiring a couple of sets of headers that (I hope) are in better shape.

Holding one of these Tour Glide mufflers next to the bike it looks like if I connect it directly to the header the tip will be a few inches farther back than the existing system (hopefully just past the bags) so all they will need is basic adapters.
But at this point installing them will wait until spring.

I also picked up a nice set of pre-cat Sportster mufflers for Eccles. These ones will require mid pipes; The last time I bought a set of the ones Murray's Carbs sells for the CX/GL500/650 family of bikes and I'd buy another set except that between exchange rate and shipping to Canada they'd end up costing about $200 CAD. So I've been talking to a local car exhaust guy about making something a lot simpler than Murray's that will work for a sidecar outfit.

Sportster mufflers.jpg

[Whiskerfish]

Gotta say HD makes some mighty pretty chrome!!

[Sidecar Bob]

Yep. Harley mufflers usually last me an average of about 7 or 8 winters of daily driving. The longest any other mufflers ever lasted was 2 winters (the ones on the Dnepr might have gone longer but the engine threw a main bearing).

[Sidecar Bob]

Kay's car died last week and my driving time increased for a couple of weeks
I didn't notice anything out of order when I did routine maintenance (tire pressures, fluid levels &c) on Tuesday or when we left to pick up the new (used) car Wednesday but I was doing something behind Mr.H yesterday and noticed this

01 - Broken bracket.jpg

The bracket that broke started out as the license plate bracket from the LED trailer light set I installed on Mr.H when I added the sidecar and has been supporting the turn signal on the sidecar since then (15 years). A year or 2 later I installed a different LED trailer light set on Eccles and didn't use its license plate bracket. I spent over an hour fruitlessly searching for it and another hour looking for anything else I could build a bracket from, again with no luck before I had to stop to get ready for Halloween.
After the trick or treating was done and supper finished we were watching TV and I remembered another place to look: The box of new but not used automotive LED lights.

Making it work was as simple as drilling 3 new holes and bolting it on

02 - New bracket.jpg

It looks OK and it will do for now but it is easier to bend than I'd like; It must be bouncing when I go over bumps and maybe years of that is what did in the first bracket.
I need to talk to Lee about printing one that is a bit more solid

03 - That'll do - for now.jpg

[Sidecar Bob]

This summer flew past and I realized that I hadn't even put the camera into the mount all summer, let alone taken any video. I needed to fill the sidecar tank for storage so I made time Wednesday to go for a little ride before changing bikes (it will be a few days before I have time to do anything with the video). When I got home I drained the tank in the bike and while it was draining I moved my stuff to Eccles and put the tools I'd need for removing the battery and draining the carbs into Mr.H's saddlebag
This time I remembered everything, including writing down the end of season mileage and moving the clock to Eccles (& changing it to standard time)(I've had to go back to the shed to get the clock several times over the years).
When I put it in the shed Thursday I didn't even have to walk back to the garage to get some tool I forgot.

This year's total was 966 Km (=220 Km/month). That's still not a lot but it is more than double last year's numbers.

I replaced Eccles' exhaust system this year (I can post about that in the GL500&c section if anyone is interested) so today's job will be tuning the carbs

[Sidecar Bob]

It only took me 17 days to get this uploaded