12,000 Miles Since 2005

fairracing,

I started noticing those bike paths around Vail, but the coolest thing was after we ate in Silverthorne, those buses with the bike carrying platforms on the front were parked nearby, and I went over and chatted.

It is SOOOO cheap to hop from one spot to another, and I counted 3 identical bus setups within a half hour.

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bama, when you say no ethanol, are you referring to the 10% blends that most places force you to use? I don't think I've seen non-blended gas for quite some time...

Sure, the major name brands Shell, BP, Amoco etc. don't have ethanol.

I used to run only 91 octane, and when I hit Kansas I started to notice there was no such thing, 87 was all I was seeing.

But still I found the major brands. However they started getting rare to find as the distances stretched out between major towns, (lots of gas companies I never heard of), and I was having to ask all the time "does this have ethanol?" because the pumps didn't have stickers.

When I got to Norton, KS I saw a pump with 89 octane, I asked and was assured it didn't have corn. So I put it in my spares tanks.

I poured in the first spare in Oberlin, then hiccupped/vapor locked all the way to the next town 30 miles away. I pulled into a small engine shop and he told me to just pour it out, it was bad gas. He gave me enough to get to Saint Francis on the Colorado border.

Talking to farmers, they said they grew it but didn't use it in their pickups, they had private co-op credit card operated tanks with "the good stuff" or diesel.

are you the guy who was featured in the Birmingham News a few months back?

I think that is completely awesome.

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Yes, I met the reporter at a bluegrass festival, that was the first article she ever had go national/international, it was run via AP in Australia I heard. Denis at GEBE read it in his local Ann Arbor paper.

The article seems to have disappeared from the archives, only thing I can find is some outfit called HighBeam reprinting part of it from a Syracuse paper:

yeah, i read that article; thought you sounded familiar :-) it's cool to see you here in this fine forum. there's a guy from Arab and a guy from Birmingham posting here too, though none with your level of experience!

i've heard nothing but good things about the GEBE arrangements like yours. what do you think about the frame-mounted setups so popular in the forum?

I have now hit close to 3,000 miles on my Titan. One oil change, second chain, second tire, umm..... That has been about it. Since this is still my original Titan, I have been abusing it terribly, I feel bad about that sometimes, but it is my test Bed engine. So far, it has not missed a beat !!! The compression is better than new, it can still yank your arm off if you do not set up the pull properly. When you set up the pull correctly, it is a smooth easy one pull and go. But again.. Only 3000 miles.. Not even break in yet... lol.. I am up to around 135mpg WOT and I can cruise 33mph at 9000 feet. No kidding.. Not quite 12,000 miles yet, but not bad for 5 months or so. It is not unusual for me to ride over 70 miles in a single ride. With a stop for gas since the tank is only a 1 liter tank good for 44 miles or so. Enjoy the ride..

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Here's a coincidence- Before I bought the first engine, I had called 2 GEBE customers, both out west, and they both said "wait till you get 1,000 miles on the engine, that's when you'll feel a surge".

The Florida engine was about the fifth one I had built, and when I got back, I sold that engine to a friend. So the Denver engine was pretty new when I left Alabama.

Right out of Manhattan, KS, which was around that 1,000 mile mark, I really felt the surge. I also caught a tailwind , and rode it as far west as I could before sunset. I was having a blast, amber waves of grain, buffalo and antelope playing and all that.

The next day, on a last minute change of plan, I headed into Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather, a favorite pioneer author. I saw the museum, bought cool postcards, did a newspaper interview, asked a bunch of questions about everything I was noticing, from the height of the wheat to the size of the tractors. I was getting the lowdown.

Just as I crossed the Republic River, re-entering Kansas, I met the prairie headwind, unlike any I had felt previously. With miles and miles and miles of massive hog parlors and maybe 50 trucks filled with "hog produced fertilizer byproduct" passing me, making the experience doubly fragrant.

That tailwind I had experienced yesterday had a big bad brother, the 40 mile per hour headwind. Trying to outguess which way that wind was going to surprise me with became a game I played until I got south of Elk City, OK. They have hundreds of names for the prairie wind, but mostly I was calling it "dammit". I knew why the roads were so litter free, cuz those wind gusts blew it all up to the Dakotas.

Anyway, right after the hog perfume stretch of road is when I got the bad ethanol.

I HAD noticed there were no more dead armadillos on the road, but between the prairie wind, the vapor locking, and the roller coaster ride on Hwy 36, I'm just a "confused dude from out east" by the time I got to Denver. (A solid week of friendly folks buying me "Fat Tire" and other local exotic brews didn't help).

I had found Shell in Denver, BP in Colorado Springs....but I'm blaming the 87 octane and that store clerk in Norton who sold me the bad ethanol, because that real "surge" I had felt seemed to be missing. My spark plug was clean as a whistle, my air cleaner was good....

2 1/2 days out of Denver, coming straight south after riding thru the Oklahoma panhandle, heading to Shattuck, there are 3 long downhill steps. Before going down the first one, I stopped to take a picture because there, in the distance, were "real trees", not the scrub I had been seeing for over a week.

When I come off that second long slope, the engine makes a high pitched "wheeeeeeeeeee" sound, I'm going so fast that I let off the throttle, thinking "uh oh, drive shaft replacement time".

BUT it was the ALTITUDE CHANGE.

This whole time, from the Republic River crossing, spending a week with new friends and their friendly bartenders in Denver and State Bridge Lodge, and heading back, I NEVER PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER about that missing "surge".

But when I got back under 3,000 feet altitude, I was flying, and just like clockwork, I'm back in the land of roadkill armadillos.

I had been boycotting the internet for 5 years, so when I finally hooked back on-line in August 2006, started communicating with other MBer's, I understand you High Altitude folks can make a permanent "intake modification" and/or "fuel mixture adjustment" to maximize performance.

For "city slicker" tourists, just passing through, when the dead 'dillos disappear, when two or three beers seems to have an extra "kick", throw away all that sea-level mindset, quit worrying about the temporary engine quirks, and just enjoy the ride.

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I've got frame mounting down to an art.

I keep extra mounts, spoke rings, belts and straps on hand, so when my engines arrived yesterday at 3 pm, a Schwinn Jaguar for a guy in Garden City was all ready to bolt on the engine, put on the throttle and kill switch, and by 3:30 I was putting it through some "break-in" paces. As soon as the sun rises I'll put another 2 tanks of fuel through the engine and he can pick it up this afternoon.

Same thing on the Pink Ladies Sun Retro 7 after that, slip on the engine, run a few tanks of fuel through, varying the throttle speed, and its good to go.

My belt on Rocinante must have 3,000 miles on it, hardly a sign of wear.

I've accumulated enough tools and equipment, (the bike work stand, air compressor, grinder, drimel, etc.)...and little "helpers" like 4 plastic spacers to center the spoke ring and a 357 millimeter long piece of wood to get the space between axle/motor mount exact, so that Jaguar is rolling perfectly, belt centered just right.

Nowadays, the only adjustments I may have to do is add/subtract an axle washer to fine tune the install.

But unless a person concentrates FIRST on making the rear wheel/tire/tube combo as "pothole-proof and flat-resistant" as possible, he never will get the reliability peace of mind.