The CB in motion

Still working on a video. It's more work than you might think. This is some of the raw footage I shot yesterday.

Excellent video on exhausts and carb tuning

Found on Do The Ton

BMW walkaround

I was going through my videos and I realized I've never posted this one..... Hope the weather will be like that again soon!!

Great 70's motorcycle safety video

Via motor-forum

Find Me from Doug Jackson on Vimeo.

Bike build vid

This is how it's done....

Nice! Again: sooo much to learn :)

Season 2K11

I'm not the only one to have had my first ride of the year. Excellent editing!

Season 2K11 from Brauchi on Vimeo.

On http://brauchisbikes.blogspot.com/, check it out, it's a nice blog (In German). Thanks to Lars!

Peace of mind

Hell yeah!

My apologies for the crappy quality of the video.

We finally did it! Last night we changed the spark plugs, put a filter on the freshly cleaned carb, screwed in a couple of bigger jets and she fired straight up on both cylinders. After some minor fine tuning we decided to take it to the road. It goes like stink!

We've been fighting this carb for a while now and some people started to lose faith, but we won. We still have to do a little fine tuning (it's still a bit lean in the bottom ranges), but we've now proven it can be done.

A sunny Sunday

Nice and sunny day today! Bit cold, but finally clean and dry roads. I took the CB for a 3 hour blast trough the Dutch countryside. I had way too much fun to stop for photo's.

When I got back my girlfriend wanted a go with the CB. She had not ridden the bike before, so I was curious to see if the bike wouldn't be too big or heavy for her. But all was fine, she loved it and she felt comfortable with the bike within a few meters.

I made some photo's, but the sun was already gone.

We've also worked on the Virago again this week. We've really been fighting the carb lately and this week was no exception. The bike gave a nice fire works display while trying to tune the carb:

First part of the video is from the side, second part is looking into the exhausts form the rear. I took the carb home with me to clean it thoroughly, which I've just done. We also need to find more (bigger) jets to play with to find the right set up. It's demanding quite a bit of our patience, but we'll get it to work.

virago update

Yep, we've been working on the Virago again. Started of by going to the deep south of our country, Brabant, which is almost Africa, for a new starter motor. So we finally have a working starter motor again now. We quickly adapted the side stand so it doesn't have to lean on a block of wood the whole time and fired up the bike. The exhaust system with rings that worked so well on the Suzuki worked marvelously on the XV too. It runs better on both cylinders now we have restricted the flow in the much shorter rear exhaust.

We had hoped to take it for a first decent test ride and although I (for some reason it's always me who has to do the first ride, tells you a bit about the confidence Vincent has in our building skills) broke the previous record of 5 meters, the final 7 meters weren't very impressive. The bike kept dying after running for roughly 20 seconds. It did that every time, very annoying. We excluded fuel and battery problems, but we're not sure yet what the problem is.

After draining the battery in all the attempts we took it back into the shed and did some other vital work (like making a whole new throttle set up, the old one was CRAP and we didn't have very much control over the revs). All in all a mixed result. No test ride yet, but in the end we did have the feeling that we made progress.

The carburetor that caused so many problems yesterday:

The exhaust fumes were getting to someone's head while trying to do a test ride: