There's No Place Like Home

So I won a 512MB iPod Shuffle at the conference in San Francisco and I wanted to use it on my motorcycle.

I know, a lot of people think this is a bad idea – but I wear ear plugs all the time anyway, and what about those cars with the stereo turned way up? There is no way they can hear anything.

Isn’t rationalizing fun?

But the Apple ear buds suck. I have not owned a pair of ear buds that didn’t fall out of my ears, and the Apple ones are more of the same.

What I really wanted was the ER6 ear buds, but at $139, I didn’t think that would fly.

Some people had been saying that the Radio Shack In-the-Ear Noise Reducing Stereo Headphones were pretty good for the price ($20), so I picked up a pair.

These things rock!

They appear to be re-branded Koss Plugs (and they cost a few dollars more, but oh well.)

The only gripe I have about them is that the foam expands too fast – you can’t squash them and get them into your ear before they have expanded. But if you just jam them in there, they work pretty well.

I wore them on the way to work this morning and they cut the wind noise pretty well and the music sounded great. They have a pretty good bass response and the iPod has no trouble driving them to reasonable volume.

There was some pressure from my helmet, but I think I can get them further into my ears to relieve that.

Over all, I’d say they were worth $20.

A Google search turned up this page about modifying these plugs… I might have to look into this.

Well, I was right. It was the frayed wires from the timing pickup coils that were the problem. Apparently when I was looking at them yesterday, I wiggled them enough so that the last strands came apart.

So I patched that back up by splicing in a new section of wire and re-routing it away from the spring on the kickstand that had chewed through it in the first place. It wasn’t the first time this had been repaired either – someone has been doing a bunch of electrical work to this bike, and they were not very skilled.

While I was down there, I removed the kickstand switch and jumpered it to get rid of the annoying “Stand” warning light. Surprisingly enough, the Haynes manual was wrong about the switch. The Haynes manual said that when the stand was up, all three wires should be connected (why you need three wires for a side stand switch, I have no idea.) But when I twisted all three wires together, the bike refused to start!

So I untwisted them, started the bike, and used a jumper to discover which two turned off the light. Then I clipped the third one off and soldered the other two together. No more light.

I also cut the notch in the side cover to clear the sidecar strut mounting point – it looks great now!

I have ordered a couple of clamps from J.C. Whitney that should be what I need to attach the steering damper and a six position fuse block to replace the stock one. The stock fuse block is falling apart and someone has already replaced two of the fuses with in-line holders. The stock block has four positions, so I’ll have a couple left over for hooking up my electric vest and other equipment.

Hmm…

I went out to the garage this morning to go to work. Tossed the laptop and other stuff in the sidecar, got my helmet on, turned the key and pressed the starter button.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r

Hrm… Try again.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r

Not even a ‘pop’ to show that it’s trying to start. That’s odd, I was driving it around yesterday morning. Well, hell.

Yesterday I put a ‘heavy duty’ turn signal flasher in it to fix the flashing problem I created by adding two additional lights on the sidecar. I did mess around with the wiring a bit to get it to go, so it’s possible that I blew a fuse. I checked the four fuses under the seat. They all look good, but I managed to break the fuse block! Damn it.

It would appear that this has been an issue in the past, as two of the fuses have been converted to in-line fuse holders already. I think I’m going to buy one of those aftermarket fuse blocks and retrofit it.

In any case, the bike still didn’t start. There is also at least one fuse in the headlight bucket, so I’ll have to check that out. I also noticed that the wires coming from the timing cover are frayed, so it’s possible that’s the problem.

So I drove the K1100RS in today. Man, I haven’t driven that for a few weeks. That’s a fun bike to drive. I’ll miss it if I sell it…