What did you do with your P11 today. he he

Schwany said:

So two days ago I cut 1/2" off my side stand and silver solder sweat a new foot on it. Had to do it to support lowering the suspension a little and it's actually been too long forever anyway. So far from the original it'll hurt your sensitive eyes.

Click to expand...

Whatever works! My N15's stand is tolerable but could do with an inch more length and a fix to the toe angle. The centerstand has been a nightmare, but I'm ready to try again. I need to grind down the feet to make it a proper height. It requires a hernia-inducing pull to lift it as the stand is too long.

On my Laverda 3C, the center stand is perfect. I step on the lever while sitting on the bike and give a bit of a pull on the bars, and it's up, just enough to get the rear tire off the ground. The stops are adjustable. The kickstand is an atrocity. It passes through a frame lug with an M8 bolt into the engine case, and due to the lean angle, it can damage the case. The mounting hole in my bike's case has been slightly bent, so I've removed the stand. It is very far forward, near the front of the engine, and to make matters worse, it's prone to retracting on its own. I have ordered a bracket from the UK that mounts to the footpeg lug, and a fits a Kawasaki ZX6-R (ZZR 600) stand. Once I get these two corrected, I'll be a happy camper.

gpzkat said:

Whatever works! My N15's stand is tolerable but could do with an inch more length and a fix to the toe angle. The centerstand has been a nightmare, but I'm ready to try again. I need to grind down the feet to make it a proper height. It requires a hernia-inducing pull to lift it as the stand is too long.

On my Laverda 3C, the center stand is perfect. I step on the lever while sitting on the bike and give a bit of a pull on the bars, and it's up, just enough to get the rear tire off the ground. The stops are adjustable. The kickstand is an atrocity. It passes through a frame lug with an M8 bolt into the engine case, and due to the lean angle, it can damage the case. The mounting hole in my bike's case has been slightly bent, so I've removed the stand. It is very far forward, near the front of the engine, and to make matters worse, it's prone to retracting on its own. I have ordered a bracket from the UK that mounts to the footpeg lug, and a fits a Kawasaki ZX6-R (ZZR 600) stand. Once I get these two corrected, I'll be a happy camper.

Click to expand...

I ended up melting the silver solder off with a propane torch and welding it. Bought and taught myself how to use flux core wire on a MIG multi-process welder in about 4 days. Not that great at it, but good enough. Most expensive weld ever. Fortunately, I have more plans for welding projects. Also got welding off my bucket list better late than never.

Getting my '96 R1100GS BMW up on the center stand was difficult if done wrong. No way I could have ever done it sitting on the bike. Too short. That said, I later went into a BMW dealer looking at new 20XX GS models and they are really easy to get up on the center stand. Didn't buy one though. They have gone up in price at least 300%.

The '74 Commando I had for a few months was fairly easy to get on the center stand. I remember starting it, putting it up on the center stand, and watching it spin around in circles in the driveway from the good old Norton vibration. Idling never hurt it contrary to internet wisdom.

I actually can't remember what putting my other motorcycles that had center stands up on the center stand was like. Must have been so easy I never logged it in my head. None of the dirt bikes I had came from the factory with center stands, nor did my Ducati 996S or the P11.

Made a set of u-hooks for springs that I welded on the bottom of the exhaust headers to hook springs to in order to hold the headers tight in the collector. The collector already had a single hook on it. Headers actually have hooks on them on the top, but the springs were vibrating on the edge of the sump plug. U-hook welds are kind of crappy, since I just recently got a welder, but the welds are holding. Used a MIG setup with flux cored .030 wire with the wire speed and volts turned down a little and did not burn through the headers. Anywho, been meaning to do that for about 4 decades. If I had more patience and wanted to play with a Argon gas mix I would have done it with TIG. I have some other complicated (for me) exhaust work planned, so might end up doing that with the TIG process.

A stupid is as stupid does moment:

Sun is out up in he PNW, so had to go for short loop. I moved the key from where it hangs on the Feked anti-sump valve handle and put it in the ignition, opened up the Feked valve and turned on my fuel valves. I turn them all the way to reserve by the way. Started the engine and it was running terrible, and dying when letting off the throttle. I figured well I finally broke it. Looked at it and thought maybe it was the little bit of exhaust flow work I did yesterday making it run lean at idle, but that didn't make a lot of sense. Turns out my fuel valves had been left turned On from the previous day when I was thinking about riding, but didn't get to it. No the cylinders were not full of fuel. My FCRs still work like they are supposed to. What happened was I actually turned the fuel valves off. I'm amazed it ran as long as it did with the valves turned off. Anywho, I turned the fuel valves on and went for a ride. Other than the engine sounding like a bucket of 1/4 pound steel balls on paint shaker, the thing runs perfect. I'm really hard on rear tires. Cant make my throttle hand act its age.

As far as what did I do with my P11 goes... I took the baffle setup I made out of the megaphone and removed and blended the edge created on the end cut ID of thin wall metal exhaust pipe when using a manual pipe cutter rather than a band saw. Also replaced some fasteners used on the exhaust with stainless.