What a Pain in My Tail Section

2008 is off to an inauspicious start.

The tail section for my Ducati arrive about 6 weeks ago. I haven't had much time to deal with it until last week. I decided I'd try to match the reds better this time around. (Every time I look at the mismatched color on the nose it bugs me a little more.) I found a website that would sell me aerosol spray cans of the right color. Not cheap but I figured it was worth a try so I ordered 2 cans of color and 1 can of clear coat. My order arrived Monday.

Even a lab rat learns from experience, right? I decided to spend more time prepping the piece in the hopes of getting a better result. I put about 4 hours into filling, and sanding, and priming, and sanding, and filling, and sanding, and priming. ... Mostly sanding. In the end it looked promising.

I wanted to mimic the OEM piece. I'd try to match the basic stripes but I wasn't going to worry about the lettering. It was going to be a simple but time consuming job:

1. Paint the whole piece white with the cheap paint I already had.
2. Mask off the stripes.
3. Paint the piece red with the expensive paint I just bought.
4. Clear coat everything.

The white went on pretty well.

The masking wasn't too hard although my tape doesn't do curves well and there are some subtle curves.

The red went on beautifully.

I pulled the masking off an hour later and I was pretty excited. The color was as close to the original as you could hope for. The time spent on the prep work had paid off. Things were going to be great.

Unfortunately there were two significant problems: there was a spot where the masking failed and there was some red over spray; and there was another spot where the masking tape pulled up some of the white paint revealing the grey primer. I figured it wouldn't be hard to re mask those spots and respray some white.

So I got some paper and went to town. I wanted to be sure none of the new white got into the red so I made sure to mask everything except the two problem areas. I sprayed the white and an hour later came back figuring I'd pull the masking and spray the clear and I'd be all set.

Unfortunately when I did the masking the red paint was dry but not dry enough. The paper stuck in the paint and ruined absolutely the whole thing. What was a good paint job with two significant flaws had become a piece of garbage. There's no way to salvage it, I'm going to have to remove all of the paint and start all over from primer.

Stupid new year.

New Car Shopping

My wife wants a new car. More accurately she wants to replace *my* car. I drive the designated dog car. Lately she's been taking the dogs to the park on a daily basis and it's making a mess of her nice new Audi.

Maybe you're thinking "Hey, why doesn't she just drive your car? Are you some sort of territorial bastard that won't share?" Of course the answer to that is "Yes, I am a territorial bastard. I pee a circle around my motorcycles at least once per week. ... But not when it comes to something as cookie-cutter as a 2003 Subaru Forester. It's a glorified toaster. She's welcome to drive it." The problem is it's a manual transmission and she doesn't want to learn how to drive a stick.

So she wants us to get a new dog-friendly, automatic-transmission, AWD car to replace my Forester.

Well, if we're going to get a new car, I have some requirements too. We should get something that can tow an enclosed trailer (at which point I can go out and *get* an enclosed trailer). Since it will mostly be doing car-type-duty it should get decent gas mileage and drive like a car.

After a little shopping our short list is:

Dodge Nitro R/T
Toyota Highlander
Toyota RAV4 V6

We haven't driven anything yet. I suspect we'll find that the RAV4 is the most logical choice for us. But I'll want the Nitro anyway.

This could turn out to be a big win for me. I could end up with a new car, a new trailer *and* additional spending money. How? Because of how our finances work. There's MyMoney, HerMoney and OurMoney. A new car would definitely be paid for with OurMoney but since I bought the Subaru before we were married any money we get from selling it is MyMoney. And it will be more than enough MyMoney to buy a trailer.

Well, maybe putting that money towards the Ducati loan would be a good idea too. That was a big MyMoney purchase.

Incontrovertible Visual Evidence

I just received some more pics from my track days in Pahrump so I thought I'd post a few more of them.



Here's a snippet of the video they took of me at the track:

Cruising the Sky

My trip to the track in Pahrump also included a trip to Tucson to visit family.

Since the trailer I borrowed had room for two bikes and I couldn't convince anyone to join me (Dave, Joe and Jason, this is where you should feel guilty and ashamed of yourselves) I decided to bring the Suzuki. That way I could enjoy the Tucson weather if the opportunity arose.

It turned out to be a good idea. (Insert Guinness-ad "Brilliant!" here.)

Just outside of Tucson is one of the best mountain roads anywhere. It covers about 25 miles from Tucson up to Mt Lemmon Ski Valley. The scenery ranges from the Sonoran Desert to pine forest as you climb from 3000' to about 9000' in elevation. ... Well, here's a good description. The road is Catalina Highway but it's less commonly called Sky Island Scenic Byway.

I hadn't been on Catalina Highway since I lived in Tucson in 2002. Back then they were in the midst of a long-term repaving project of the entire road. But, much to my delight, they've finished that project. That means gorgeous smooth wide asphalt for 25 miles.

In 2002 I would get up early and get in a few spirited mountain "laps" before the cars showed up in force on the weekends. (I'm not the sort of person that drags a knee on public roads, but if I were, Catalina highway was one of the best places for it. It wasn't hard to find times where there was zero other traffic on the mountain.) But for this trip I had the Suzuki. It's a much different ride on a cruiser. Not better, not worse, just different. You pay more attention to the scenery than on the sport bike. But it can still be a spirited ride.

If you're in Tucson with a bike it's a ride you won't regret.

I'm starting to think that moving back to Tucson might be worth the 20% pay cut. A couple hours each weekend on the mountain might save me enough in therapy costs to make it worthwhile.

Pahrump Revisited

November 8th and 9th STAR held their year-end track event at Spring Mountain in Pahrump. Since I had a new bike I figured it would be a good way to get it out on the track for the first time. (1. The riding season around here ends in Min-October. 2. My impression of open track days here isn't good, there's just too much chaos.) So I borrowed an enclosed trailer and a truck to pull it with and headed down.

As always STAR put on a great event. They now have professional photographers that take pictures of the on-track action. The pictures are then used in the classroom sessions to help illustrate what you're doing well and not so well. You also have the option to buy the pictures of yourself. Here are a few:






You can see how my spray paint turned out on the racing body. The nose and fairings are sprayed. The tank and the tail section are OEM. The bellypan isn't OEM but it came already black.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you have a sport bike you owe it to yourself to take it to the track. You don't have to be a daredevil or a speed freak. If you're the conservative type think of it as learning the capabilities of your motorcycle to make you a better and safer rider when the unexpected happens on the street. Regardless how you validate it, going to the track is an absolute must.

I know there are some people out there (well, assuming *anyone* reads this blog at all I guess) that think "That bike is too expensive to take to the track. What if you wreck it?" True, that would stink. I'd cry and whimper and spend a week naked, in the corner, in the fetal position. But bikes like this are designed for the track. That's their whole purpose in life. Otherwise they might as well be in the living room as sculpture. ... Come to think of it, that wouldn't be a bad idea either. :)