Show us your TransAlp modifications!

[quint7]

Originally Posted by Nightrunner

Lots if us have tried the DJ kit and most have gone back. Big drop in mileage is the #1 complaint. I bought a used one on ebay, tried it for a short time, and then re-sold it again. I have a recipe that has worked very well with my Tiger and my T/A and costs way less than DJ. Go up one size on both the pilot and main jets. Get some #6 brass washers to shim up the stock needles. They should be about 0.025" or so thick. Drill out the caps that cover the idle mixture screws. Be very careful drilling because the brass screws are right under the covers. A small hole plus a sheet metal screw is good for pulling out the covers. Count the number of turns to screw them in til they seat. Write it down so you can put it back if needed. I will guess they are about 2.5 turns out from seated. With the larger pilots, set the screws to about 1 turn out. If memory serves, the stock jets are 38 pilot and 120 main. I went to 40 pilot and 122.5 main. I have the K&N air filter and the Laser exhaust as well. She starts right up cold, has more power, and mileage improved from stock.

Yeah I've done a tone of kits and I'll have to look at my Factory Pro kit I put in my Hawk. I'm wondering if it would work in the Alp. I have all kinds of jets from them for various bikes, I'll have to clean the carbs and see what's going on. The only thing I think about when seeing a Dynojet kit is that the slides are usually drilled out aren't they? I'll look into running your setup too. Thanks for the advice!

[Nightrunner]

Also wanted to add, an excellent reference on how CV carbs work.

http://hondanighthawks.net/carb14.htm

.

[quint7]

I was just out for another ride, about 100 miles, but small town stop and go in some of it. The bike wants to stall sometimes when I come to a stop and the idle is jumping from 1300 or so to close to 2000. Looks like it will be one of the other bikes out on the road this weekend and I'll start taking the carbs apart on the Alp ASAP. I got 44mpg today with the stop and go riding. I switched the reserve on at 137 miles as soon as she started sputtering. Anyone have any ideas on how to improve the rear brake? Better shoes or something other than trying to find all of the Africa Twin parts to do a swap?

Other than that, the Avons Distanzas stick great like I have always experienced with their tires, but the front is almost toast. Gonna get something just a little more dirt oriented I think. The giant and ugly Rifle windshield is actually pretty damn near perfect for me other than a little bit of noise and the bike did 80mph like it was nothing on the highway (about 6200 RPMs). I see another trip to Big Bend in my future this winter once I get this sorted..

[locorider]

Good looking bike!

Originally Posted by asilindean

Hi to you all,

This page has been an inspiration to me and since there is a long time since my last post here I thought that I must show you the stages of my Transalp:

I started with this:


Went through this stage:


To arrive here:


After a hard day work :)


It puts a big smile on your face :) Last year it took me and my gf around the Balkans (RR in my signature) and this year on a loop around the Black Sea (RR to come)


Modifications include:
- 320 mm front disk rotor
- progressive springs
- new mono shock Hagon
- Africa Twin swing arm, back wheel, fuel tank and bashplate
- crash bars Kappa, H&B luggage racks
- Fehling handle bar and risers
- custom seat
- MRA wind deflector
- heated grips
- Africa Queen exhaust

Ride safe and enjoy,
Adrian

[Belgian Waffles]

Originally Posted by Ladder106

Next check the 3 wire plug under the seat that leads from the stator (in the right case) to the recrifier (right side panel, the square bit with the cooling fins). The connection here is critical and gets dirty, corroded and melts on older bikes.

Pins are fine... it just vibrated loose after I didn't connect them securely the day before... phew!

Thanks for your help.

[Bruincounselor]

No affiliation:

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=732198

[ujeni]

On a recent commute in the rain, I noticed my front brake became very weak. After "cleaning" the rotor by holding the brake lever a tad while driving, brake power returned. My brake pads are in good condition and so is the brake fluid. My question to the collective:

Is there an upgrade out there that will solve this issue? Perhaps the hawk rotor upgrade?

[Ladder106]

I think it was the same rain that I was riding in.

First real rain of the season seems to always be like that...full of oil, grease and (if you live where I do) tomato juice.

My bashplate was actually orange/brown from all the tomato crud on the roads.

Hope everyone in the world enjoys their ketchup this year.

It'll get better when the roads get washed off a bit.

[quint7]

Originally Posted by Ladder106

I think it was the same rain that I was riding in.

First real rain of the season seems to always be like that...full of oil, grease and (if you live where I do) tomato juice.

My bashplate was actually orange/brown from all the tomato crud on the roads.

Hope everyone in the world enjoys their ketchup this year.

It'll get better when the roads get washed off a bit.

I'd love to be able to talk about the 'first real rain of the season' except rain IS a season here. 3 of them actually with the other being snow.

[Jim Rowley]

Originally Posted by quint7

I'd love to be able to talk about the 'first real rain of the season' except rain IS a season here. 3 of them actually with the other being snow.

We had our first snow Saturday, 5" of the white stuff. All gone now and by this Friday, we'll be back in the 70's. That was a close one.

[gummycarbs]

Awhile back, I asked why nobody makes racks out of flat stock. Well, I figured out why...

Built up a couple of 'hoops' in roughly the same dimensions as my Happy Trails racks:


Figuring out how to mount them to the bike was interesting. I used some tubing with a steel spacer inserted into it. To hold the spacer in place, I drilled through each side of the tube, then spot welded the area pretty thoroughly:
 

My welding jig is first class. Quick-Grips, a spring clamp, some 3/4" wood strips, and zip ties. I eyeballed the angle to vaguely match that of the rear top rack. I'd mount it all up on the bike, spot weld as briefly as possible, then remove everything for full welding. Usually, it would turn out that my tack welds were entirely made of slag, and it would fall apart... This was all done with a stick welder. I used a Harbor Freight fiberglass welding blanket to protect the bike and, remarkably, nothing caught on fire or melted!
  

It was a pretty snug fit, so the bits connecting the rack to the bike needed to be narrow. I used redneck-ovalized tubing: I heated it cherry red and squeezed it in the vice:
 

The final fit is pretty close. In fact, the left side might be a bit *too* close! I don't plan on going off-road in the immediate future, so it will do for now:


It's significantly narrower. Before (Happy Trails rack):


After:



So, wait, what about the muffler? I always had a perverse attraction to the original KTM Adventure, with it's low pipes for luggage clearance... I got ahold of a Yoshimura Off-Road muffler for, I believe, a CR250F. The included connector pipe was a bit shorter than I needed, and it angled in the wrong direction, but the inlet was nearly the correct inside diameter. I found some 2" stainless 304 at the local metal recycling place, cut the muffler pipe in two, rotated it 180 degrees, and welded in the extension. I used Hobart stainless rods, which were ridiculously easy to weld with.
 

While relocating one of the spring retainers (they hold the muffler on), I used too little grinding and too much force, opening up a tiny hole in the pipe. That's when I found out that it's really hard to weld up a hole in the outside perimeter of a mandrel-bent curve in stainless. Luckily, a patch of 304 went in reasonably well:
 

The inlet's inside diameter was just a bit too large, but then again, it doesn't have a gasket, unlike the stock Transalp muffler inlet. I bought some high-temp gasket making material at Autozone. It has a sheet metal core and uses a high-temp fiber laminated on each side. Of course, I can't think of the name of the material at the moment... This, along with some RTV sealant, and a wrap of Scotch tape to hold it temporarily in place, has worked pretty well:


So, as for the reason why people don't make racks out of flat stock: it's because they're heavy. Really heavy. They're about twice the weight of the Happy Trails racks, and not nearly as stiff. I haven't bothered to finish these. I only put a front brace on the right side, since it supports the muffler. I have, however, ordered some 4130 chromoly tubing in various sizes, and got my hands on a cheap gas welding outfit, but fall is here and now I'm feeling lazy, so you'll have to wait awhile to hear anything about that.

[trex300]

Came across this pic on the internet...anybody know anything about this bike?

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...zMe9tooSYSDAU1

[gummycarbs]

I have XR650L forks on the Transalp, and they were really softly sprung. I mostly relied on this SuperHunky article and this spring rate worksheet.

The XR650L stock spring rate is 0.44kg/mm. The Transalp is, I believe, 0.51kg/mm. My simple length-based estimate gave me about 3-1/2 inches to cut off. The spring worksheet gave me about 3-3/8 inches. I went with the more conservative number.

The springs turned out to be *really* easy to cut through. I didn't even have to employ the SuperHunky method, since as soon as the spring metal puddled, it ate through and fell apart. After cutting, I heated the spring and bent it so that the last coil lays against itself, and so that it would be as flat as possible after grinding. They're not perfect, but they're much better than if I'd simply cut the spring and installed it.


I cut 3-3/8 inch spacers out of 1" Schedule 40 PVC, and deburred the ends with fine sandpaper. Where the spring meets the new spacers, I used 1/2" washers from Home Depot. The 1/2" opening was a little too small to clear the damping rod, so I had to be enlarged a bit with a file, and smoothed with a Dremel. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that the washers were only hung up on the nut which holds the damping rod to the fork cap. I believe I could have just unscrewed the nut from the rod, slipped the washer over the rod, and threaded the nut back on. I don't think I needed to enlarge the washer hole at all.
 

The worst part of the entire process was actually just cleaning out the fork. I must not have changed the fork oil -- or did a crappy job -- when I put them on back in 2006 or 2007. I'm not too concerned, since I don't think I've even put 2,000 miles on the bike since 2005, but it was still horrifying to see. I went though an entire bottle of Autozone's cheapest ATF, and it was still coming out black. I switched to kerosene, which was much more effective, and cleaned them out within a couple of cycles. I put one more cycle of ATF in, just to make sure the kerosene was out, then filled the forks up to about 120mm (stock is 145mm) with Bel-Ray 10wt fork oil (stock is 5wt).

With the job complete, the forks feel much better, pretty close to how I remember the Transalp's stock forks felt.

[gummycarbs]

Originally Posted by trex300

Came across this pic on the internet...anybody know anything about this bike?

Looks like a Moto Guzzi NTX. One page I found shows that color scheme as a 1985. This page lists it as a 1988-1990 model.

[Jim Rowley]

Originally Posted by gummycarbs

Looks like a Moto Guzzi NTX. One page I found shows that color scheme as a 1985. This page lists it as a 1988-1990 model.

I did some work on one a year or two ago. Nice bike.