So, while I recover from the shock of getting back to the daily grind, I’ll leave you with the top 10 viewed posts of 2008!

1. Steampunk Motorcycles-even though I wrote this post a year ago, it is the most popular post of my site. The Steampunk movement has gained much popularity since then.
2. BikerorNot.com: bikers and social networking pt. deux-social networking sites are booming. It seems that every subculture has formed their own social community these days. Since this post was published I have received numerous emails informing me of yet another new biker social community and asking me to join or write about their site. I can only keep track of so many accounts these days and it makes me wonder if more is better.
3. Bikers and tattoos-Two of my favorite subjects! A brief history of tattoos in America and how they touch my world.
4. Bring Exile Cycles back to TV-the popularity of this post surprises me a little. Prior to this post I had read a myspace bulletin from Russell putting out the call to fans for some help. This year we’ve seen Russell on VH1′s Rock of Love and of course, that silly Comcast commercial that featured Exile Cycles, with an actor playing the part (instead of “hardcore” heavily-tattooed Russell) that confused so many people. Here’s hoping we see a lot more of him in the future.
5. Anatomy of the Kawasaki Vulcan-in the summer of 2007, Greg White contacted me and hooked me up with Kawasaki to test ride the Vulcan 900 Custom. I spent a few gleeful weeks riding this bike and this is my dissection of various elements of the bike in detail. Thinking back on the experience makes me remember how much I enjoyed riding this bike. And yes, the skinny front wheel felt safe!
6. Biker Movie Hell Ride in theaters August 8-this movie was all the buzz for us this summer and it came and went in the blink of an eye. It had a very limited release in theaters and when it finally came out on DVD it would be an understatement to say it is a love/hate kind of movie.
7. Slayer launches a line of helmets-*RAWK!* Rockhard helmets launched a line of motorcycle helmets emblazened with graphics of our favorite thrash metal band. They’ve since increased their lineup of bands that include: Lynard Skynard, KISS, Slip Knot, Motorhead (yes!), AC/DC and The King. These suckers ain’t cheap but if you’re a fan I’m sure they’re well worth the cash!
8. Garage Girls: a new site for women, or is it?-this was my initial review of Sara Liberte’s new online venture. I was as honest as I could be while reading through the site (maybe too honest?). So much so  that I actually received an email and blog comment from Sara letting me and everyone else know that the site was brand-spankin’ new and to cut her some slack. I revisited the site three months later and was pleasantly surprised at the changes that had been made and the fresh content that had been added. Props to Sara.
9. Video Tuesday: Harley-Davidson Dark Custom-this video accompanied the announcement of HD’s newest and coolest motorcycle. I also went on a bit of a tirade about how out of touch Bruce Rossmeyer is with a younger demographic.
10. My first motorcycle love-I’m so happy to see this post made it to the top ten! This is a guest post, written by my nearest and dearest, recounting the love of his first motorcycle, the experiences he had while owning it, and then eventually trading it in for a newer Road King. Definitely a good read. Hmm, that reminds me…I think I’ll bug him to guest post more often!

It’s now three months later and my curiosity has led me back to check in.

Here’s what I’ve found:

The homepage is now streamlined with digestible information, the footer links work and the content about Sara and Jody are in the appropriate “about us” section.

The Body & Machine sections have a lot more content broken out by monthly updates and reads sort of like a newsletter with info about nutrition, fitness tips and the latest news in circulation. On the Machine side, there’s info about motorcycle maintenance, advice and tips and general motorcycle news/info (with lots of videos sprinkled through to help break up the content). Again, I like how Sara is trying to make the correlation of taking care of your body and also your machine as an extension of your body. My only criticism for this section is that it’s not very obvious what month you’re reading, it’s not clearly labeled (which is more a criticism for the web team).

The Events page shows where you can next see Sara and the Garage Girls (although perhaps calling it something other than “events” might help users understand what they’re going to see when they come to this page), Sites2See is pretty much the same and Cruisin’ companions has some additional photos of fuzzy kind, with a link to donate to her local animal resource center-a topic near and dear to my heart.

While Garage Girls may not be the epicenter of information for women on the web, the site has improved and is forming a distinct personality of it’s own. Bravo to Sara for being tenacious in building her site up and showing us what she’s made of. I look forward to seeing where it is in another few months.

Here’s a first from me: a video post!

I feel the need to interject a bit of a disclaimer here:

• this was not shot with a real video camera, it was shot with my digital snapshot camera
• the production of the video is not the greatest, but I had fun doing it (especially when I found the banjo soundtrack!)
• I have ZERO training or skill being in front of a camera. I kept giggling while trying to shoot it. I’m just a hack.
• This was shot under the disguise of being an “instructional video” but it’s really psuedo-instructional. For the most part I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about!

Now that I’ve got my first video post under my belt I kind of know the ins and outs of what it takes to create one and now know what to expect for the next one. I hope you guys enjoy it anyway!

The weather was good this week so I thought I would take it out for it’s maiden voyage after all of the work we put into it. Turns out that wasn’t the greatest idea. It was the most frustrating and stressful round-trip rides I’ve had in a long time.

Even though I’ve got the mixture screw turned out 4 times, the bike is still running lean. It’s not getting enough gas unless I really lean on the throttle, then it takes off like a rocket ship. Plus, I have to keep the choke out or else the bike stalls out. And that causes it to idle really high. The thing is, once it has enough gas it really flies.

More consulting on my motorcycle board tells me that I should swap out the pilot jet. Some folks who rejet say you don’t need to do that, Dynojet says you don’t need to do it, but then there are others who say you absolutely need to replace it. I ordered one the day before yesterday. If it comes in tomorrow then I know what I’m going to do this upcoming weekend.

The saga continues…

On my bike board some guys put together an extensive rejetting matrix for my bike which I followed. I bought a DynoJet rejet kit and a Uni filter. I did the rejet and it seemed pretty easy, so I fired it up and took it around the block. About half way it started to bog down and black smoke started pouring out the tailpipe.

My man helped me push it back home and we tore it down again. It looked fine but was obviously running too rich. I tried to lean it out a bit by moving the needle a notch. That didn’t work. Over the next couple of days we tore that down and rebuilt it about 20 times. Finally someone suggested that one of the super tiny o-rings in the carberator might be missing (or bad) so I went to the dealer and ordered another freaking o-ring. One week later it came in.

Last night I went back and again tore the carb down again, put the o-ring in and fired it up. After dialing in the idle I thought everything would be good, but when I put it in gear (while holding in the clutch) the idle dropped significantly, the bike sputtered and died complete with a small puff of black smoke coming out the tailpipe. (It was like a bad cartoon.) I pulled the spark plugs and they were black, so I know it’s still rich.

I don’t want to give up and have to bring it into the shop. Tons of people rejet their bikes all the time so I should be able to also. Right now I need some advice which is where you guys come in.

I still think it is running too rich so should I:

1. move the needle down a notch
2. change my pilot jet from 150 to something else – if so what?
3. change my plugs
4. pay someone to do it
5. set the bike on fire and claim an “Act of God” to the insurance people

Seriously, I am at my wit’s end. Argggggggg!!!!!!!

It’s time to get off of the computer and attack this motorcycle again to fix the problem. I want to be out riding this weekend!

Reading the VolusiaRiders board has been very helpful with advice and keeping me sane. I think I lost a little, bitty O-ring that everyone told me not to lose. That’s the only thing I can think of since we’ve ripped the bike apart fifty times to get at the carburetor it probably fell out at some point. That has to be it. So, today I ordered not one but two. They’ll be in on Thursday.

If all goes well I’ll be out riding this weekend, dammit.

Well, the answer to that (and reason #2 why I’ve been so quiet) is because I JUST BOUGHT A HOME! (*cheers, applause, hooray!*) Yes, it’s true. I’ve become a member of the landed gentry. So my life is in complete upheaval! In fact, I have to get out of here to go paint a room. But I wanted to do a quick update and say ‘hi’! Now I gotsta go!

My bike comes stock with a HUGE air cleaner, lovingly referred to as “the football” and a “pair valve” (California emissions control device). The plan was to rip off the pair valve, replace the football with a hidden K&N air filter, re-jet and debaffle the exhaust pipes (since I have not made a decision on what style of new pipes I want). I realize this was ambitious, but I started over a month ago and figured I’d be done by now. The problem is that I still don’t have all the parts that I ordered! The one big thing I’m missing is the jet kit. But I couldn’t wait, so I started anyway!

Getting half-naked.

When you remove the pair valve and the football on the Volusia, it allows you an unobstructed view of the V-twin cylinders (or “jugs”) so some smarty-pants refers to them as having “Naked Jugs“. I began to set my jugs free today by removing the pair valve. Things went fairly smooth except for the front air breather, that’s a bitch.

Once that was done I figured since I can’t re-jet yet that there was no reason to replace the football. My bike runs lean anyway so the last thing I want to do is give it more air.

The top row of pictures is the pair value before and after I removed the casing. The second row is me tackling the “football.”

Voila! Naked jugs!

So now the bike is half-nekkid. I’m going to have to wait until I get back from bike week to re-jet and go au naturale.

Baffled that I haven’t debaffled before now.

I decided to do a partial debaffle of the exhaust pipes. There are 3 separate baffles in the Volusia. My goal was to remove the first one.

We picked up 2 hole saws to cut through the plates in the massive pipes. You cut out a doughnut and the baffle becomes unrestricted. Then put a dowel in the baffle and wiggle it around until the metal fatigues and breaks off.

Pull the baffle out: lather, rinse and repeat on the other pipe.

What a difference! The sound coming out of those pipes now is unbelievable!

So, as I mentioned before I will be at bike week from Wednesday to Sunday and will try to post updates while I’m there. I’ve been working on a special feature that uses a GPS that I put on the bike and Google maps so you can see me riding in real time. Look for the “Where am I” link under pages in the right hand column. When it’s there, that means I’m on the road! Check back soon and check often…

I am having some minor issues with the bike lately, so I didn’t get as much riding in as I would have liked to. However, I did order some things for minor improvements, including some foot pegs and clamps to add to my highway bars, a Uni filter to help with the airflow issues I’ve been having and a jet kit.

I did accomplish a simple but cool modification: I lowered the bike 2.5 inches. It’s a a popular mod that a lot of people with Volusias/Boulevards do that’s really easy and effective. Two and a half inches doesn’t sound like a lot, but essentially it lowers your center of gravity for better control while riding. At first I barely noticed a difference, but riding next to other motorcycles I feel like they tower over me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures while doing the work because one of the bolts was really difficult to remove and I was getting super pissy…ha!

So, here’s one of me starting the work and another of me after it’s all over and done with.

OK, well I’m off to spend some time kibbitzing with other bloggers and to market, market, market to build up more traffic to this site! Nitey-nite!

I scoured my motorcycle message board, VolusiaRiders.com to see if anyone else had a similar problem. After searching through multiple of threads I found out that when stock, my type of bike runs a bit lean and that I could adjust the carburetor mixture screw. But I had to drill out a piece in the carburetor to get to it.

I found a tutorial at The Rusks, grabbed the toolbox and my husband (because there was NO way I was going to do this alone) and headed outside!

I get really nervous at the idea of pulling everything apart because I never think I can get it all back together again.

First step: gotta take off the seat.

Then take off the speedo.

Starting on the tank.

Then lifting off the gas tank (my hubby helped me unhook all of the lines). I don’t know why I expected it to be really heavy but it wasn’t.

Drilling out the carb.

Here’s the piece drilled out.

And there’s the screw.

Stretching my legs before reassembly.

Putting the tank back on so that I can start the bike up and adjust the mixture (while my man holds the tank up for me to get the the screw).

Done!

We adjusted the mixture so that the bike runs a little richer and I’m ready to take it out for a spin. The adjustment helped a lot, but unfortunately it’s still not 100%. I think I’m going to have to replace the air filter (perhaps a UNI filter?) and my husband thinks that I should bite the bullet, get new exhaust pipes and rejet. I know that he’s probably right, but I’m procrastinating!