Two Weeks and counting until Bonneville

"Decay buys too many beaters" (decay) 07/31/2018 at 14:02 • Filed to: Southwest Road Trip, Decay's Beaters, Honda, Decay mototrip

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It’s just over two weeks now until my road trip through the Southwest. I’ve spent the last two weeks getting to know the VTX from a riding perspective, and getting it up to date on maintenance.

For maintenance, the big one was valves. I had no record of it ever having been done before, but according to factory recommended intervals, It should have been just about time for the third valve adjustment. The actual adjustment isn’t difficult, being a set screw type lash adjustment, rather than shims. Access however, is pretty challenging. It is such a big motor that you have to take off a lot of stuff to get at the heads, and then you have very limited clearance to work

I didn’t take any pictures while I was working, something about touching my phone with oil covered hands... I used a photo above !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In any case, based on what I saw when I got it opened up, I’m fairly certain I was the first one to do valves here. Exhausts were on the tight end of spec, but still in spec, so I did not adjust. Intakes were all out of spec on the tight side, so all were adjusted to the correct lash.

After that, I changed the oil (Rotella T6 FTW!) and checked all the other fluids. Should be good to go for a long time now!.

Which is probably a good thing, currently I’m planning on putting quite a few miles on it in a not very long time.

The first leg, which I’m running with a few friends, takes us on the most direct route to the Bonneville salt flats where we will spend a few days watching rocket cars go fast.

From there, the rest of my party is going to split off and head back north, while I’m going to head south and explore a bit.

That’s a general route I have planned although AMGtech did give me a few other places to look at crossing the Sierra Nevada range. Haven’t been to the Southwest in almost 13 years since I did a few weeks of backpacking in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And I haven’t been to the grand canyon area since I was 10 (and couldn’t even begin to appreciate it).

More to come!

HammerheadFistpunch > Decay buys too many beaters 07/31/2018 at 14:46

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I gotta tell ya, driving down from W endover to when you back into Utah is a pretty dull drive outside of great basin NP (which, if you still go that way you should TOTALLY do). Might i recommend instead, this?

You need to see highways 6 and 12.  Much longer drive...totally worth it.

Decay buys too many beaters > HammerheadFistpunch 07/31/2018 at 15:03

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Thanks for the suggestion! Yeah, that stretch from Wendover to Kanab was already the second longest leg of the trip at 400 miles so I’d planned it out to be a little more slabby. I’ll see as it gets closer if my work schedule allows a few extra days of flex to see that area. I’ve also never been to SLC so that could be cool too!

HammerheadFistpunch > Decay buys too many beaters 07/31/2018 at 15:08

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SLC is just a city, but there is neat stuff to see around it. Frankly though, you can’t miss 12. its easily one of the best roads in the west.

HammerheadFistpunch > Decay buys too many beaters 07/31/2018 at 15:13

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if you do mostly highway miles you can still hit up highway 12 with only a 2 hour time penalty over your mostly N evada route.  I can tell you its worth it if for no other reason than to avoid that stretch of Nevada road.

Decay buys too many beaters > HammerheadFistpunch 07/31/2018 at 15:19

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Any recommendations on a layover somewhere along the route? I could probably combine two days later on in the trip, bypass the overnight I had planned in Kanab and end day two right at the canyon.

In a car it would be fine, but on a bike 500+ is a bit of a big day, especially if the technical bit happens near the end of it, I’d probably tackle that with fresh eyes.

HammerheadFistpunch > Decay buys too many beaters 07/31/2018 at 15:24

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I guess it depends on what your level of standards for a room are , but if you were going to stay in Kanab anyway I am going guess “relatively low”.  There are some okay places to stay in Torrey Utah.  That would allow you to see all the best bits fresh.  

Decay buys too many beaters > HammerheadFistpunch 07/31/2018 at 15:29

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I’m actually planning on camping most places I can! Kanab was chosen because it was a nice even 400 miles from the flats and seemed to have a number of accessible camp grounds. 

HammerheadFistpunch > Decay buys too many beaters 07/31/2018 at 15:38

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oh if you are camping there are MA NY options on this route. Fish lake national forest will be nice and cool and of course there is capitol reef area, Boulder mountain (again, cool temps) and so on. Captiol reef is a little ways out of the way (maybe 30 minutes each way) , but the campsite there in the park is one of my favorites. Green grass surrounded by high red cliffs and a stream running through the pick and eat orchards right in the site.

peaches, pears and apples should all be in season when you arrive.

thejustache > Decay buys too many beaters 08/01/2018 at 20:42

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Wait - you can run rotella T6 in motorcycle engines? I always thought they needed additives for the wet clutch to work properly... or is that not an issue with the VTX specifically? I run T6 in my Subaru so that’d be pretty convenient to standardize

Decay buys too many beaters > thejustache 08/01/2018 at 21:45

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They specifically need no friction modifiers, and generally HD diesel oils don’t have them. Rotella T6 is actually JASO-MA/MA2 (wet clutch, motorcycle use) right on the bottle, s o I even use it in the Triumph.