On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:47:14 -0700, "Jeff Deeney" <jdeeney.DeleteThis@nospam.com>
wrote:
>Great to hear Fred. Your boy is doing wonderful. Especially
>for having to start on a bike with a clutch. All of mine started on
>an auto clutch.
Thanks Jeff. It would have been nice to start him out on an
automatic, but it just wasn't in the budget. Because he's tall for his
age and would "outgrow" any of the autos pretty quickly... plus we
didn't have the budget for new bikes. If we had, I may have opted for
the KLX-110 and then traded it in after a year or two.
>Anyone remember the write-up I did from last December about
>teaching one of my son's friends to ride, where he nearly careened
>off a couple of trucks before taking a digger? He eventually did OK,
>but when I saw his mom a couple of weeks ago, she thanking me for
>taking him out. Now he never wants to ride motorcycles again 
>I guess it wasn't as easy as it looked on TV.
Hehehe. This reminds me... my son has always been confident (over
confident usually). So when my nephew was riding his little PW-50 at
the farm one day my son kept asking if he could ride too. This was
several years ago, so I guess Tanner (our son) was probably about 6 at
the time. Well, my brother says he doesn't care so I begin to give
Tanner instructions. I tell him where the brake is and how the
throttle works. He's nodding his head as if this information is
elementary. We put him on the PW and the first thing he does is pin it
WFO. And at this point, he's too scared to do anything else.
Fortunately, he leaned left and sort of spun out and laid it down
just as the tires brushed off the storage shed. If he'd hit it head-on
things could've been ugly. The total ride lasted about 1/2 a second
and he got one of those neat little handlebar burns across his belly.
Notice it took about 3 years before he wanted anything to do with
dirt bikes again? <g>
>Getting them to shift when the RPM gets too high is also
>a challenge.
Yeah, that'll be the next big step. After his introduction 3 years
ago we're playing it a little more slowly this time around. So far
most all of his riding has been restricted to first gear.
>Most often, a bit of dirt makes it leak. Sometimes, tapping on the
>side of the carb with a plastic or wooden mallet frees it up. It
>worked for my (dearly departed) XR80 the other day. Given
>all that bike has been thru, and the old metal tank, you should
>install a $3 gas filter ASAP (if you haven't already). Otherwise
>you'll be continually battling debris in the carb.
Good point, Jeff. I do indeed have an inline filter, but removed
it from the line when I was having carburetion problems and suspected
it might be obstructing flow. I'll put it back now and clean the carb
again.
Fred - Livin' Large in the 098!
'85 RM 250
'79 YZ 80
'81 DT 80<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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