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The battle of the century seems to be keeping this 28 year old Honda CM400 running. Actually it's not been that bad, but she does take up quite a bit of time every couple of weeks. Right now I'm trying to figure out why my engine is getting so hot, and I mean like skizzle hot. The crankcase is averaging in the 230-250 degree range as far as I can tell, which is a bit on the hot side. Now, there are a list of culprits that could be causing this, the most likely are or were a dirty carburetor, valves out of adjustment, or the timing is off. I don't have a timing light or feele
r gauges, so that kinda pushes me into checking the carbs first.
This didn't bother me since I had been looking at the blow up diagram from bikebandit.com for something like two months now. I was able to find some replacement screws for ones that had been stripped before she was mine, so I was ready to tear into them. First thing first, I gotta get them off the bike first. This is not super hard, but does require you to take off the gas tank to get to the throttle and choke cables. After taking off the tank, drain the float bowls, and loosen and detach all cables, except the choke, WHILE KEEPING TRACK OF WHERE THEY WERE!!!! I dunno, take a photo or something, I had 3 cables and marked them 1,2, and 3 to keep em in order. Worked for me, why not you? After you detach cables 1&2, pull the choke out( at the handlebars), and loosen the clamps around the boots. At this point it's kinda by feel to get them out. I straddle the bike, and pull the carbs back to get them out of the boots connecting to the engine block. Then I'm able to kinda wiggle and force them out to the left. If you pulled the choke, that little tab won't get hung on the rear boot, making life a lot easier. With a little finesse, they should pop out. Each time I take them out, it varies in difficulty, sometimes are easier than others? After the carbs are free, remove the throttle cable and viola! A set of 
carburetors in hand!
After freeing them, be careful with them. Don't shake em or do stupid crap like that. Now you want a CLEAN AND ORGANIZED working area. I can't reinforce this enough, there are lots of tiny parts in there. I lay a cheap towel down and put all my tools and needs on it before I start, this tends to save a lot of time in the long run. All I really use is a can of carb cleaner, a can of compressed air, a phillips head screwdriver, two flat head scew drivers(one large, one small), and maybe some pliers and tweezers. Along with that, I'll use tin cans to soak jets and other parts in and a larger container to soak other parts in. Now i
t's time to open them up. I start with the bowls, seems logical and it will tell you what you can expect in the rest of the carb. A preview of this is seen when you drain your bowls before taking the carbs off. In my case, lots of particulate rust from a rusty gas tank and a crappy wire fuel filter. This is not a good thing to see. Before you start to spray everything with carb cleaner, remove all rubber pieces, carb cleaner will destroy them. Replace them if necessary, be careful with them if you're not! After cleaning out the bowls, start taking the jets out and looking for clogs and whatnot. It's not recommended that you stick wire through the jet holes, but in the case of heavy varnish, it might be necessary. I like to use the wire out of the center of a twisty tie. They're super thin, so there's no threat of damaging the needle. After checking the jets, throw them into a can to soak in cleaner, and continue to disassemble the body. Remove the floats and the float needle. Check the float and needle for defects.
My cabs are cv type with pistons, so I flip them over next to take the pistons apart. After removing the main screws, slip the body apart to expose the slider and carb interior. Remove the needle jet and toss it into the can with the other jets. The whole body is almost apart at this point. Parts are everywhere, things could get hectic. All that's left is removing the accelerator pump and air cut off valve. The air cut off valve is on the side of the body. Take the cap off slowly, there is a spring underneath it that can be lost easily. The pump itself is a brass piece with a rubber gasket. Check to make sure there are no tears or cracks in the gasket and remove the small o-ring in the small hole to the bottom left of the pump. Next is the accelerator pump. Similar to the air cut off valve except its a brass rod with a rubber gasket. Same drill on this one, look for defects and clean gently. At this point, the carb body is completely apart and its time to clean it. Clean it good, blow cleaner into all it's little holes, nooks, and crannies. Make sure all the paths are clear of obstructions and 
then blow all the cleaner out with compressed air. The insides should be shiny clean!
Time to reassemble. I put it back together the opposite of how I took it apart. Makes it easier for me to get it back together with all the parts in the right order. I tend to lay pieces out in the order I take them out, so I just have to move down the line to get it back together. After reassembling the first carb, do the exact same thing to the other one. It's best to clean them separately. If you forget how to put a piece together, you can look at the one that's still together, plus, they tend to not like having parts swapped between the two of them. I hope this helps someone who wants to work on their carbs but is hesitant to. It's not that hard if you have some mechanical ability and can stay somewhat organized. In the end, I pulled some nasty crap out of my carbs. LOTS of rust. I plan on resealing my tank this winter. Unfortunately, she is still overheating. I'm becoming more suspect of a small hole in my lower head gasket. It might be blowing back into the cylinder head causing my mixture to lean out, thus causing it to run hot. Sounds like there will be a blow by blow of how to replace most of the gaskets and seals in the engine this winter.
It seems the universe has finally righted itself. After a month of despair and misery, gainful employment has finally been secured. In case your not aware, Western North Carolina does not have the best job market in the world, so I'm pleased to find something reasonable that didn't require me to shave my beard or wear a uniform. Hopefully now things will begin to right themselves around here. I think financial disaster has been averted, but only through the fraying of Cat's nerves.
Obviously I haven't been doing a lot of the normal things I would fill my blog with, now that things are getting back to normal, some fishing and hiking will definitely be in order. It looks like we'll be having a good color this year. I hope, it makes for great photos and beautiful hikes.
Brookies should be spawning soon and since we had a little rain, the fishin should be pretty good. Temps have started to trend towards to more fall like, which is great, except when I'm riding into work when it's 45 in the morning. I am still on the motorcycle, but barely, I dropped it 3 weeks ago at 45mph and was luckily able to ride it home with both of us in one piece. Well, the bike actually had a few things just hanging on it. Total damage was taken care of for $15 an a little rigging. I limped away with two separated ribs and some road rash and miscellaneous bruises, but overall quite pleased at my condition. A guy who saw it was amazed that I got up and rode home 30 minutes later. Shows the wonders of wearing a full face helmet and leather!
Thanks to all who voiced support during these trying times, I appreciate it.
Sometimes life seems to get out of hand, at least for me that is. I'm having one of those moments right now and things are getting REALLY out of hand! Seems I pissed of the head ranger on my side of the Park, so I was shitcanned! Office politics has never been a specialty of mine, so navigating the minefield of what's probably the most political NP in the country was not something I was capable of. Obviously there's a little more to it than that, but I don't really want to get into it, I'm still livin it. It amazes me sometimes the stupidity of the things that I do without thinking out consequences or the effects on my life. This year has been a difficult one for Cat and I financially, so in my royal wisdom, I've now made a bad situation worse. It's almost like I have a demon that haunts me, waiting for success before he strikes. My mom used to comment that it was like I had some aversion to happiness, so I'd go and screw my life up every 6 months to a year.
Sadly, the effects of this are not felt by me me alone anymore, but also by my selfless, loving wife who has to put up with this crap because of me. An amazing woman no doubt, I don't think she really signed up for some of the stuff she's living with! But like the trooper she is, she just regroups and keeps on rollin. For this, I am eternally grateful. Will I be able to fix this situation before the whole thing folds up like a damn deck of cards? I don't know, but I'm sure as hell not going to sit around pissin about it. Life really sucks sometimes and it's not something I deal with particularly well when I know it's because of something I've done. But I do know that change is inevitable and sometimes drastic things are required to bring change around in our lives. One look at gas prices will show the proof of that.
Enough of all that depressing crap. It looks like we might actually get some rain this week. It would be nice to go fishin again. God knows I need to get on the water for a bit. On the up side, I've been goin out for more rides on the bike since I got new tires. Feels like a totally different machine. The new front tires make her quick and effortless leaning into turns at speed, I'm sure there wouldn't have been such a notable difference had the tire that was replaced had any trad left on it. My carbs are still being testy, the idle speeds variate constantly, so I think I'm going to take them off again for a total rebuild and then synchronization. They are probably out of sync and need a more thorough cleaning, so hopefully I can get around to that sometime soon. As usual, the task is made more difficult by some stripped screws that I need to get replaced once I can get them out. Cheap, but requires a special tool to remove the screws and ordering replacements online.
I'm going to attempt to build my own synchronizing tool out of some plastic tubing, 10wt oil, and a yard stick. I've heard good things about it all, so my hopes are high. At a $1.55 you can't beat the price and it's supposed to be more sensitive than other types of store bought gauges. Am I delving into some things I don't really comprehend, for sure. But hey, that's how I learn to do new things.
So things I've learned....
Keep you're mouth shut! It's hard to piss someone off if you never say anything.
Never under any circumstances ask if things can get worse. They can and they will!
Life goes on, things change. Get over it and deal with it.
Motorcycles are like boats, there is always something that needs to be done to them!
So I have finally recovered from the vile bug bestowed upon me by my best friends crotch fruit. 4-5 days of highly unpleasant expulsions, thank god it's over with now. It took a few days, but even my appetite has returned in full force. So what's been going on since then? Not a whole lot! The garden has taken a pretty big hit this week, I think it's been over 2 weeks since we've received any rain. Last week, my only concern was trying not to die, so the garden did not receive it's normal and required waterings, soooo... the garden is pretty well Shermanized. Oh well, I was thinking about tearing it all out to get it ready for a fall/winter cover crop to improve the soil. We'll see, the bike has been taking up a lot of time as of late.
This week on the way to work, she (the bike) started to die on me, on and off. I knew it had something to do with the fuel system, since the carbs sounded starved for fuel. My gas tank has some rust, which there is a fair amount of in the carbs, but this was a new problem and unexpected. I was off on Tuesday, so I tore the fuel system apart. I emptied and drained the tank so I could look at the petcock. Not suprisingly, it's in pretty bad shape, but I could tell it has been that way for awhile, so it should not be the cause of my headache. I checked the fuel lines, changed the fuel filter, and threw the tank back on all the while giving the carbs a dirty look. I've been hoping to avoid dealing with them yet, but it was looking more likely that they were coming off the bike soon.
I had to run into Asheville to get a new rear tire mounted. Sweet! Now I don't see visions of my rear tire exploding at high speeds, now it's only the front wheel! I returned home to remount the rear wheel and take her on an anticipated test ride with the new tire. I hopped on and took off down the road, only to have her start bogging down again and stall. I limped back home frustrated and hoping to find an easy fix online. All the while, I'm still giving my carbs dirty looks. No chance finding an easy fix, so in a moment of desperation, I tore the carbs off my bike and started taking them apart. Cat got to come home to me smeared in grime with a dual carb layed in front of me like a scattered deck of cards.
My only experience with carbs is screwing around with them on boats, lawnmowers, weedeaters and such. As stated before the are dual carbs, so they have to be calibrated. Needless to say, I was not very confident in my ability to do what I was about to attempt. I took most of it apart to clean the jets out and all the rust out of the bowls. After putting the jigsaw puzzle back together, it was time to get it on the bike and see if it worked or I totally screwed my carbs up. After a few attempts to get the carbs mounted in the boots with all appropriate wires attatched, I put the tank back on and it was time.
I turned the key on and hit the starter, as expected, it took a bit for the carbs to refuel and then she started. But she didn't sound right, I took her out for a quick spin and she ran like crap. I limped back home and restarted her in the driveway and revved to 8000 rpm and I think it cleared some crap out of a jet, because she purred at idle after that. I took her for another spin and she ran dreamy, but wanted to stall when I came to a stop and the rmp's dropped.
So, the bike runs great, sounds better than when I bought her, but my idle settings are all screwed up somehow. Sometimes it will die when I'm idling because of low rpm's, the next time I stop they'll shoot up to 2500rpm's at idle.I'm sure one of my cables got stretched out of whack or something. Hopefully I'll get a chance to look into it more tomorrow before work. Other than that, I'm having a great time on the bike. The new rear tire has improved my confidence and feels a whole lot more stable. I found a set of front forks on ebay for $15 I'm going to buy and try to rebuild this month. After putting those on and a new front tire, most of my issues with the bike will be resolved.
Believe or not, I have actually fished in the last week. I ran out to the Pigeon after frustrating myself on the bike in Tuesday. Fishing SUCKED!!! I was calf deep in areas that are normally thigh deep. I caught one fish on a wooley bugger. That was the only hit I had, the only fish I saw. I hate to say it, but I think I'm going to hang up the rods until we get some rain. It just isn't worth the stress in the fish and fishing has been mediocre at best for the last month. Since it has cooled down some, I'll probably start doing more day hikes to get ready for hiking season this winter. So there you have it, the past ten days of my life in a nutshell. Not real exciting by any means.
Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I was infected with a stomach virus by my best friends urchin. This has kicked the crap out of me, literally and figuratively. I woke up around 3am on Tuesday expelling liquids from multiple orifices and it has only let up a bit over the past 4 days. I felt better on Wednesday night and over did it trying to get something other than rice and toast into my body (the only things I can seem to keep down). I took half of Tuesday off and squelched out of today in hopes of defeating this.
Something has got to give. My house is trashed, my wife has gone to see her mom and pops in Michigan, so I'm playing bachelor this weekend. Hopefully Cat won't come home to a skeleton of me covered in poop and vomit! Actually, I do feel a bit better today, the constant feeling of nausea is passing, I just don't want to risk doing too much and starting the whole cycle over again. So, when you think things are not going the way you want this weekend and you think it couldn't get much worse, be glad you're not on the crapper trying to figure out which end it's going to violently come out of! Sorry if this all got too graphic, but I think we've all been there at some point.
I decided to get out and hit the water today since it was so nice out. It was supposed to get warm too, so a day wet wading a creek sounded good. I loaded Adicus since he had not been able to go on my last two trips and headed out to one of my favorite brown 
trout streams.After arriving at my destination, I strung up the new 2wt and headed down the road until I reached where i wanted to get in. A harrowing descent through loose rock and thick brush I finally arrived at stream side ready to catch some fish. The water level looked good and I began to cast to likely spots. The first five good lookin holes yielded nothing, not even a bump. While casting to another hole, I finally hooked up, unfortunately it was my thumb. A s
ize 14 yellow harey moose was embedded in my thumb. All right, this is starting out to be a stellar day! After a quick yank with the hemos, the fly was out and I was back on my way.
I started to randomly catch a few brownies in the 7-8" range, but nothing I would call consistent. I approached another nice hole and began to cast to only find th
at I was hung in a tree. I pulled the branch down, snagged my fly, and stepped off a rock to get back to where I could cast to another hole. As I'm false casting, I noticed Adicus starting to jump and yelp, I looked to my right and about 15 feet away in the tree I had just gotten my fly out of was a hornets nest the size of a basketball. And they were pissed and nailing the crap out of Adicus. I retreated rapidly while calling to Adicus, didn't need to, he was right behind me. I think he got hit 5 or 6 times before he got away and was quite irritated about the whole affair.
We rapidly proceeded upstream about 50 yards and got back to business. Things continued at 
about the same slow pace for the next hour, then it was like a light switch was flipped and I started catching fish out of almost every decent hole. I cast into the eddy next to a main run and hooked up with a double, a fish on both the dry and the dropper. Unfortunately, the larger of the two fish popped off as I was landing them, so I only got a photo of the 8 incher.A lot of 8"-9" fish were caught today and my largest was a fat 10" brownie that sucked down my dry fly.
Adicus and I fished bit longer than we had intended to, mostly because things started out so slow and then got so much better later. I stumbled into multiple patches of stinging nettle, luckily there was plenty of jewel weed around to take the bun out. Between the hornets, hooking myself, and nettle, I was beginning to wonder which one of us was going to get bit by a snake! But the day ended with no more disasters, j
ust a long walk back to the truck on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I played some fetch with Adicus while walking to the truck and just enjoyed being alive (and not been stung by hornets! Thanks Adicus!). While I'm typing this, Adicus is totally crashed out on his bed and I would like to believe very content about his day fishin
g with dad.
As planned, I took off from work early today so that I could run my newly built rod through her paces. After getting off, I strapped everything to the bike and took off up the road to Beech Flats, one of favorite places to hit on a day after work. A perfect place for a new 2wt to do her thing in style!
I had a pleasant ride up the road, it was rather warm out, so it made being on the bike very comfortable. I pulled into a large parking area about a mile above Kephart Prong and started to slowly get my things togeth
er. After stringing up my rod, it was time to head to the water. A scramble down a rocky slope and I was at the waters edge and ready to do some damage! My setup for the day was a 14 thunderhead with a 16 yellow harey moose as a dropper. Things didn't start off balls to the walls, but rather with me picking up the odd 6" rai
nbow here and there. Most pools were not yielding fish, only the deeper longer runs seemed to be holding, despite the fact that the water levels are really good for the time of the year.
I continued picking my way upstream hitting plunge pools and deep runs that looked promising. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful the streams in the park are and how easily solitude can be found in the Park despite the fact we're still in peak season. As I'm working my way upstream, I can hear vehicle traffic and occasionally catch the odor 
of burning brake pads as tourons eat their breaks up coming down 441 on their way to somewhere. Sadly, most of these people will never know the joy of catching a beautiful ruby gilled bow out of a sparkling pool surrounded by moss covered rock. What a shame.
The day continued on the same pace, I'd catch a few fish and then go 10 or more minutes before I would even get bumped again. To my surprise, I started to catch the occasional brown trout. Could it be possible, am I going to get a Smoky Slam on my new rod, that would be super sweet! Alas, it was not to be, the elusive brookie was not caught today. On the other hand, many bows and browns were caught, so all was not lost. I think I ended up with about a dozen fish caught and released today, although nothing of any size ended up on the line. My bi
ggest fish was probably 8", but most were 6"-7".
So how did the new rod do. Wonderful. It's actually a little softer than my other 2wt (I didn't think that was possible) and she cast more accurately than my previous rod. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic with my new toy! I'm already anticipating years of fishing memories with this stick. It was time for me to be get going, so I mozied up a steep hill to hit the road and was quite surprised to be able to see the bike despite having fished for about three hours. Not a usual thing for me to see after a day of fishing.
The day ended pleasantly with a nice ride home on the Parkway, enjoying the unusually clear evening that afforded great views on the way home.
If you've been following my blog, then you're aware of the horrendous death of my favorite rod and the unexpected replacement of it with a new 2wt rod building kit from my wife. Well, it's been over a week and I finally found the time to finish her. Excitement is already building, I'm taking half the day off tomorrow to fish one of my favorite streams in the park.
She's beautiful! A black 6'6" 2 piece 2 wt with silver accents on all the wrappings. I must say, even I am impressed with my first attempt at rod building. Although I was building it on an incredibly narrow budget, it was much easier to do than I thought it would be. Frankly, if I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have been building my own rods for years, and I didn't 
even have some items a lot of rod builders would consider crucial: a wrapping stand, a rod rotator, etc. The only money spent was on the rod kit ($55) and another $10 on misc. stuff like razorblades and denatured alcohol.
So, how did I do it? The first step was to find the spline of the blanks, I'm not really sure I found it right because of the rod being so small. There was a definitive spline, whether my guides were in the right side is another question. After that, I put on the grip along with the reel seat so I could mark them for mounting later. After these were marked, I then put the blanks together so I could begin marking for my guide placement. Now it was time to actually glue the cork to the blank. MUCH care was taken during this stage to make sure the end of the blank touches the reel seat cap when it's all put together. The base of the rod has to be glued to the reel seat to anchor it.
Since the cork was on, it was time to put the guides on. Initially, I taped them into place so that I could begin wrapping them. So, how did all this work without a rod wrapper? I used a cardboard box with notches cut into it to hold both blanks. To get tension on the wrapping thread, which is 
critical, I put the thread into a cup, ran it through 2-3 books, and then into the box through a hole in the bottom. Wrapping the guides was pretty easy despite using a box to hold everything. If time and patience is used, tight wraps can be had. I re-did at least 2 or 3 of the bindings because they looked crappy. 2 or 3 more popped loose during other stages of the build. After all the wraps were done, I began putting in the accent wraps.
The accent wraps almost made me crazy! When I would get one done, it would become unraveled while I would be working on another one. I truly thought I was going to loose my mind! After what seemed hours 
of putting on the accents, I finally finished them. At this point, I had to take a break from the project for a few days to do some other things and save my sanity. Once I had a night that not much was going on, I settled down to do the rod finish.
Without a rod wrapper, this required me to sit around for a couple of hours turning the rod a quarter turn every 5 or so minutes. I put on two moderately thin coats and I found that to be a sufficient buildup for such a small rod. I left the blanks with a matte finish, so I had to be very careful about were the finish went and to wipe it off immediately with denatured alcohol when it got somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. After all the wraps had dried and cured, the last thing that was left was to attach the reel seat. I used some epoxy I had lying around to glue it on with since I opted to put it on last to make the blanks easier to manipulate, and only one packet of rod glue came with the kit that was used days ago.
Once the seat was seated, I attached the seat base by gluing it to the end of the blank to anchor the whole rod. This part of it anchoring is REALLY important, I know this because mine was off just a bit. I eventually had to rig something together with a washer to lock the two pieces together. Lucky for me, it worked. I was actually looking at a small error that almost ruined the whole project, literally at the last stage. I could have died. As stated before, I was lucky enough to have a washer lying around that fit my need perfectly, so all is well.
So what would I have done differently? For my next rod, I'll be building a rod wrapper. Now that I understand the concept and have seen them for sale, I think I can build one fairly easily. I would have put more time and effort into the area that I wrote on the rod, about the only thing I'm unhappy with at this point. Kinda looks crappy in my opinion. The final test will be tomorrow when I can get her on the water. I have high hopes for her, she feels very similar to the other 2wt that cost me $125 for the stick. I like that kind of math, I saved something like $60. SWEET!
On an uplifting side note, I think I was able to repair my broken 2 wt. I had said before, some of the rod still fit together reasonably well, so I sanded down the rough edges and wrapped a new joint. It's possible that she might snap while I'm casting her or playing a nice fish, but I think she might get by because it's such a small rod. Plus I figured out a SAFE way to strap my 3ft rod tube to the bike. Super SWEET! So hopefully tomorrows update will have photos of the new rod starring next to some fat trout!
I fished from the motorcycle for the first time today. It took about 20 minutes to figure out how to get everything attached to the bike, but after that, off I went. Because of riding the bike today, my trusty sidekick Adicus would not be joining me this afternoon. I enjoyed a pleasant ride up above Canton for my destination for the day. After getting to my pull off, it took a bit longer than usual to get everything together and lock the bike up. After all that was done, down the road I went.
After walking about a half mile, I found a fairly convenient place to drop to the water, I tied on a EHC and a PT dropper and got down to business. Fishing started out slow and pretty much continued that way all afternoon. I only made contact with 4-5 fish all day, not good. The
good news was that the two fish I actually landed were rather chuncky, unfortunately, I lost another whale of a fish today. My first fish was caught out of the middle of a fast deep run. The brownie was sitting in the feeding lane right where he was supposed to be and slurped my caddis off of the surface as it passed over him. He put up a valiant fight, but was laid out for a photo in the end.
I continued
to move upstream, slipping around large boulders and climbing up frothy cascades, casting to any likely spots with no luck. I climbed over a large rock and saw a beautiful run hidden in deep shade with moss covering the bottom of the chute. I made a gentle cast to the tongue of the pool, as it swept past a rock and around a bend, a very large brownie sipped the caddis of the surface as pretty as can be. I tentatively set the hook and all hell broke loose. The surface turned into a explosion of whitewater and the tethered beast shot straight up in the air, throwing my caddis back at me as a sign of his victory. It was over that quick. Two seconds, maybe. Man that was a big fish. I reckon he might have gone for 17-18" and was fat.
I moved on, a bit saddened at missing yet another large fish, I came to a run that was almost a duplicate of the one I had just lost Mr. Big to. Excited. I got into a position to make a good cast and did just that. A nice brownie slashed at the caddis in a violent w
ay and the fight was on. This guy had a lot of fight in him. He kept tearing through the pool, trying to get under a rock to break me off or to pop loose. To my satisfaction, neither of these options came to be and I was taking photos of this beast within a minute.
After c
hllin for a few a bit after releasing another beautiful brown trout, I moved on upstream, acutely aware of not having my fishin buddy with me today. I probably fish with Adicus 75-80% of the time I spend on the water. I hadn't noticed until today how used to havin him with me I've gotten, and this was a stream I normally would have had him with me on. Unfortunately, I'm just not driving the truck much due to gas prices. The fishing pretty much died completely at this point. I don't think I even saw another fish for the next hour. Despite this, I continued to enjoy being out on the water.
It was a beautiful day to be on the water even if the fish didn't want to cooperate. I had a very nice ride home. I was nice and warm out, the sun was shining, and it was nice to just to be out and not doing yard work that should have been getting done.
Because of the rain this morning, I didn't get out to do any trout fishing. In light of limited time due to some other things going on today, I decided to take Adicus out to the river for some smallie action. To my dismay, there was someone already fishing my beat. Damn! Nobody but me fishes that section, I was sad to see someone there. I moved down the road a bit to hit my 2nd favorite section and was pleased to see no one was there.
After parking, I strung up my 5wt that I hadn't fished in ages. The setup for the day was a deerhair frog with a big olive bugger hanging underneath it. Adicus and I shuffled our way across shallow shoals and riffles to get to some of the larger pools and runs. The Pigeon is still running at less than half of its normal flows, so alot of my normal runs are too shallow to hold fish. The fishing started out slow missing some fish that took the bugger. Some time was also spent getting used to slinging something as big and heavy as a deer hair fly and bugger. On the plus side, I only hooked myself once today. A nice deep one in the elbow. Thankfully, the barb didn't get buried, but it still left a nice whole on my arm.
I finally started to catch a few smaller fish on the bugger, but nothing with any size yet. Moving upstream, I came across one of my favorite runs that usually holds a nic
e fish, if not 2 or 3. I cast near a large rock that swept the flies into a fairly deep run and the bugger was hammered by a respectable 14" smallie. Fight on! The dude put a nice bent into my noodley 5wt. After a few moments, he was brought to hand for a quick photo and release. I landed a few more fish, but nothing bigger than 11" inches.
We came up to another narrow deep run. After a cast that landed with a loud splat, the frog popper was destroyed by a very large bass. How big? I don't know, he popped off only seconds after taking the bug. GGrrrrr! Somewhat disappointed, we continued to fish on. After a few more small fish, another nice run was in front of me. I tossed the combo into the middle of the current and the bugger was immediately taken by a very nice 17" bass. This fish was NOT happy about being on the end of my line. He fought like a true champ. But alas, he ended up laying on the bank next to my rod getting his photo taken.
That was about the last fish that I tied into for the day. We weren't out that long, so I was pretty pleased with the 2 larger fish I caught. Quite a few fish were caught along with a few nice ones. The water is low, but the fish are active right now. Just a nice day to be on the water.
So, as stated in earlier posts the headlamp on my Honda CM400T is like riding down the road with a flashlight, and not a good one at that. 
Something had to be done, so I finally went down to WallyWorld and bought a set of cheap halogen driving lights for a quick fix until I can come up with something better. Car lights are not the best option, they have a tendency to vibrate themselves to death on a motorcycle, but for $17, it was a doable option.
I had been trying to decide which way to wire them, either directly in the headlamp or directly to the charging system. Despite being more work, I decided to wire them to the charging system in hopes of avoiding overloading the fuse for the headlamp. The first order of the project was to drill holes onto the headlamp mount to mount the lamps to. Extreme caution had to be taken to avoid drilling into the brake lines or other electrical wires. With that done, I mounted the headlamps into the holes that had just been drilled. Holy Crap! I think this is going to work!
With the lights installed, it was time to start on the wiring. This was not that difficult either. I started with running the individual grounds to the to the screws used for mounting the lights on the bolt side. After that, I disconnected the battery and connected the power wire to the charging system and ran it to the handlebars. I ran the connectors from the lights to the toggle switch on the bars, and then ran a another ground from the toggle switch to the back of the
other mount. Mounting the toggle switch was a little more interesting. I ended up getting creative with some zipties and came up with a solid solution.
At this time, everything was hooked up and it was time to give it a try. I turned the key and hesitantly flipped the toggle. VIOLA! LIGHT! 55 watts of clean halogen light spilled into the driveway, I leaned back in satisfaction. It was getting dark out so I decided I would finish it up in the morning since I was off. When I got around to finishing it the next morning, all that was left was splicing some wires to shorten them and then hide them, while locking the lights into position. This didn't take too long, so after a bit, it was time to take it for a test on the road.
I decided to run by and see Cat at work, a nice long trip on a beautiful day. It was a great ride and I felt more confident that I was much more visible to traffic. I'm excited about driving to work on Monday to see how well it does in the tunnels. Later that day, I decided to take her out for a night ride to see if the lights were vibrating or anything. Damn! These things are bright. My charging system is having a little difficulty keeping up with them. When I hit the brakes or a turn signal, they dim a little bit. Something to look into. Overall, I'm very happy with the outcome of this. Now I should be able to start fishing after work now that I feel moderately safe in the dark.
It only took about 3 hours to do this all together. The most difficult part was connecting everything between the forks and behind the headlight. I'm sure a hour could be shaved off if 
I had been a little more organized, lots of trips to the basement. So, if you got an old bike that doesn't give off much light and there are no real options to upgrade, try this out. How long will they work? Will it stress my battery? I have no idea the answers to these questions. I'm sure I will find the answers out though. All I do know is that I feel ALOT safer out on the road, and they even look pretty cool on hte bike. SWEET!
Seems I screwed up pretty big recently. Cat has been making cookies for work (for like three days), struggling a bit. Last night she had school, so I made myself breakfast for dinner. Yumm, a favorite thing in our house. In my pursuit of French Toast and eggs, I used the last of the eggs in the house. Mistake #1. Then in total stupidity, I forgot to write it on the "grocery" board, something relatively new to our house. Mistake #2.
After dinner, Cat announced she was going to go at the cookies again. OK, go for it! I had a mistake Adicus left us while at work (once again lives up to the name "Mudbutt"!). While cleaning up poop that was not mine to clean (another story for another day), Cat opens the fridge, looks at me and asks "where are the eggs?". Stupid me says " I ate em all last night". A brief glance at the grocery board that doesn't have eggs on it, and she announces she's going to the store and leaves without another word to me. From experience, I can tell you that it's not a good thing when Cat doesn't even tell me I'm in it deep. Plus, since it's late, she'll have to drive all the way to Canton, so she'll have plenty of time to stew over it. Frankly, I'm scared of whats in store for me when she returns.
In other news, I decided to drive the truck to work today. Weird. Seemed like I was going 10mph when I was going 50. I plan on riding the bike tomorrow since it's supposed to be nice out. I was also the victim of a random act of kindness today. While fiddling with the Honda trying to figure out how I'm going to mount some driving lights to supplement the headlight, my neighbour Mike and his wife walked up with an arm full of leather. Seeing that I was riding a bike everyday, he gave me an old jacket and chaps that he didn't use anymore. I didn't know what to say, graciously I accepted them. Dumbfounded at his generosity. I'm excited about not freezing in the morning anymore, maybe even avoiding being stung by bees and such, although I do like to ride without a jacket on warm days. Thanks Mike!
Tomorrow I will embark upon mounting a set of driving lights to my headlight mount. My current headlight has about as much power as a candle, something has to change or I'm going to die in a tunnel on the Parkway. No aftermarket halogen bulbs for my ancient ride, so modification is in order. This will be a quick fix until I can come up with something more permanent. The hook up shouldn't take too long, hopefully I can just tie them into my highbeam wiring. Might end up blowing my fuse. I might just hook it up directly to the power source, but I was trying to avoid mounting a toggle switch to the bike. I plan on photo documenting the whole thing, so everyone will get to see their first piece of the bike.
I was able to finish up the accent wraps on the rod tonight. Holy Cripes! Those things almost made me crazy! They kept coming unraveled, sometimes immediately, sometimes 20 minutes later. Grrrrrrr! Alas, it is done. All that is left is putting some script on it, rod finish, and mounting the handle. I have a three day weekend this week, so I'm hopin to break her in by Sunday, need to get the finish on tomorrow so it has time to cure. I've already been thinking of where I want to take her, gotta be somewhere good.
Back to the leather. I tried it all on and it's a bit large on me, but not too bad, definitely wearable. Although, I feel kinda weird wearing leather chaps. Who knows, maybe it will look badass on the bike. In general, I feel like I'm going to a Village People concert or something. I'm sure the benefits will outway the way I think I look, but even Cat mentioned how odd it was to see me in that much leather. I think she likes the bad boy thing! Although she's told me to shut up about the bike, but she does that about all my new toys!
And so it does. It's been a bit of a stressful, hectic, and tiring week. The motorcycle has been dominating most of my time and energy. I was able to start on the rod Cat bought me, but it will probably be this weekend before I'm able to put the finish on. I was able to get all the guides on and so far, only one wrap has come unraveled. Wasn't really that hard, definitely would have been easier than using something other than a box as a rod wrapper, hopefully that will come in the future sometime. All I have left to do is add the accent wraps, put finish on the wraps, glue in the seat, and she's set for a day on the water.
Some milestones have been bestowed upon me as far as the bike is concerned. My headlight burned out, so I've been in a maddening search for a part made for a motorcycle the same age as my wife. This was not the easiest thing to find, but alas, I was able to order one today. It's a shame that the light sucks so bad, now I'll be able to try and rig up a halogen light somehow. I had my first carb issue yesterday. Coming out of Wal-Mart, I saw a large pool of gas under the engine. A result of fuel pouring out of my overflow on my right carb. A condition caused by a float in the bowl of the carb getting stuck open somehow. Oh crap! I'm going to have to rebuild the carbs. I'm totally not prepared to do that yet. No manual, never worked on bike carbs, I was freakin!
I spent about 5 hours looking at alot of different things, trying to avoid the rebuild at all costs. I came across a few fixes that might unstick the float, so it would close again. The first was to start the engine and restrict the air flow to the carbs enough to almost stall it, and then let air return. This is supposed to increase the vacuum in the engine and pop free gunky valves and floats. Didn't work. Next solution was to start the engine with the petcock closed and run it until it almost stalls, and then turn on the fuel. The purpose of this was similar to the first fix and the results were similar ...... at first. Defeated, I went in to change for work and to run by Advanced Auto to get a can of Sea Foam. While riding, I decided to try fix #2 while the engine was under load. While riding, I shut off the petcock and ran her until she started to fade, then I switched the fuel back on. I did this two or three times, and wouldn't you know it, when I stopped at AA, the leaking had stopped, YEAH!!!! I still got a can of Sea Foam to run through the tank and the intake soon. This stuff is amazing, if you're having carb problems, try running this directly into the carbs while the engine is running. I used to do this all the time on my boats to keep the carbs from gumming up. I plan to do this as soon as I can. I planned on doing it tonight, but didn't get home til late tonight due to rain. These carbs will need to be rebuilt, but not today!
I had to ride home in the rain today. Not fun. On the plus side, I stopped at a hotel at Socco Gap, the first cover I could find, and ran into a nice guy from Kentucky that offered me a beer. We chatted for a while as it continued to rain, enjoying a refreshment and conversation. After a bit it quit raining, so I was on my way. I was moving at nice clip trying to avoid more rain I could see moving my way and had a friendly encounter with on of Maggie Valley's finest. Only a warning, thankfully. Along with all this, I almost got clipped by a turkey and I've been stung TWICE by something in the last 4 days that hurt like hell! Still, the bike rocks! So much fun, now that visions of death in every curve are easing.
Now if I can just get my ass back on the water! The garden hasn't been receiving the attention it deserves as of late either. Hopefully life will return to a normal rhythm sometime soon.
So life has been rolling along in our house like normal as of late. I've been too busy for a whole lot because the motorcycle has been sucking up alot of time. New toy, goes froom, froom, is fun! Fishing has definitely taken a back seat, that's OK, after the breaking of my 2wt, some luster was lost for a short period. Although, I do plan to get out and hit some smallies tomorrow if it doesn't rain. Gonna take the flyrod and commit to fishin it. I have a tendency to puss out and take a spin rod because it's easier in my opinion.
I've been having alot of fun on my new used motorcycle this week, and I've found that the stress of learning to ride it has taken alot out of me. It's alot of fun, but still requires ALOT of attention and concentration to make sure I don't die in some tourons home video of the Parkway. Some things I've learned this week: it's quite chilly here in the morning, I need chaps or something else windproof. Air temps have been around 50 in the morning and I hit 60 mph during one part of my drive, Brrrrrr! Full face helmets are the way to go. I probably wiped the carcasses of 40-50 bugs off of my helmet today, some of them large beetles. Uneven pavement SUCKS! I took hwy 19 home out of Cherokee yesterday and the road is covered with half ass patches that made the bike super unstable, scared the hell out of me. Get saddle bags, I have to figure out a way to strap crap to the bike. It sucks wearing a backpack all the time and I haven't even started fishin from it yet. Yet!
Most other things have been lost in the mix over the week. I got my rod on Monday, but haven't really even looked at it because of buying the bike on Tuesday. I have gotten most of the things I need and my hopes are to start on it tomorrow, if not finish it. Of course this will be mixed in with an afternoon nap, a little fishin, an maybe an afternoon ride, who knows? Whatever I do, it won't be alot of "productive" activity, but more of the leisure type. Sweet!!
So Cat and I are arguing about the use of the shower and bath in our household. Basically, I've been taking showers every morning for since she's known me. It's how I wake up and I look like someones been dragging me around by my hair in the morning. All of a sudden, she wants to start taking a bath every morning. The tub she uses drains the entire hot water heater, so I end up taking a warm to cool to cold shower on the days she takes baths in the morn. I'm a bit frustrated in the fact thast she won't COMPROMISE and take showers most mornings so it doesn't leave me in the cold. Her solution is for me to get up at 6 and take my shower so she can take a bath. I'm considering this, but.... I don't know. My problem is that I don't need to get up at 6, I usually get up at 6:45 or so. I go to bed around midnight, so that 45 minutes is pretty important to me. Who knows, I'm sure we'll argue about it and I'll end up getting up at six if I want a hot shower. That is of coarse if she gets up on time, which is another whole deminsion of the discussion.
Enough of that crap. More fishing and hiking posts to come soon. I'm gonna try to post some photos of the bike next week, if I can ever get off of it while it's light out. I'm gonna try to hike up to Chasteen Cascades off of Bradley Fork sometime this week and hopefully do some fishin after work this week too. Who knows what I'll actually end up doin.
Buy a motorcycle. I did, and it's smackey!. Cat and I had been trying to decide what to do about our rising expenses and we had been bouncing around the bike idea for a couple of months. Thanks to Uncle Sam and his rebate check, we decided to go ahead and do it. Now, a little background. I haven't ridden a motorcycle in about, I dunno, 20 years. Been a long time. Being about 12 at that time, I didn't ride on the road, so that's new to me.
Yesterday, I went out and got a hold of an Iwanna as early as I could drag my ass out of bed. When I got home, I flipped through the adds and only found 2 bikes that met my criteria: running, cheap, not a total turd. First one was sold, got ahold of the guy selling the second one. After chatting for a bit about it's condition, I decided it was worth the drive out to Pisgah Forest to check it out. Decided to take 276 out there and couldn't help but notice how dry both the upper Pigeon and Davidson River were. Scary! Not even August yet. Anyhow, I met up with the guy to check out the bike. It was sweet! A 1980 Honda cm400t with about 7000 miles on it, for $1000. No major problems, tires in good shape,.... The only problem is that it cold starts a little rough, takes about 5 minutes to warm up, after that, good to go. I think she only needs to be ridden some, if not, I plan to rebuild the carbs in a month or two.
Needless to say, I bought the bike on site. This necessitated another trip over Mnt Pisgah to pick it up and drop the money. After loading it into the bed of the truck, I took her home in anticipation of getting her on the road. Getting home, I next faced the issue of getting the bike off the truck alone, not fun! After all that, it was finally time to ride! As stated before, I haven't ridden a motorcycle on about 20 years, so I was a bit nervous. I cinched up my helmet and started her up. Instantly, a gentle purr sounded from the engine. I put her in gear, shifted into first, rolled the throtle a bit, and off we went. I screwed around in the driveway for a few minutes to make sure everything was working and that I remembered what I was doing.
Tentatively, I eased out onto the rural roads around my house to put her through the paces, in hopes of retuning home in one piece. Getting used to how 400lbs rolling down the road is taking a little of time. Slowly I am beginning to get more confident that I'm not going to die in a hideous crash and began to enjoy myself. I should have bought one of these years ago! What a blast, when you're going 45, it feels like you're going something like 90. I'm sure it will be more fun once a little more confidence comes, being as how I take the Parkway to work. Not alot of traffic, but tons of curves. Which decidedly made today's ride to work a bit intense! That's fine though, each time I go for a ride, I get a little more comfortable.
So far, I've averaged about 60mpg which is super, I was getting 22mpg on my Colorado. I can get about 115 miles out of a tank, I know this because I ran out of gas today. SWEET!!! Not really. Luckily it happened next to a pretty nice fella who happened to have a gallon of gas. One of my forks is leaking oil out of the boot, so some attention will need to be paid to that soon. Happens that this bike is supposed to be pretty easy to work on and parts for it are readily available. Seems like a good buy to me so far. Hopefully this catagory won't end up with me selling this as a scrap heap from a wheelchair! I'm trying to be super careful, although it is a bit distressing that Cat just upped my life insurance today.?!.
I'm happy to announce a new category because of my wonderful wife: Rodbuilding. Seeing how tore up I was about the loss of my favorite rod because of my stupidity and Adicus doing what he was taught to do, she surprised me with a 2wt rod kit. WOW!!! I couldn't believe it. I came in last night around 10 wanting to go to Wallyworld to get epoxy to attempt a repair on my rod. When she got all weird and kept asking me if I couldn't just wait a day or two to get it. I relented and pouted a bit. This was enough for her to breakdown and tell me that she had ordered a replacement rod that I would get to build. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded, speechless, caught completely off guard.
When my rod was broken, I was just going to try and repair it. Replacing it was not even an option in my mind, due to our current financial situation. Catherine knows how important my small stream fishing is and saw how devastated I was, and surprised me wonderfully. Now I'm excited about the adventure of building a my own rod. I've never done this before, so I'm sure it will be a challenge. I don't have a wrapper, rod support, or a motorized wheel, so I'm going to be doing some rigging and old school stuff. Basically rod building on a tight budget. If anyone has any tips or hints to keep me from screwing this up, please let me know. I'm sure this will be interesting, so I'll post photos while I'm tryin this whole thing out. Hopefully it will be the beginning of a new phase of my fly fishing addiction.
I was running early for work today, so I decided to head over to Mingo Falls since it has been
raining over the past few days and flows would be good. I was right, they were. Mingo can be a little difficult to find. It is off of Big Cove Rd. on the Cherokee reservation. It's past the KOA campground on the right near the Mingo Campground. The trail head is in a small parking lot across the river with stairs leading out of the lot.
Ah, the stairs. This is a short trail, only 2/10ths of a mile to the falls. In that short distance, there are 158 stairs. The good thing is that the trail is short, so even if you had to stop every few minutes, you'd still make it in under 20 minutes. After coming to the top of the stairs, the trail ambles along a little longer until you come to a footbridge that crosses the creek at the base of the falls. Mingo Falls is about 180 ft cascade, not a high volume fall, but impressive from the height. Water flow was good, so the falls looked full, they would definitely be affected during low water.
I snapped some photos and headed back down the trail. I wish there was more I could lend to this post, but the trail was pretty short. I was able to do the whole thing, including time spent at the falls, in under 15 minutes. So, I'll leave you with the photos.
Well, the time has finally come that we are pulling a substantial amount of veggies out of the garden. Zucchini and squash are flooding the kitchen, along with cabbage and cucumbers. We literally have a pile of the stuff on the counter from tonights harvest.
The onions are doing really well, I pulled a few of them tonite just because. Some of them are still growing, but most will be ready to harvest soon. I pulled a carrot out of unending curiosity and guess what, it looked like a carrot. Since it was orange, I decided to give it a taste and ii even tasted like a carrot. Hot Damn!!! Spinach went to crap, along with all the lettuce due to heat, most of it started to bolt, despite being bolt resistant. Marigolds and nostriums that we planted earlier are blooming in profusion throughout the garden. Mighty pretty if I might say so! Pulled out most of the broccoli, except the ones that were still putting off side shoots. And my two cucumber plants will probably take over most of the fallow lettuce rows.
Squash, ah squash. As seen from the photos, the squash and zucchini are growing just fine! 
One plant has started to collapse, so I need to keep an eye on it to make sure nothing weird going on. Bell peppers are starting to be harvested, the first green of the year came off the plant tonight, with more coming soon. The purple and yellow peppers are starting to bloom and set fruit. The tomatoes are seem to be going to total crap. I don't get it, they just start wilting, while the lower leaves turn yellow and then black. And it's rapidly spreading throughout the whole planting. Oh.... how I want a fresh BLT. Cat's herbs are doing well, along with a few sunflowers we planted. We're hoping to plant alot more next year.
My corn is doing well, much to my satisfaction. They could be doing better because light issues. I have 3 huge tulip poplars blocking my morning sun that will be disappearing this fall, before we put in the cover crop, hopefully. I say that because these trees are something like 5 ft in diameter, so I'm a little hesitant of dropping a tree that big, much less three. Luckily the house is nowhere near them, so there is at least that. I don't really know what I'm going to do with that much poplar, it's not that great of a wood for the wood stove.. So despite being in the throes of a tomato meltdown, the garden is still kickin right along. Pullin lots of weeds and makin lots of compost for next year. Hope fully the plans to put in a few raised beds will begin soon.
r gauges, so that kinda pushes me into checking the carbs first.
carburetors in hand!
t's time to open them up. I start with the bowls, seems logical and it will tell you what you can expect in the rest of the carb. A preview of this is seen when you drain your bowls before taking the carbs off. In my case, lots of particulate rust from a rusty gas tank and a crappy wire fuel filter. This is not a good thing to see. Before you start to spray everything with carb cleaner, remove all rubber pieces, carb cleaner will destroy them. Replace them if necessary, be careful with them if you're not! After cleaning out the bowls, start taking the jets out and looking for clogs and whatnot. It's not recommended that you stick wire through the jet holes, but in the case of heavy varnish, it might be necessary. I like to use the wire out of the center of a twisty tie. They're super thin, so there's no threat of damaging the needle. After checking the jets, throw them into a can to soak in cleaner, and continue to disassemble the body. Remove the floats and the float needle. Check the float and needle for defects.
then blow all the cleaner out with compressed air. The insides should be shiny clean!
