Classic Yamaha Rally in NC

[TopCatGr58]

Well, I was waiting to see if Rob Reil was going to post a message, but after meeting him and learning how busy he is with emails, it's no wonder he hasn't had the time.

This rally was supposed to be a classic Yamaha rally for folks in the Ga. area, inviting all makes, not just XS's, ie. 650 twins, 750- 850 triples and the like. A great number of XSives showed up for it. Gary "66" Granger(Bandit) and Bruce Gerkin came down from NY and PA; Ken Krieger and Chris Phillips and myself made up the "Special" east Va. group; I believe it was Paul Johnson from Ohio with his SWMBO; Brent Hoovestol from Buford on his XS instead of his Road King with Rob Haller; and several others who's names escape me right now.

I've never ridden so many twisty roads in one day in my life!! The 'hills' of NC are just loaded with them. Many of us gained plenty of "countersteering" experience during this fun trip. All riders survived the encounter, no one went down or over. A few cruise foot pegs, crash bars-engine guards, and megaphone muffler(mine) got a few scrapes from some Xsive turning angles but that just provided more topics for after ride discussions!!

I will be converting, editting, and hopefully creating a CD with MPG video of the rally for those in attendance as soon as I can. I'll edit a little clip to post a link to in a follow up to this message soon, so you can see the view from the "Godzilla-Cam" !!

Okay, that's it for now, gotta get up, tired of sitting for now!!!!!!!

[TopCatGr58]

Video Link

Okay, here's the link to the short video clip I promised. It's a low quality WMV file, about 1.9 mb in size, 1.5 minutes in length.

If you pay attention, you can tell that in the beginning we were moving faster than Bug 1.0 on the straight away!!

The final compilation will be in a much better quality and size format on the CD. Hope you enjoy it?

North Carolina Rally Video Clip

[Ken Talbot]

Tell me that's not a giant white rabbit on the other side of the road on that curve at the 42 second mark!

[TopCatGr58]

White Rabbit

Originally posted by Ken Talbot
Tell me that's not a giant white rabbit on the other side of the road on that curve at the 42 second mark!

No, Ken, it's not,(just junk) but we did come across a few horses, one in particular that was amusing, came around this tight turn, and it was standing against a fence, just eyeballing us as we rode thru, didn't expect to see it, a little surprising.

Well, for the participants of the rally, I have a little problem. I just converted all of the video tape to MPG format, 320x240, not postage stamp size, not full screen, tried to use a high enough Megabit capture rate to get decent quality imagery that will look okay if you zoom to 200% viewing size. Problem is......I've got 850 mb of video to fit onto a 700mb CD-rom!

I opted for this format instead of making VIDEO tapes that are much more costly and time consuming to prepare, package and mail out. So.....I regret that I will be editting out about 10 minutes of some of our rides....the more boring sections....I didn't capture all of our rides anyways, mainly the beginning ones when we were all together, then regrettably only 1 bit of the "Faster" paced rides we took after lunch. The "Bumpy"Dirt road.... you all remember that one, caused the camera to actually fall off of it's mount, and so I ended up packing it away for the remainder of the ride that day!!

But, I think I've got some fun shots that will be enjoyable to view and show to friends and family. My plan is to provide this video at NO CHARGE to the participants since Cd's are pennies a piece and only about a buck or less for postage.....just my way of saying thanks to Rob Reil for hosting it, and to all of the other Xsives, 650, 750, 850, and 1100's that joined in a fun weekend's getogether.

I'll be posting another message requesting mailing addresses from the dirty dozen(self excluded only from count!) when I have finalized the compilation. Later......!

[TopCatGr58]

Video Now Available

Dear NC Rally attendees,
The Video compilation on CD is now available. I have already gotten the addresses for Gary Granger, Bruce Gerken, Rob Reil, and maybe Brent Hoovestol if he hasn't moved from Buford Ga, but in the tape he states he's from Lilburn, so contact me if you have changed since the XSEast ride.

I'll try to send Emails/PM's to the others, but if you/they read this just drop me a line if you want a copy.

[deo]

What kind of camera were you using? It looks like it was a helmit mount of some sort.
deo

[TopCatGr58]

Godzilla-Cam

Hey there Deo,

It was a Sharp box style camCorder, took some foam rubber, cut out a slot for it, and used bungy cords to fasten it on top of the headlight against the instrument cluster, that way it turned with the handlebars, still had a bit too much vibration at times, will need to figure out a better dampening effect, I actually used 2 bungies, and that may have actually contributed to the increased vibration being held so firmly against the headlight and instrument cluster, probably received harmonics from frame,engine, road!?

Swmbo got sick and couldn't attend, she was supposed to be holding it, had to figure out something quick! May try an idea suggested by Rob Reil, get some sort of bracket that I can bolt to the bars-triple tree-forks that has the screw that fits into the tripod screw mount on the bottom of the camera, but again, if it's hard mounted, will be difficult to isolate it from vibration!?!? Will look in to it later, thanks for asking.

PS, whereabouts in Virginia are you, I'm in Portsmouth, eastern edge of state!

[deo]

I am in Locust Grove, which is inbetween Culpepper and Fredericksburg, you know that place that they use for target practice.

The camera set up sounds complicated. What kind of camera, DV, HI 8, SVHS. I guess I am just curious cause I do a bunch of video recording and editing.

Ride away, man.

I'll be in tidewater in November, VA Beach, going fishing out at the bridge.

deo

[TopCatGr58]

Originally posted by deo
The camera set up sounds complicated. What kind of camera, DV, HI 8, SVHS. I guess I am just curious cause I do a bunch of video recording and editing.

Ride away, man.

I'll be in tidewater in November, VA Beach, going fishing out at the bridge.

deo

What's complicated about a pair of bungy cords??? Seriously, yeah, the hard mount will be a challenge, will take some pic when I finally get it worked out!

The camera was an analog HI-8, I've got an ATI 32MB All-n-wonder card that I used to import/capture/convert to MPG, and then used ULead Video Studio 5.0 to tidy it up a bit, add titles, transitions, background music, and such, it was fun.....for a hobby activity.

Good luck fishing, not my sport.

[TopCatGr58]

NC Rally Video CD in the mail!!

Dear NC Rally attendees,
The video CD is finally in the mail. Sorry for the extra day delay, but I had to assist(read mostly do) a clutch and pressure plate replacement on my nephew's '92 Saturn SL2, and to start my Saturday off right, I was awakened by a policeman knocking on my front door at 5:30am, got dressed and he politely showed me my 2 streetside tires that had been maliciously attacked by some day late Halloween tricksters and had been SLASHED!!!! They hit some 17 cars in the neighborhood, one fellow's truck had 3 tires and he was parked in his driveway, I was on the street. Some had two cars in same driveway slashed.
Needless to say, this caused a modest setback in my overall plans to work on that clutch. Secondly, the manual said that unlike most vehicles where you drop/pull the trans away from the engine to replace the clutch plate, this vehicle was designed to be worked on by PULLING the engine!! Well, BS on that, but I did have to pull half of the inside of the engine compartment to get at all of the bell housing bolts, pulling the left wheel, the axle off of the rack/pinion steering and tie end rod so that the transaxle shaft could be pulled, the battery and intake mounting cases, drain the radiator to remove the upper hose, multitude of other electrical connections, etc. Then found the trans/engine mount broken, had to get it replaced. Then bunged up the left transaxle seal getting the axle out, had to replace the seal.
The worst was the slave piston for the hydraulic clutch, the piston rod got diverted out of the slot it was supposed to be in to make the clutch lever work to release the clutch, didn't realize what was wrong, tried bleeding the system, the Manual stated that it was a factory sealed system, bleeder was only for factory filling. If defective, whole unit was to be replaced!! Went to a local shop, they looked up the system on there "All Data" Cd rom references, it told me how to remove the slave cylinder from the bell housing, once I did, I found the misdirected piston, got it in the right place, and ALL WAS WELL IN MY WORLD!!!! Got it all back together in time for my nephew to make the 3.5 hour return trip from Va. to Md late Sunday PM so that he could go to work on Monday!

So.....that's why the CD's didn't go out till late tonight!!!

Exhausted........T.C.

PS. Still haven't received address from Paul Johnson in Cinc., Ohio, have tried to send him Emails from Yahoo group x2, no response, if anyone knows him and knows how to contact him, please let him know to contact me so I can send him his CD!?!?!?

[saboliz]

Paul Johnson

Dear Top Cat,

If you want to reach Paul e-mail him at tupperj@juno.com

It was great meeting you in N.C.

Liz

[sixtysix]

Got my video and watched it last night. Cool it was just like being there again. Thanks TC!!

[Robert Haller]

The CD is awesome! Thanks again for all your effort. I nominate you to be the official XS videographer.