What did you do to/with your other motorcycle/scooter/trike today?

[dduelin]

What is the rim diameter on that scooter? I find the smaller it is, the harder it is to mount the tire. Mounting tires on the 10 inch Ruckus rims is a real challenge for me.

12"

 

[670cc]

12"

My wife’s former Reflex scooter had a 12 and a 13 inch rim. I did not enjoy changing the 12 inch tires.

 

[dduelin]

My wife’s former Reflex scooter had a 12 and a 13 inch rim. I did not enjoy changing the 12 inch tires.

I watched Mitch's Scooter Stuff video on changing tires by hand and went to work.

 

[WingMan71]

Got the rebuilt carbs reinstalled in the 1976 Honda CB400F I'm restoring. Hardly any available wiggle room to get these installed. A few tricks from the group online forum helped, and I only invented a few new cuss words!

 

[the Ferret]

Day 73 ... dang got down to 25 last night. I thought we were done with this cold crap. Anyhow waited until afternoon and it got up to 42 and sunny for today's 42-mile ride. Still can't get anywhere near the river..until maybe Thursday at best.

Guys walking down front street in town. River is normally at around 40 feet. This is at 60 feet.

Our town..the straight line between the buildings in the lower right corner is the main street thru town

 

[GIGreene]

You guys dealing with flooding have my sympathy. Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina got blasted last autumn by the remnants of hurricane Helene. Lots of water dumped into the mountains, and all those little streams, creeks, and rivers running between ridges became funneled torrents. Whole towns got washed away. Homes that were in a tiny flat spot between ridges were completely washed off their foundations. An amazing number of those folks are STILL living in tents. I don't know how anyone does that. I went to North Carolina from eastern Tennessee last week across I-40. Significant chunks of the interstate are gone. Repairs have begun, but it may very well take longer to repair those sections than it took for the original construction. Riding home across US70/US25 from Asheville NC towards eastern TN was sobering too. In places, the banks of the Nolichucky and the French Broad Rivers were scoured down to bare earth for hundreds of feet from the edge of where the river normally runs. But the towns that just disappeared...that's the staggering part.
A big part of the purpose of the Tennessee Valley Authority was flood control. Established in 1933, the TVA dams further downstream were able to hold much of the storm water from the above thanks to them being brought down to winter low levels. In one weekend of these storms, most of the dams went to above their normal high summer levels but filled with debris...trees, houses, bridges, and so forth all washed downstream. It's amazing to see the acres and acres so often of debris that have been fished out of the rivers and lakes so far. That'll likely continue for some time.
It made me wonder about an era when state and international boundaries were, and still are, defined by rivers. When those rivers move, as still happens, we now have other things to help define borders. But that's not always been the case. Just weird to think about.

 

[ljurgens]

Day 73 ... dang got down to 25 last night. I thought we were done with this cold crap. Anyhow waited until afternoon and it got up to 42 and sunny for today's 42-mile ride. Still can't get anywhere near the river..until maybe Thursday at best.

Guys walking down front street in town. River is normally at around 40 feet. This is at 60 feet.

Our town..the straight line between the buildings in the lower right corner is the main street thru town

Are you in New Richmond?

 

[dduelin]

Day 73 ... dang got down to 25 last night. I thought we were done with this cold crap. Anyhow waited until afternoon and it got up to 42 and sunny for today's 42-mile ride. Still can't get anywhere near the river..until maybe Thursday at best.

Guys walking down front street in town. River is normally at around 40 feet. This is at 60 feet.

Our town..the straight line between the buildings in the lower right corner is the main street thru town

 

[the Ferret]

Are you in New Richmond?

Yes. I don't live down in town thank goodness, but up on the hill above town on what is known as the first ridge back from the river. Since I have lived out here the town has flooded 3 times. 2025, 2018 and 1997. My son was in High School which is also up on the hill during the 97 flood. The flooding was worse then, than now, with the river cresting at 64 feet (vs 61 ft this year) and that year they moved the pharmacy, the Police Dept, and the Post office from down in town up into the gym and cafeteria in the High School.

It is amazing how resilient some of these folks are. Every 10 years or so their homes and businesses get flooded and once the flood waters recede, they clean up, rebuild and go on like it never happened....until the next time, and then they do it all over again. Of course some leave but most stay.

All along the river there are also campgrounds where people park their huge campers for the summer. When they get rains like this, they all scramble to move their campers out. Not all of them make it.

 

[670cc]

Yes. I don't live down in town thank goodness, but up on the hill above town on what is known as the first ridge back from the river. Since I have lived out here the town has flooded 3 times. 2025, 2018 and 1997. My son was in High School during the 97 flood which is also up on the hill. The flooding was worse then, than now, with the river cresting at 64 feet (vs 61 ft this year) and that year they moved the pharmacy, the Police Dept, and the Post office from down in town up into the gym and cafeteria in the High School.

I always wonder what people were thinking when the built a town right next to a river.

 

[ljurgens]

I always wonder what people were thinking when the built a town right next to a river.

I'm in the La Crosse WI area, which is directly on the Mighty Mississippi.
We have a bunch of small rivers and tributaries that all feed into the Might Mississippi right here in our area. They call it the 7 rivers region.
Many of these small tributaries flood each spring, and of course the Mississippi has flooded quite a few times over the years. Does not look like this year will be one, there was so little snow up North.

La Crosse has done a pretty good job of levee control and flood mitigation to the point where most of the city is no longer in the flood zone at all.
Some of the smaller communities around us have moved their city centers up the hills around their towns to get out of the flood zones.

We have so many hills and valleys (coulees) around here, the water does a lot of damage as it rushes through these valleys when it rains torrentially like we've seen in the Ohio/Kentucky/North Carolina areas this past year.

 

[dduelin]

I'm in the La Crosse WI area, which is directly on the Mighty Mississippi.
We have a bunch of small rivers and tributaries that all feed into the Might Mississippi right here in our area. They call it the 7 rivers region.
Many of these small tributaries flood each spring, and of course the Mississippi has flooded quite a few times over the years. Does not look like this year will be one, there was so little snow up North.

La Crosse has done a pretty good job of levee control and flood mitigation to the point where most of the city is no longer in the flood zone at all.
Some of the smaller communities around us have moved their city centers up the hills around their towns to get out of the flood zones.

We have so many hills and valleys (coulees) around here, the water does a lot of damage as it rushes through these valleys when it rains torrentially like we've seen in the Ohio/Kentucky/North Carolina areas this past year.

Undoubtedly irregular seasonal flooding has been offset by access to valuable resources of plentiful water and inland trade routes. My father’s family farmed “bottom land” near the Red River in Arkansas. It often flooded but was also very fertile with upriver soils that floods leave behind. The Mississippi Valley and other navigable inland waterways would not have flourished over time if spring floods did not occur.

 

[dduelin]

Yesterday and two days before I changed the tires on my 125cc scooter by hand. The front was first and it went easy. The rear tire yesterday kicked my butt. It should not have been but it was a lot stiffer and to make it more interesting one rim protector fell down inside the tire when the second bead slipped over and into place. With only one rim protector to use in my frustration I ended up taking some paint off the rim getting the other one out. Disappointed in myself.

 

[670cc]

Yesterday and two days before I changed the tires on my 125cc scooter by hand. The front was first and it went easy. The rear tire yesterday kicked my butt. It should not have been but it was a lot stiffer and to make it more interesting one rim protector fell down inside the tire when the second bead slipped over and into place. With only one rim protector to use in my frustration I ended up taking some paint off the rim getting the other one out. Disappointed in myself.

For me, doing tire changes with levers has always resulted in some scratched paint. It is frustrating. I try to do them all on the tire changing machine where nothing touches the rim but nylon, but it is difficult to master the manual tire lever method.

 

[dduelin]

For me, doing tire changes with levers has always resulted in some scratched paint. It is frustrating. I try to do them all on the tire changing machine where nothing touches the rim but nylon, but it is difficult to master the tire lever method.

Your machine will do 12” wheels?

 

[670cc]

Your machine will do 12” wheels?

It does now, after I modified it. In fact, I got frustrated after manually doing (fighting) three 10 inch Ruckus tires that now the machine is modified to clamp down 10 inch rims, which I used for the fourth Ruckus tire.

 

[dduelin]

It does now, after I modified it. In fact, I got frustrated after manually doing (fighting) three 10 inch Ruckus tires that now the machine is modified to clamp down 10 inch rims, which I used for the fourth Ruckus tire.

Good on you. My Cabo had knobby tires which I didn’t like and now with pure street tires the ride is better. I will touch up the rim with some black enamel to feel better about it. It’s not a show bike anyway.

 

[the Ferret]

" It’s not a show bike anyway."

You just described all my bikes lol. Tools, not toys.

 

[potter0o]

Yesterday and two days before I changed the tires on my 125cc scooter by hand. The front was first and it went easy. The rear tire yesterday kicked my butt. It should not have been but it was a lot stiffer and to make it more interesting one rim protector fell down inside the tire when the second bead slipped over and into place. With only one rim protector to use in my frustration I ended up taking some paint off the rim getting the other one out. Disappointed in myself.

I have bought some pex piping I am going to slit to use as a rim protector. I hoping that it makes me happy...we will see

 

[the Ferret]

Day 83....been a couple weeks since the naked CB had been out. Today the skies were blue, the sun was out, and it was 78 degrees (but very windy) so I took the CB out for a 50 miler and caught a pic for the CB forums monthly photo challenge of your bike with a Food Vendor Truck ..... in this case a Charlie's Taco truck spotted in the next town north of me.