How to throttle a throttle

I've said it before and I say it again, I am a speed addict. Typing my last post, I got a brainwave of limiting my throttle, in order to keep my speed under control. It's a kind of crude speed limiter, but effective, none the less. What I have basically done is that I've limited the amount that I can twist my accelerator, which is kind of like fixing a wedge under the accelerator pedal of your car, except this is not quite visible. Okay, so here's what I did :-


Remember the carburettor??? The one I had opened up in one my previous posts?

Well get it off. (Instructions in previous post, if you are new at it)


Now unscrew the top, the part where the accelerator cable goes in.

Take an small piece of plastic tube or something else that's rigid, and about an inch and a half or two long. I chopped off the back end of an old pen refill. Though I would have preferred to have used a long screw, filed off its thread, and sawed off it's head. That would have been a better thing to put inside a carb, but since the carb isn't supposed to heat up, I used the refill. Edit: The top of the carb is in fact really cold, especially during the rains. Also another thing you could put in here is one of those round PVC conduits, if you can get your hands on a small piece of it.


Now place the chopped off piece of the refill (or whatever you are using to restrict the movement) inside the spring.


Carefully put back the carb, making sure everything goes back in smoothly. Don't try to force anything in. If you are new at opening your carb, It'd be better if you went through how to open a carb explained in this older post.

Once you close your carb, you can check out how much you are restricting the bike by checking the amount you are restricting the air flow. The fuel being used is proportional to the air being allowed. This image shows the position during idling.


And this is the position with the full throttle, after adding the restrictor. Notice I have set my bike to run at 50% power (IMO that's 25% too much). Once again, you can see how much the full throttle opens up on 100% on my previous post. If the accelerater doesn't turn at all, the restrictor used it too large. If it opens up more than 50%, or the amount you want to limit it, it's too small.
Put the carb back onto the bike and you have got yourself a speed limiter. I have done extensive testing on my bike and have even had a fall in the process. At 50% restriction, the bike is still quite peppy with a solo rider, but a bit sluggish with a pillion. The initial pickup is compromised, and starting up an incline with a pillion could require more effort. The top speed attained on straight piece of road was 95km/hr (though it took really long to attain, I'd rate the crusing speed to be 75-80). Mind you my bike levels out at a 100-110 otherwise. With a pillion, the top speed drops to 85km/hr (Crusing speed of 60). Top speed with the pillion otherwise is the same, 100-110. Inclines with a pillion may require an upshift. I couldn't find a perfect dry road for the burnouts, since it has been raining. The only dry piece of land I found and the burnout left my bike 6 inchs below the ground level, which required me to take my weight off the bike to get it out. The gearwise speeds are as follows

Gear      Top speed unrestricted     Top speed restricted
1st                 45                        40
2nd                 65                        60
3rd                 90                        75
4th                110                        95

I had tuned my bike to perform, so it is doing really well despite being restricted. You get used to the amount of power you have and eventually you start shifting gears better and you forget that you have limited your accelerator. All in all, I am quite satisfied with the restriction. I will be adding the average if n when I calculate it. My bike currently has a fuel economy of 22-25 kmpl.

The longest skid

I just love riding my bike, and I do occasionally like to screech my tyres, but I respect the rubber. The other day, I was a little wound up, n there is nothing like riding to loosen yourself. Riding down an empty road, all of a sudden, this car comes out of a side lane, spots me, n brakes right in the middle of the road. 80... 70... crap... I'm gonna crash... screeeeeeeech... I don't wanna crash... 60... 50... move lady... move outta my way... screeeeeech... 40... 30... okay, I am gonna survive if I crash at this speed... screeeeeeeech... 20... 10... I'm gonna make it... sreeeech... 0 KM/Hr Ah I finally stopped. And guess what, I had a smile on my face when my bike finally came to a stop. The lady in the car who had turned white, must have thought I was crazy, but I had always wanted to do a 100 to 0 with the rear wheel locked, but my respect for the rubber intervened. This entire episode lasted for atleast 4-5 seconds, since my tyre started screeching. All this lady did was stare at me. I am not trying to be a chauvinist, but I hate lady drivers (at least all the confused ones). (To prove that I am no chauvinist I would also like to add - apart from them, there are cab drivers, and bus drivers too on my hate on the road list. And if I am driving (rather than riding) guys like me (when I'm on a bike) also fall into my hate-list.) Luckily my tyres were set up for the rains (low on air pressure=more grip), and I stopped a meter from her car. I wonder why people freeze, like deer caught in a pair of headlights, and I don't mean just on the road. I for one have this thing where I freeze during orals, interviews, and whenever I am in the limelight. In fact I choke quite a lot. Each time I need to think up something, my brain freezes, my face turn red, and I can't recollect even the most basic of things. Reminds me of Marshall Mathers (Eminem) from 8 Mile, where he is referred to as a Choke artist. Coming back to bikes, I also did my first wheelie the other day. Actually it was a handful of hops. This friend of mine (actually the kid brother of a friend of mine, lets call him The Chimp) clung to me when I was on my friend's bike, insisting on getting on a ride. But my friend (whom the bike belonged to) n I were leaving, so in order to get the chimp off I threatened him with a wheelie, n when he still didn't get off, I gave the bike a little gas n popped the clutch, hoping that the sudden acceleration followed by intense breaking would scare him off. Turned out I had underestimated the bike (which was a pulsar 200) n up went the front wheel. I asked the chimp if he wanted to get off the bike, n he refused. That is when I did a series of hops, kinda like Dr Dre's souped up low rider (hopping on hydraulics of course) from that video of him n Snoop Dogg, Still Dre. Man, I used to love hip hop, but now my choice of music has changed a lot. I am more into the blues these days. The blues do me good, especially while riding, keeps me slow. I am seriously considering putting a throttle limiter on my bike. I can easily do 80kmph without opening more than 25% of the throttle. Opening it any more and it's just guzzling fuel. Though in my case I keep it at either full or no throttle.

Memory memory everywhere, too many things to share

As I had mentioned in my previous post, I recently got back a lot of my old stuff and I am deluged in nostalgia. It's good to have your old stuff back, brings back memories from the good ol' days, but it is then that you realize that most of this stuff is there just because of it's sentimental value. I mean I was doing fine without any of it, but now that I have it, I am just not able to convince myself to dispose it off. All it has done is clutter my room. What is one supposed to do with stuff like this. They should have places called memory banks, where you can store all you priceless possessions, and go have a look at em whenever you feel like seeing them. That way, you'd have someone else taking care of your junk for you. Though I'm not so sure if it should be called junk in the first place. Right now I am staring a my glo-friend which someone gifted me when I was 9 months old. It still glows in the dark. I used to place it under my pillow each night before sleeping. It's totally insane that I remember so much about where each and everything in my house came form. Sometimes I wonder if people are supposed to remember so much. Remembering eventful things is fine, but how is remember things which have no consequences whatsoever justified? Anyway, coming to the other memeory thing, my system now has more memory too, a lot more memory. I managed to knock off a couple of items off my list of desirable objects. I've added a 250GB hdd for taking care of my hoarding needs. And then I added a GB of RAM too. Apparently, Vista is still not as fast as XP was. It still takes ages to install software on it, or even doing stuff like enabling and disabling the LAN. And because of my tweaking skills, the memory usage which used to hover around 450mb earlier, now is at 650mb. What a waste, adding a GB and utilizing a mere 200mb of it Though the memory thing has helped me get started with the whole Linux things (More hdd space => more place for installing systems). My Linux blog is now alive. There are a lot more things I'd like to blabber about, but I this would have to suffice for now. I feel really sleepy all of a sudden. But do visit my Linux Blog, that's an order. Oh! n it's from a seperate ID, so you wouldn't be able to go there from my profile.

A trip down memory lane

My parents recently were cleaning up my room in our abandoned house and they stumbled upon some of my old stuff that they thought I would like to keep, and brought it along. Amongst it was this yellowing piece of paper with a few lines printed on it, that I wrote for the school magazine, as a conclusion to our class poem (Most of which too was penned down by me). Oh n please don't try to imagine me as one of those really creative people, I wrote the poem, only because there was simply no one else to write the poem. It's is probably one of the first thing I had ever written, and I can think of a million ways to improve it now. Anyway, here's the crappy poem that I could not even claim credit for.

Bon Voyage

Today's the day, we must all be on our way;
And to god must we pray, that from our path may we never sway;
Today our class is as weak as glass, and will soon be shattered away;
Poetic sound that I may, is just because of my dismay;

Shed not a tear, for the task ahead is shear;
And may be too much to bear, but a smile you must always wear;
For our friendship do not fear, we shall surely meet some year;

And why should I lie, to bid you goodbye;
Is though oh my! and may our friendship never die;

Adiós amigos!

By -Wolfestine