Atlas Questions

I have but I doubt I could get it up under the guard, the touching is high up and towards the front so it's tight and pretty hidden in there. I am hoping I can find a fix that doesn't involve pannelbeating the exhaust I hope. I though also about ratchet straping the subframe to the swingarm but that would probably bend something.
 
Vince said:
It's just 2 of the smaller bags, reduced by I think law. Too many people were blowing out their backs with the old 40kg bags of product so they now have half that weight. The 2 local Bunnings don't have stock, but the one near Marty's place does, BTW that includes 3 road toles I need to pay to get there, access to the Northen Wahreingh Freeway ramp, 20 mitres of road with a separate tole, the same Freeway is another tole and The Lane Cove tunnel tole. That's probably close to $10 each way in toles. It's either that or well more than an hour and a half on toll-free roads each way.
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🤔 You could solve two issues at once.

Ride the Atlas to the hardware store, avoiding the tolls. Load the panniers with the gravel. Ride home and look for grunching marks.

Winner winner, chicken dinner
 
Good plan, except the panniers are at max load with 5 kgs, they already have 8 kgs in them each with 4/2 litre soft drink bottles filled with water. The new plan is to leave the bike in the shed with those panniers fitted and at max load and just put the 3/ 20kg bags of crushed granite stacked up on the rear rack and see if that goes close to bottoming the bike and I can see what's hitting the tyre. If that works then use that crushed granet into the deep wheel ruts grounding out the exhaust on the 3c hitting as I ride across the concrete gutter crossing. I still haven't decided what bike to ride on the next club trip to Rystone Pub. Might flip a coin.
 
It looks really hard. It's packaged really snugly. I could just get approximately 1/8th of a turn on the sag nut as both sides of the shock have a 50mm x 3mm vertical plate-type frame rail right next to the shock on both sides. it has typical rising rate links on the bottom. I haven't tried pulling the shock, it's not leaking and appears to be working okay. My only complaint was last weekend on those corrugated corners, it shimmied that badly it was hard to tell if it was tyre slip or the drive chain slipping. It would just hop slightly up and down instead of driving forward. It's just typical late 1980s suspension so I really didn't expect it to be brilliant on bad braking bumps. I am just not comfortable with THAT SUSPENTION NOISE especially not knowing what's causing it. Other than that and its really high seat height and a bit of buffering and wind sound I could live with the way it is now really easily. It's fun thinking of simple fixes though.
 
I noticed something the other day when I was adding the masking tape to the possible bits under the rear guard that might be touching the tyre and didn't think anything of it at the time. The square protrusion jutting out of the rear guard in front of the tyre had a segmented flange surrounding it that looked like it was riveted on. I just thought it was the rear of the plastic airbox. It was pretty hard to see being the same colour as everything else there. Tonight I was thinking segmented flange, why would it have that, and then it struck me, I bet my left ball its metal. I bet it's aluminium armour placed over the plastic airbox to protect it from the tyre. Why else would it be made that way? I bet the factory discovered that with standard gearing and chain length having the wheel where mine is now it would hit the airbox on full compression so they added protection, it's way too well made to be added by some previous owner. The big question is that happening at shock bottoming or am I losing shock travel? I will actually measure full travel tomorrow, the owner's manual says 200mm, we will see. This is all guesswork but it makes sense.
 
Now confirmed, I am 95% sure the tyre is hitting the lower right corner of that steel not aluminium armor covering that proturion of the airbox past the rear mudguard. I loaded 3 bags of Crushed Granet onto the seat with the bike on its sidestand and the only thing close to the tyre was that airbox cover, it was appox a finger thickness clear. The bike was close to tipping over so I couldn't get a good look, it got a good bounce so it must have got close or even touched. That's the 5% I am not sure about. I also couldn't see if the rear shock was bottoming either. What I could measure was how much rear suspension travel it got to using that sag metre gadget and that showed a disappointing 110mm instead of the 200mm listed in the owner's manual. Now I also don't know if there is more shock travel available that's now blocked by hitting that armor over the airbox. The tyre is well forward in its adjuster slots on the swingarm, so that means the rear wheel could move back and away from touching that armour with another rear chain link added. That's entirely possible, if I do that then new front and rear sprockets will also happen. BTW if 110mm of travel is all it's got then where I set the sag is well WRONG at the moment. Instead of 74mm, where it is now it should be 37mm. Nice bit of schooling on a very hot Sunday morning.
 
If you move the rear wheel backwards, does it improve the clearance between the tyre and the protrusion? I realise that will increase the tension on the chain, and depends on how much of the chain adjustment is already in use, so may not be possible.

cheers,

bazzee
 
The chain is now adjusted correctly but that required moving the wheel forward to where it is now exacerbating its contact with that armour. Moving the wheel back has the chain going tight and that restricts the suspension travel and puts insane pressure on the countershaft bearing. That REALLY BAD. It needs a longer chain to move the wheel back and still maintain correct chain tension. BTW moving the wheel back also obviously lengthens the wheelbase and that slows the bike's steering and moves weight rearward putting more weight on the rear wheel and less on the front wheel completely changing the way the bike will feel and handle. This might be a dramatic change or it might not, I also don't know if that will be a good thing or a bad thing. I guess I will find out soon enough. I am hoping the adjustment slots in the swingarm end will be long enough to handle a chain with one more link in it or if one link is even possible, sometimes it's a link and a half I think. I don't do this often enough to know so I am not sure about that either. Just as a general principle I prefer bikes to have a shorter wheelbase but not in this specific case. Another bit of info is this contact might be worse with a more aggressive rear tyre, the one I have is a 20% off-road and 80% road tyre with smaller knobs. It's the standard size for this bike being a 130.
 
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This really needs fixing before I do any more riding. It has the potential to blow a tyre or having it have a rock-solid bum stop can suddenly destabilise the tyre and put you on your arse real quick.
 
Ever get the feeling you're banging your head against a brick wall? I did some head-banging today trying to find a Moto Guzzi Falcone rear sprocket and maybe there available in Europe but zero chance in Oz BUT it doesn't matter as I also had a look at the chain adjuster slots on the swingarm and there is zero chance the wheel can come back enough by adding another link so the tyre clears that protusion. So I thought I would try looking for a rear tyre with less of a profile to miss that protrusion under the rear guard and nope, no one makes a 130 or 140 rear even small-size nobbs in less than an 80 aspect. You can get 70 and even 60 aspect tyres in 150s but they won't fit because of the huge muffler. So the only option left is to maybe remove that steel protection plate and maybe pannel beat it into a shape that clears the tyre. One odd thing is I cannot find this issue mentioned anywhere else. Is my bike the only Atlas where this tyre contact happens? I have seen reports where people have lowered their Atlas quite a lot and that would result in much easier contact happening just like when I load mine to the max, it hits really easily. I will try and get a picture of it.
 
The shiny bit on the right bottom corner is where the tyre is rubbing. It looks to be blocking 30mm of wheel travel, which added up to 140mm in total. Way less than the manual quotes at 200mm. If that's correct, in the real world instead of in the manual then I now have the shock preload and therefore seat height way too high. Thats also odd as every quoted seat height I have read is pretty close to where mine is now at 900mm. That means it could come down maybe 30mm or a bit more. That would help it be more user-friendly and still optimise its shorter rear wheel travel for sure. Be great to remove that grouching sound and eventual tyre damage as well.
 
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Yes, it's tidier than you might think, it's scribed to the curve of the guard. But I just noticed the cutting of the guard to fit it is a bit of a hack around, It will be interesting to see
a/ If it's a standard part
b/ To see what it's covering.
It might cover either the plastic airbox or the new Mark 3 exhaust which is very different to the one it came with, Mark 2 was standard. I am hoping it will come off without pulling the rear wheel or ABSOLUTELY not touching the exhaust. Motorcycle archeology.
 
Their Philips Head self-tapers I guess going into the plastic mudguard and I will be replacing them with Stainless self-taper Screws. I am really curious as to what's under it. I hope I can reduce it so it's closer to flush, busting to see.
 
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There is something else in that general versatility that I just thought of, the battery tray holding its oversized battery. Maybe someone extended it rearward beyond the rear guard at some point. That battery is bigger than standard and really tight where it is.
 
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