Passes & Canyons Blog

It appears I may yet need to get my carbs cleaned on the Concours.

The weather Monday was fabulous, high in the mid 70s, so I had to ride despite a considerable breeze. Besides, I had been wanting to get back out on the Concours to see if it really was that simple to get it running well again, i.e., just pour some carb cleaner in the gas tank.

It wasn’t. Yes, the bike fired up and ran well but it struggled as I tried to ride away, though not as much as before. And this time by the time I’d gone two blocks it was running pretty much OK. So that’s definitely better. On the other hand, while I was out it stalled three times when I came to stops.

In addition to that, when I would pull away from a stop I had to rev it a bit to get the rpm up so it wouldn’t stall out of me. That kind of hesitation can be dangerous, such as when you’re waiting for an opening in traffic to pull out, you get your opening, and you start to go but the bike falters and you’re suddenly looking at a car coming your way in a hurry. I don’t like that feeling.

So I may end up needing to call Joel to come take care of it but there is another option I want to explore. Roy is always billing himself as a top mechanic and while I have doubts that he’s as good as he claims, I figure he may well be fully qualified to clean some carbs. I wouldn’t hesitate to do it myself if I knew how; if he’s willing to help me do it I should hopefully learn how so next time I can just do it myself.

In the meantime, I’m going to fill the gas tank and put in more carb cleaner and at least give that a chance to do the job. Hey, it helped a lot the first time. Maybe a second time really will be the trick. But I’m not holding my breath.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: Motorcycles don’t care about how many other motorcycles you have.

The RMMRC rode up to Bruce’s in Severance a few weeks ago and while there we got in a conversation with our waitress.

It turns out she and her guy ride motorcycles and they were planning a trip in a couple weeks, going to Florida to visit family. While there they planned to rent a bike and cruise over to Daytona for Daytona Bike Week. But, oh man, the regular rental places were in full mercenary mode.

In addition to the usual high price of about $175 a day, they wanted more because it was Bike Week and they knew they could get it. As in an extra $500. It was kind of like when I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We got there a week before the official start to the event and ate every morning inexpensively at this particular restaurant. One morning we showed up and there was a new menu with all the same items but double the price. We asked why and the waitress told us, “Oh, that’s our carnival menu.”

No surprise then that these folks were not inclined to pay that much. She’s working in a restaurant in Severance, for Pete’s sake, they’re not wealthy. But they found an alternative: Riders Share.

I’ve written recently about Riders Share but I have never used the service or known anyone who has. But there she was. And presumably it worked out well for them. They had some nice cruiser bike lined up and as I recall it was going to cost them just around $100 a day for five days, with insurance included. You can’t beat that with a stick.

I’ve always found this concept interesting and seductive. I have three motorcycles. Why not make a little extra cash by renting them out on occasion? But that’s where you get into issues.

For instance, I have a 1980 Honda CB750 Custom. It’s an old bike, and not worth a whole lot. But hey! It’s the first motorcycle I ever bought. It was a dream come true, and I still love that bike. Sure, insurance would cover the financial loss if something happened to it but this bike is irreplaceable. It has so much emotion tied up in it. Exactly how horrible would I feel if someone else smashed it beyond redemption?

Well, what about my 1999 Kawasaki Concours? I don’t have the emotional attachment to this bike that I do with the Honda. And from time to time I have seen basically identical bikes in excellent condition for sale for essentially peanuts. The same is true for my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650. I love the bike but it could be replaced.

So for me it now gets to the question of what’s the point? There were a lot of years when I was scraping by and a bit of extra cash now and then would have been extremely helpful. But I’m retired now, and I’m doing fine financially. As I have said many times, if I needed more money I would not have retired. So no, I don’t think I’ll be listing my bikes for rent.

On the other hand, I do like having a bike to ride when I go somewhere, but I really don’t like the high prices the big companies charge. Something like Riders Share seems to me to be the perfect way to go. By the way, there is another company doing the same thing, called Twisted Road. If you’re planning a trip and want a bike to ride you might think seriously about checking out what is available on both these sites. I sure would.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycles are not all about speed. It is a feeling, and emotion, but also my therapy.

I’ve been trying for months to figure out how to mount this top bag on the rear of my Concours and I think success is near. I had asked my mechanic, Joel, if fabricating something to mount it on was something he could do and he demurred, saying that kind of thing is not in his realm of expertise.

However, the second time we talked about it he said he has a friend who also rides a Concours who has a bag mounted on a bracket he made himself. I asked if he would be willing to help me out and Joel gave me his phone number. That’s how I met Tom.

I called Tom and we talked and then just before the blizzard hit I drove the bag and it’s mounting basket to him. That gave me a chance to take a look at the bracket he has on his bike. His wife wanted a backrest up kind of high so his bracket elevates the bag quite a bit. That wasn’t something that particularly appealed to me.

Apparently, not raising the bag makes the whole thing a lot simpler. As you can see in the photo of the mock-up that Tom sent me, he’s figuring all we really need is a couple strips of steel bolted onto the bike, and then attach the basket to the steel strips. Then just slip the bag into the slot on the basket, secure it with its thumb-screw, and voila!

The one thing I’ve been concerned about, and I asked Tom about this, is that Kawasaki stuck a sticker on this rear fender area saying not to put more than 11 pounds of weight on it. Dang, by the time you get the bracket, the basket, and the bag on there you’ve already eaten up nearly half that weight. So I asked Tom if Kawasaki was just being overly cautious, and what his experience has been.

Tom said he has had his bag on his bike for nearly 10 years and no problem. On top of that, I ended up talking to Jungle yesterday, and Jungle is a mechanic who has owned several Concourses. He said he built a rack for a bag on one of his and he never had any problems with too much weight. He did mention that you don’t want to put a lot of weight up high way out back because that can throw off the suspension and affect your steering. But a little bit is no big deal.

Now, the truth is, what has made me envious for years is watching how my friends get off their bikes and take off their jackets and helmets and throw them in the top bag and walk away. Not having one, I’ve always had to keep my jacket with me, and that can be a pain. But the key there is, you can’t throw your helmet and jacket in the bag if it’s full of other stuff. So if you don’t put much in it then there’s not going to be a lot of weight. Then a bit of weight when you’re just parked is not a big problem. And you’ll remove that weight before you take off again.

So my concern has been mollified. Now I’m just waiting for the finished product. This is going to be great.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcyclists who don’t wear a helmet probably don’t have a brain to protect anyway.

Hallelujah! At the smallest possible cost my 1999 Kawasaki Concours is running great again. If I was a mechanic I would have known what to do a long time ago.

You’ll recall that I met a guy in the neighborhood, Eric, who has a garage full of bikes and a Jeep. He was in coveralls and was working on something in his garage so I assumed it was safe to bet that he was a mechanic, at least to whatever degree. More than me, for sure. So I described the issue to him and asked what he thought.

OK, I guess first I need to add the latest info I had derived. I had tried riding the bike again and while it started up and ran OK while warming up, when I tried to ride away it balked. Then I had the idea to give it some choke. It ran fine on choke while warming up. Maybe that would help. And it did. So I described all this to Eric.

His immediate answer was that the carburetors needed to be cleaned. If it runs on choke but not without choke, it’s the carbs. OK, now we’re getting somewhere. So I called my mechanic, Joel, and asked him. He agreed: carbs. He suggested I get some Lucas jet cleaner and pour it in the gas tank. So I did that.

I certainly hoped for results but I expected them to be gradual. Nope. The bike fired up and ran really great. Even when I turned down the choke it ran great. So I got on and rode off. Holy cow, this thing had more power than I remember it having for a long time! I pulled on I-225 and rolled on the throttle and it screamed!

Now, I have to say, this immediate change makes me a little nervous. Could it be that this Lucas stuff is like jet fuel and that’s what is giving the bike this pep? When this tank of gas is gone and I refill the tank will the pep be gone? Or were the jets just dirty and had been for a long time?

I won’t know for a while now, especially since we’re in the middle of multi feet of snow at this moment but boy is that a relief to have this bike running well again. Yahoo!

Biker Quote for Today

We know you’re a poser if your saddle bags say “Gucci.”

The light turned green and both lanes of traffic pulled forward and then left. As I swung my Kawasaki Concours from the right-hand lane of one street through the arc and into the right-hand lane of the other I saw a common sight. A driver in the left-hand lane swung through the curve but then started moving to the right.

Of course he didn’t turn his head to see if the lane he was moving into was clear, and of course it wasn’t. I was there. I made sure to get out of his way and blared my horn at him. He looked in his mirror to see this motorcycle right at his rear bumper, realized what he had done, and waved sheepishly in apology.

Just another day on the road for me. I’ve had this particular situation occur at this particular intersection more times than I can count. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen at other intersections as well. It does. It also happens driving straight down the road. People think it’s sufficient to check their mirrors, and that a head check is not necessary, and they are wrong. Bikers learn that they need to ride as if they were invisible, because they might as well be.

The problem is blind spots. Everyone knows you’ve got a blind spot where a vehicle pulling alongside you is not visible in your mirrors. And every motorcyclist knows that their bike is small enough to get completely lost in that blind spot. We compensate by throttling through it a quickly as possible, keeping a close eye on the vehicle we’re passing in the process, ready to react at the slightest indication of trouble.

But sometimes that’s not an option. Sometimes you’re on the highway in rush-hour traffic, creeping along with cars and trucks on both sides. In that situation you’re constantly, inevitably in and out of somebody’s blind spot almost all the time. And when this dude to your left decides he wants to be in your lane and doesn’t do a head check to see if the lane is really clear, you’d better have good reflexes. By the time you’ve grabbed the brakes, swerved to safety, and then gotten stabilized it’s usually too late to blow your horn so the fool doesn’t even know he almost killed you. He’d just wonder, “Why is that guy on that bike blowing his horn?”

I know a lot of riders who respond to this by simply not riding in traffic unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. They’ll get on their bikes and head straight out of town. You call them up to go for a ride and they’ll only agree to meet you somewhere that does not involve them coming across town.

That’s not me. I ride everywhere, on all kinds of roads, in all kinds of traffic. You’d better believe I ride defensively. And if someone encroaches on my space I’m quick with the horn. I want them to know they screwed up. In that situation at the intersection, that driver and I were going the same route for several miles. In the repositioning that constantly goes on in traffic we found ourselves a few miles later with me in the left lane and him in the right lane. I was watching him closely and I saw that he wanted to move left. I also saw that he turned his head to see where I was, turned on his turn signal, and then waited until I slowed down to open up space for him before he pulled over.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Update
I had intended to head out to the Dirty Dogs Roadhouse on Saturday to check out the first of these monthly swap meets but then Sunday morning as I was thinking about what I would write about this week it dawned on me that I had totally forgotten it. Oops. I’ll try again next month.

Biker Quote for Today

Riding a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive.

As I try to figure out the problem with my Concours I have visited some forums on the bike. As something of a surprise to me, after owning the bike for more than 20 years, there apparently is a common, known issue with Connies, and that is called hydrolock. One thing I read the guy said the two main causes for the deaths of the Concours are crashes and hydrolock.

So what the heck is hydrolock, and what causes it? Let me tell you a little about the Concours.

On my Honda CB750 Custom the gas petcock has three positions: On, Res, and Off. Pretty simple. On the Concours there are also three positions: On, Res, and Prime. Prime allows gas to trickle into the cylinders. I have never understood the purpose of Prime, but I do know from experience what can happen if you leave the petcock in that position.

Probably within the first year after I bought the bike I had cause to go to reserve. After getting gas, without looking at the markings, I pushed the lever all the way in the other direction. That’s what I would do on the Honda. All the way one way was On, all the way the other way was Res, and in the middle was Off.

That’s not how it is on the Concours. On the Connie, On is the middle position. Switching to reserve, if you go the correct direction you move to reserve. If you go the wrong direction you go to prime. And apparently the bike will run on prime.

But when you stop, if you leave it on prime it will allow gas to trickle into the cylinders but because it is not getting burned it just seeps past the rings into the oil pan. And the bike does not run well with gas mixed with the oil. It was after the second time I did this that I figured it out. And apparently I’m nowhere near the only Concours owner who has made this mistake over the years, although from most of the discussion of hydrolock that I’ve seen the larger problem is failure of the petcock, not carelessness.

Well, all these years, I thought the only issue with inadvertently switching to prime was the engine not running well and that the solution was to dump the oil/gas mixture and put in new oil. That has always worked in the past. So this time, when I apparently had a brain fart and pushed the petcock to the wrong position I assumed changing the oil would solve the problem.

And it sort of did solve the problem. I could now fire the bike up and ride away on it, but it doesn’t run well at first. Which is what brings me to where I am now.

So trying to figure this out I go looking and for the first time I start seeing all this discussion of hydrolock. Hydrolock occurs when there is fluid in the cylinder and you fire the bike up. On the up stroke the cylinder is compressing the fuel/air mixture. Fluid does not compress as well as gas (as in oxygen, not gasoline). And what can result is that the connecting rod that links the cylinder head to the crankshaft gets bent. Not good; not at all.

Is this my problem? I’m still not sure, though I sure hope not. I need to find out one crucial thing. With all the discussion I’ve read I still haven’t seen definitively whether the bike will still run after a hydrolock event. I get the idea it won’t, and if that’s the case then that’s not my issue because my bike does run.

Judy says just call Joel and let him figure it out; that’s the purpose of money and we have money. To which my response is that the only thing worse than doing something stupid is having to pay a bunch of money to correct for your stupidity. But unless I get real smart real soon I guess that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if one area of your house (other then the garage) is decorated in a motorcycle motif.

OK, me, the non-mechanic, trying to trouble-shoot my Concours. I looked into what would happen if you had too much oil in the machine and my first lead was to the air intake, which is where excess oil presumably would be pushed out. Is the air filter saturated with oil?

First I had to figure out how to get to the air filter. I was going to change the spark plugs on this bike once but then I found that to do that I would have had to lift the gas tank. To do that would have required sealing off the gas line and who knows what else. I left it for Joel to do once I finally got around to having him do a tune-up. Would I need to lift the tank to get to the air filter?

Happily, the answer was no. I have a shop manual and looking in there I found that all I had to do was remove the left side panel, then take out two screws to remove the plate to get to the filter. Easy enough. So I pulled out the filter and found myself with a definite maybe.

The thing is, I don’t know what a new Connie air filter should look and feel like. This thing, seen in the photo, seemed to be a bit oily, but not so much as to be anything close to saturated. Is that normal? Plus, there was certainly no oily residue in the air box.

The only thing I know to do is take it over to Vickery and ask them if this is how it should be, and if they have one in stock, compare it to a new one. It is Sunday as I’m writing this so it will be Tuesday before I can do that. Nothing to do but wait.

If this proves to be the answer it will be a godsend. Because if it is not the answer I have no idea what to look for next. Of course I can always give Joel a call but man, I’ve really been giving him a bunch of my money lately. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

A little later: Nope, I did some more reading in my shop manual and it says to lightly coat a new air filter with oil. I guess my next move will be to go to the Concours Owner’s Group forum and see if I can find answers there.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you have at least one ashtray that is actually a motorcycle part.

We had some fabulous weather to start off February so I got out on all three bikes right away.

Of the two bikes I’ve recently had issues with the situations varied. The V-Strom, which I put a new battery into, started and ran just great. It still drips something but that is a longstanding issue that I’ll just continue to live with.

The Concours is a different matter. It fired right up and I ran it a good while to make sure it was warm. That bike has always needed to warm up before heading out.

Previously I had apparently left the reserve lever in the Prime position, an error that led to gas trickling into the cylinders and seeping past into the oil pan. In that state the bike wouldn’t run and I ended up making a real mess changing the oil. And once it was changed, although the bike fired up and ran, it didn’t initially run well. I rode around the neighborhood to be sure it didn’t crap out on me a long way from home, but eventually it did fine.

Well, same thing this time. I pulled out of the driveway and there was very little power. Again I rode around the neighborhood until it seemed to be doing OK and then I took off. This time, however, in two instances when I was coasting downhill and not revving the throttle at all the engine died. Now, it started back up right off when I pushed the starter button but this bike has never just died on me before. For the rest of the ride, anytime I was slowing down I made sure to give it a little more gas so it would not die. That’s a pain.

Maybe the business with dying could be remedied by just cranking up the idle speed a bit, I don’t know. But what the heck is the issue with the poor running in the beginning? Could there still be gas in the oil? Certainly not much–would just a tiny bit have that effect? Is there some other issue? I’m convinced that my mechanic put too much oil in when he changed it back in June. Could that have blown out a seal? What happens if a seal is blown? I just don’t know the answer to these kinds of questions. I need to do research.

Of course I could change the oil again–it certainly helped to change it before. I hate to do that because motorcycle oil is not cheap and changing oil on this bike is not a simple operation. And if I did that and it still was not running right, then what?

I just did a quick Google search and it appears I ought to check the air filter to see if excess oil has been through out that way. Now I need to look into how I get to the air filter. Sigh. I’ll let you know what happens.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: Disassembling the motorcycle is done out of pleasure rather than need.