Passes & Canyons Blog

I think I’ve got something figured out here. I have the vague notion that when you have a dealer put a new tire on your bike, they routinely put in a new valve stem. Maybe I’m mistaken, but that’s my notion. Regardless, I’m pretty certain now that Joel, my mechanic, does not. And in the future, any time I have him put on a new tire I will specify that I also want a new valve stem.

I had my first valve stem problem when I was getting ready to leave on the RMMRC‘s Great River Road ride. That necessitated that I take a different bike; not a big deal.

Well now I’ve had a second valve stem problem, and this was a lot bigger pain in the butt.

I’ve been taking some music classes over at Swallow Hill Music and so a couple weeks ago I headed over there on the Honda CB750 Custom, which had yet to be ridden in July. Just a few blocks away I noticed the handling on the bike was not as it should be, and it reminded me of the time when I had a flat back tire on the Concours. I got to Swallow Hill and parked and looked at the rear tire. It was fine. Great. I headed in.

When I came out and returned to the bike it was very obvious that my front tire was flat. Oh, dang. OK, I got here on it, if I can get air in the tire hopefully I can get home on it. I called Judy and asked her to bring my pump, figuring I’d put air in and she could follow me home, stopping if necessary to add more air along the way.

Judy arrived and I hooked the pump up but after way too long the pressure gauge was still showing no increased pressure. I turned it off and was disconnecting it when I heard a hiss at the valve stem. Sure enough, that’s where the problem was. And there was no way this bike was rideable.

I have roadside service through my American Motorcyclist Association membership so I called for a tow. It took a while to get through but I finally reached someone who took all my info and said I would be receiving a text message with the data on the company dispatched and their estimated time of arrival. We knew we had a wait in store.

The first part of the wait was not boring. We were at the corner of Lincoln and Yale, standing by the bike, when we heard tires screeching and a crash. Turning around, there was a Harley on its side, a rider on the ground, and a car stopped, all in the middle of the intersection. Holy crap. I went running to the guy, thinking about my recent crash scene management training.

The guy, an older, very gnarly-looking sort of old school Harley rider, was sitting up and bleeding badly from the left side of his head. The first step in crash scene management is to secure the location, and there were cars stopped in all directions so clearly nobody was going to come driving through and hit someone. The guy asked for a hand up and I hesitated. Another initial point in crash scene management was to do all you can to prevent the person from getting up and riding off, because they may suffer shock and once the adrenaline wears off they may find themselves completely incapable of even standing.

He asked for a hand up and I told him he really ought to just sit there for a few minutes. “F— that” he bellowed and insisted I help him up, which I did. Then he asked me and another guy to help him get the bike up, which we did. I was hoping he just wanted to move it out of the intersection but he climbed on, fired it up and rode away. Meanwhile, we could all see that the lobe of his left ear was almost completely ripped off, hanging by just a slender strip of skin.

Judy’s speculation was that he either had warrants out or else maybe he had been drinking or drugging and either way had no intention of dealing with the police. Who knows. Meanwhile, the young woman driving the car was on the phone with 911. She had not hit him; there had been no contact. I’m not sure what she had been doing, maybe a U-turn in the intersection, definitely not a left turn in front of him. All I got from her was that she was making her turn and he just wouldn’t wait for her to complete it. He must have swerved to avoid her but even that is odd because the bike fell on its right side and he was on the ground on its left. I have no idea what happened. The police were apparently never even dispatched to the scene.

We know this because we were there for another three hours, and they never showed up. After talking to the person I gave the tow request to we were told we would receive text updates and all we got were three messages saying sorry for the delay, we’re still trying to get someone to provide your service. After awhile my phone was going dead and Judy suggested we call again, using her phone, so I did.

Once we got through again I explained the situation and they escalated it to the supervisor and once again we were told we’d be messaged with update info. We finally did get a message, telling us who was coming and that it would probably be an hour and half more. Thank goodness we had Judy’s air conditioned car to sit it because we had no shade and the outside temperature was about 85.

Finally the tow guy showed up and I have to say, he was super nice. We were now late for a birthday party we were supposed to be heading to and he said go ahead to the party, I’ll get the bike safely to your house. Which he did, and then called to tell us he had done so. Nice guy.

So that’s twice now I’ve had valve stem issues. Valve stems are now very much on my radar.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if other people you consider bikers scare you.

We eight RMMRC riders left Red Wing the morning of Day 5 of this Great River Road ride and turned away from the river, headed for a house on a lake that was owned and rented out by Dave’s sister and her husband, in South Haven. I think it was at about this time that I decided to completely bag the idea I had started out with of doing a story for Rider magazine about this ride. For the kind of story they want you need to stop at interesting places, shoot a lot of pictures, and generally do more than just ride through without stopping. Which was not the way this group was traveling. Plus, now we were leaving the river entirely for the next 80 miles of its route. Nope, not going to happen.

The river goes right through Minneapolis/St. Paul and our route was south and west of the cities and then north to South Haven. Only about a 140-mile day. But first there was the question of Dave’s bike. Did buying a new battery make everything better? Or was the problem deeper? He had a full charge when we started out but it didn’t take long for him to see that the problem was not solved. We got southwest of Minneapolis and stopped, he looked to see where the nearest BMW dealer was, and we turned in that direction.

We got there and over the course of the next couple hours the shop did a diagnosis that showed the problem was the stator. A big deal. First off, the part would cost about $1,000; second, labor would be about $1,500; and third, they didn’t have one in stock. Big problem. As long as Dave kept charging his battery he could keep running. But what to do?

We headed on out to the lake with the only thing eventful about that being the driveway down to this house. Dave had warned us that it was extremely steep. My parents lived their retirement years on a lake like this in South Carolina and while their driveway was not excessive, there were plenty in the area where you might have a 150-foot driveway that drops 50 feet. Like this one. The difference being that my parents were in South Carolina where it rarely snows and this was in Minnesota. It snows in Minnesota. Frequently. A lot.

“How do you get to this place in winter?”

“We don’t.”

So we got there and one by one rode down, making sure each bike was out of the way of the others yet to come. This was uneventful until Charley dropped his bike at the bottom, the second time in two days he had dumped it. Unlike the day before, however, this was more of an event. I winced as I saw and heard his helmet crack sharply on the asphalt. Not good. But he was up quickly and later had no recollection that he had hit the ground like that. That’s why you wear a helmet. He also got his shin bloodied a bit by his highway peg. But basically not hurt.

While the rest of us relaxed and settled in for two nights Dave was on the phone and trying to figure out what to do. Should he try to ride home, counting on keeping the battery charged? Should he take the bike to a shop in the Twin Cities and wait for it to be fixed? Or leave it with them and fly home? And then fly back to get it and ride home or drive out with his wife in his truck with the trailer and trailer it home? Or maybe just trade it for a new bike right here. Decisions.

After four hard days of riding we were ready to be off the bikes. We went out on the lake in the boat, made a grocery run and got a lot of stuff for some good eating, and took it easy.

One issue lurked on our minds, though. Getting back up that hill. I was on my V-Strom, which has a ton of low-down torque, so I knew I’d be fine. I wasn’t so sure about Tom’s Vulcan in particular, and all of them considering there was no room to get a run at it. This would be start rolling and hit the hill in about five feet, then climb. The next day we moved the bikes around to get them all set up to just go at the hill.

Meanwhile, relax.

Biker Quote for Today

Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?

I got the V-Strom back from Joel and what a difference!

The chain and sprockets were badly worn and I guess that can contribute to a loss of power but the real factor seems to have been the air filter. You can see in that photo just how bad that was. When I started looking into when I had last had that replaced I was more than a little embarrassed to find the answer was, oh, maybe seven years ago.

I had been out on a four-day Colorado Cruise with the RMMRC about a month ago and really noticed that the bike had trouble going over the higher passes and also in keeping up with the rest of the group on their big, powerful bikes. One night on that trip I did some googling and ran across something that said a worn chain will reduce power, and that was what got me thinking about that.

But when I mentioned it to Joel he said yeah, that might have a tiny impact, but not all that much. That’s when I started thinking about other possibilities. When I hit on the air filter it all made a lot more sense. It’s really hard to give your all when you’re struggling just to breathe.

And did you look at that filter? All those bugs and other debris embedded in it? Not to mention the whole load of dirt! Man, if anyone ever wondered why you need an air filter, just imagine all that crap being sucked into your combustion chamber. Yikes!

So within an hour after Joel dropped the bike back at my place I was out on it seeing how it would run now. Night and day. Joel told me he figured it would have a lot more zip and boy was he right. Plus, with the new chain and sprockets all that slapping I had heard for so long was just gone. Yahoo!

I can’t say enough about having machines that work well. Not to mention having the money to keep them working well. Too well I remember my younger days driving crap cars because that was all I could afford. I don’t miss those days.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if it’s impossible to see out of your car or trucks rear window because of all the Harley stickers.

We’re home now from this year’s OFMC ride and while I’m eager to tell you all about the trip, if you’re really hard-core your number one question would be, “how did the Kawi run?”

I can’t give a one- or two-word answer to that. So I won’t.

It ran well. It ran a lot better than it did before Joel worked on it. It did not run perfectly and at times it ran alarmingly. Details:

Ever since this bike has been giving me problems it has been hard to get it going from a start. Once in motion it has run OK, other than dying when I’m coasting to a stop. Those problems are gone. There are new ones.

All Kawasakis, as far as I know, are cold-blooded, meaning you need to fire them up and let them run a few moments before you take off. This one is no different but now it responds more readily to a twist of the throttle than it had been doing. The flip side of that is that when I roll off the throttle the engine does not immediately back off as it should. It continues to run hot for a moment and then fades.

Or worse. At times, though fortunately not all the time, the throttle seemed to stick and every time I would pull in the clutch the engine would race. Imagine pulling up to a red light, pulling in the clutch to stop, and having your engine sound like you’re screaming down the highway. I suspect that at its worst that kind of thing could damage the engine. What I would do is let the clutch out just a tiny bit and hold firmly on the brake. That reduced the screaming. It was probably hell on the clutch.

The rest of the bike was great. I knew there was enough rubber on the back tire for the trip but that I would need a new one when I got home. We actually rode about 400 miles more than I anticipated so let’s say I was definitely correct about the tire, in both ways. When I give the bike back to Joel to put in the needed carb parts and get the bike running the way it should I’ll also have him put on a new tire.

But the bike did me well on the trip and that’s the most important thing. And it was a great trip–can’t wait to tell you about it.

Biker Quote for Today

Life is a big road with lots of signs, so when riding through ruts, don’t complicate your mind, wake up and live life.

I’ve had this ongoing issue with the Concours not running properly, where I’ve used carb cleaner to much benefit but not total. Every time I had ridden it lately it had run better so when I took it out the other day I was hoping for it to perform perfectly.

It did not. In fact, it ran much more poorly than before, needing me to rev the engine before taking off from a stop and dying repeatedly as I came to a stop. At least that settles the question of whether I’m going to be able to address this myself or if I need to enlist professional assistance.

This business of the bike not running properly matters for several reasons. First, I want the bike to run right. That’s a no-brainer.

More pressing, however, is the fact that it is now July and that means the annual OFMC bike trip is coming up in just a few weeks. Having gone through all the hassle with getting this new top bag mounted I was really hoping to take the Kawi this year. I’ve tried to reach Joel, my mechanic, but I suspect he is up in Montana at the family farm for an extended period.

The issue here is that if I can’t take the Kawi, I’ll need to take either the V-Strom or the CB750. And both of them need new rear tires before they can go on an extended trip. So obviously, if I need a new rear tire I need to get cracking on that.

Why not just get new rear tires on both of them if they are in need anyway? Well, regarding the Honda, as little as I ride that I can probably pretty easily put that off until next year. It’s only if I want to take it on a long trip that I’ll need a new tire sooner. But the V-Strom could use a new one now. Except that, to cover my bases, I contacted Ron, my sometimes V-Strom mechanic, to see if he would be available to get a tire on this bike and he is out of the country until August 3. Ouch.

Now it’s getting serious. Frankly, I’d rather just put off new tires till later if there’s any way I can take the Kawi on the trip. So it hinges on Joel. Who I have not heard back from.

Calling Joel: Please get back to me ASAP. Meanwhile, I better find somebody to put a new tire on the V-Strom.

UPDATE
OK, this has been evolving as I’ve been writing. Joel just got back to me and will be back in town in a couple days and can get the Kawi running good before we’re scheduled to leave. In the meantime, I spoke to Bill, who directed me to a shop he and Dennis like for getting new tires put on and I’ll go ahead and get a new rear on the V-Strom just to play it safe.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycle mechanic only because freakin’ awesome is not an actual job title.

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.