Passes & Canyons Blog

I mentioned last time how when I went to plug in my electric vest there was nowhere for me to plug it into. Removing the seat on this 1980 Honda CB750 Custom is enough of a pain that I didn’t get to that right away but I did turn my attention in that direction over the weekend.

Removing the seat would theoretically be easy but in practice it is anything but. The seat has a tongue that you insert into the compartment for it just below the gas tank. But first you have to remove two bolts, one on each side. Easy, right? Well, it might be except I have a sissy bar on the back and the two bolts are very close to each other. Then the bar that is one of the main structural members of the sissy bar, which includes back rest, tool bag, and luggage rack, passes directly over the bolt that holds the seat on.

In other words, I can’t get at it directly. So I slip a box-end wrench under the bar to work the bolt. But that’s not all. When the seat is in place there is stress on the frame of the seat such that the bolt does not turn freely. I have learned that I need to first lay across the seat from the left side to the right, putting my weight on the seat to push it down. In this way I position the bolt hole on the seat frame perfectly around the bolt and then it screws out easily. Next I have to raise the right side of the seat to get the bolt and bolt hole aligned, and then I can unscrew that one.

OK, taking the seat off is really not that big a deal. And I got it off and sure enough, the shop failed to put the two pigtails back on when they worked on the bike this spring. I have two pigtails. One is for my electric vest and the other is for my trickle charger. Neither were there.

Fortunately I have extras because when I sold the Concours earlier this year I stripped off equipment like that. Now I just had to find where I had put them. I wasn’t having much luck finding them but in the process I came across a spare vest connector that I had forgotten I had. Brand new, never been used. They must have been packed two to a package. Cool.

It took a lot of looking but then I did find the stuff I took off the Concours. And wasn’t it fortunate I had found that spare vest connector. I had forgotten that to hook the vest up to the Connie’s circuitry I had to snip off the loops that normally go over the battery posts and replace them with plugs that were inserted into the bike’s outlets. I had kept the loops and I could have reversed the process but with the spare I didn’t need to. Nice.

Next I removed the two side panels in order to get to the battery. Again, theoretically you should be able to remove the side panels with the seat in place. In practice it really isn’t possible. No problem, the seat was off.

So I hooked it all up and was about to put the other things back in place but on this bike the battery has a metal strap holding it in place and that strap has a bumped out spot where the battery cable needs to go. So before you reattach the battery you have to bolt this strap back in place and position the cable properly. I had not done that, so I had to undo the connections, put the cable in place, then redo the connections. Fine, now put the rest of the bike back together.

I got the seat back on, which is a lot harder than getting it off. To get the bolt started you have to hold it with two fingertips and position it just right and then turn it to get the threads started. This can be–and usually is–very awkward. But I got it done. Then I realized I had not put the side panels back on. So I had to remove the seat again, put the side panels on, and then put the seat back on again.

Fun, huh? I know it was my own carelessness that caused me to have to do these things twice. I really shouldn’t forget them because I have made these same mistakes more than once in the past. But dang it, I shouldn’t have had to be doing any of this. If the guy at the shop had done his job properly my connectors would have been where they were supposed to be.

And this was not the first time I’ve had this kind of thing happen. I once started out on a week-long trip after finally getting my bike back from the shop, only to realize about 50 miles out of town that the mechanic had failed to put one of my highway pegs back on. I like highway pegs. I use my highway pegs. And there I was gone on a long trip and one highway peg was not where it was supposed to be.

Yes we all make mistakes, but when I make a mistake no one is paying me for my efforts. I’m paying these mechanics. I think it’s not unfair for me to hold them to a little higher standard. But if I learn any lesson from this it should be that when I get a bike back from the shop I need to go over it carefully looking for exactly this sort of thing. Will I learn that lesson? I’ll keep you informed.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 29. We wake up at 4:00 AM to watch the MotoGP race in Australia.

I knew leaving on the OFMC trip this summer that as soon as I got back I would need to get a new rear tire on the V-Strom. We got back from that trip on August 1. I finally got the tire on yesterday. Yep, right away.

Of course that means I got more miles out of the old one. Really getting my money’s worth. Really running on no tread at all. You get busy, you know, and things get put off.

I’ve still been trying to work out this issue of where to take my bikes now that Joel is no longer running his own shop and this time I figured I’d take it to One Down Four Up, a place out on West Colfax where I’ve had some work done before. They’re pretty far and not particularly convenient but what the heck. I’ve been happy with their work.

So I called a few weeks ago to see about getting it in and I asked the woman I spoke with what they suggest now that the parts store that used to be right next to them had closed. It was really convenient because you could go in and buy the tire and carry it next door and hand it to them. But not any more.

She said they suggest you get the tire at Performance Cycle and bring it in. That seemed pretty odd to me because Performance Cycle is pretty far away. Why not point me to a place on Colfax? I know there are some out there.

It was good that I wondered about that. That ticked off an idea in my head. Have they perhaps moved? Well, score one for me. They have moved, and now Performance Cycle is still not exactly close but it’s a heck of a lot closer than it was before. Also, more importantly, this makes One Down Four Up a lot closer to me, too. I may just have finally solved my problem of where to take my bikes for service.

However, that did not address the issue of how to get the tire from the store to the shop. I have never, ever had to face that issue before. I’ve always just taken the bike to the mechanic and he ordered the tire and put it on. I wasn’t crazy about picking up the tire in my car and then driving it over to the shop and leaving it there, then bringing the bike later. But then I figured it depended on whether they would be able to put the tire on while I waited. If they wouldn’t then I would need to have Judy pick me up there and bring me back later, and she could just bring the tire with her when she picked me up.

Well, they could put it on while I waited so that was out. I thought about putting the tire around my waist and riding over like that but that seemed silly. Here’s a daring thought: how about if I just tie the tire on the bike behind me?

I know that, for a lot of you who probably have done this yourselves, this is the obvious and simple approach. But remember, I’ve never had to do this before. Well it was simple, as you can see in the photo. And yeah, I didn’t get it tied on as stably as I thought, so it shifted a little in transit, but it worked fine. OK, now I know.

So when I called the shop to make an appointment they said, well, we can get you in later today or first thing tomorrow. Really? That quickly? Sounds good to me, let’s do today. And they did the job promptly, for a very reasonable price. And they were nice folks. I think I know where to take my bikes from now on.

Then just a side note. On my way home I was coming across on Belleview and saw this pick-up in the right lane with a sheet of plywood hanging out of the back of its bed bent almost to the road surface. I thought that was odd but assumed it just didn’t fit in the bed any better than that. I also noticed that the car behind this truck was giving them a lot of room.

As I pulled up alongside I could see that in fact the plywood had shifted back from the cab several feet and looked like it might slide out at any moment. I waved to get the driver’s attention and motioned urgently toward his rear. He pulled right over to see what I was telling him. I just wonder if he started out with more than one sheet of plywood, because that was all he had when I saw him.

Biker Quote for Today

We mature with damages, not with age.