Utter Frustration
OK, you can’t really see the smoke, as I hoped you could, but there is definitely something burning here.
One thing after another. I’m feeling now like my Concours is not even my bike any more and all I want is to be done with it. Anyone want a free motorcycle?
The bike has been over at Rowdy Rocket Garage since December 29. Every time I call and talk to Mark over there he tells me he’s hoping to get to it today or tomorrow. Every time. At the end of January I went over and took it out for a short ride just to get a January ride in on it. It’s now the end of February and I went over there on Wednesday to do the same thing. No dice.
First off, I pressed the starter button and nothing. The battery–a new battery–was dead from sitting there for two months. So Mark hooked a charger up to it and it started up but now it started emitting smoke. Not from the exhaust, from the engine. Mark said he could tell by the odor that it was oil, that there must be an oil leak dripping down onto the exhaust and burning. It should all burn off shortly.
After several minutes it was smoking just as much as ever. Looking in through the slots on the body work I could see where it was coming from, with big plumes of smoke rising up and dispersing and coming out everywhere. What the heck?
I’m not blaming Mark for this–the fact is he hasn’t worked on the bike. But it wasn’t doing this before. How does an oil leak just spontaneously happen?
So I did not take the Connie for a ride, so no February ride. So much for never missing a month over 25 years (other than two months off for heart surgery). At this point I just don’t care, I just want to be rid of the bike.
Of course now it’s up to Mark to finally get to it for the throttle issue I took it in for but now also to see what’s up with the oil leak. Presumably throwing good money after bad. Whatever I spend, if it finally gets the bike running well again, I’ll only turn around and put it up for sale for perhaps as much as I will have just spent.
Right now the $200 Vickery offered me for it back when I was lusting for that FJ-09 they had is looking pretty nice. How good hindsight is. I wish I’d taken them up on that.
Oh, and then, as if all this wasn’t enough to make my day less than wonderful, I got home and sat down to put all this into this blog post and could not get to the blog. All I got was a page with an error message, and I couldn’t even get it to see what the problem might be. I did get to Google Analytics, however, where I learned the blog and the mobile side of the site had both been down for two days. Great.
Nor, for some reason, could I get to my web host online, so I called. After working with three different techs they found the issues and got it all fixed and here I am writing this. What a freaking hassle!
Biker Quote for Today
I’d rather be splitting lanes.
Tags: kawasaki concours
