Ride With Tank

Yesterday on my way to Virginia I suffered a catastrophic motorcycle failure.

The master link on my chain broke and the chain came off and did quite a bit of damage in the process. It broke off the two bolts holding my clutch slave cylinder. One bolt attached to the stator cover and it broke the whole bottom corner off of the stator cover. The other attached to the crankcase cover and it broke off at the cover. The push rod for the clutch was broken in half. The bike was spewing oil and I sure was lucky it did not get tangled with the wheel and lock it up because I was going around 80mph in a turn when it broke.

We had a great turn out for the ride.  I really felt bad to be delaying everyone’s trip and tried to get them to go ahead and leave me but they would not leave until I was on the tow truck.  I sure to appreciate everyone’s support and I am so sorry that because of my problem you guys were riding until well after dark and missed the most scenic part of the whole trip, but hopefully today on the trip home you will get to see the sights you missed last night.

I pay $7.00 a year for road service coverage with Geico and this was the first time I have used it. Geico was very excellent. They only cover for 75 miles, but they put in a lot of time to find a Suzuki dealer that was in the direction of home and open and could look at the bike. They got a towing service right out to me and got me to Morgantown Honda in Morgantown, WV. I could not find anybody back home with a trailer that was at home, so I left the bike there and my wife came down and picked me up. They are going to give me a quote on Monday, but I fear it may be quite high. If the crankcase cover has to be replaced the price will be astronomical. I checked Ron Ayers and the crankcase cover is $1,100. I figure if it needs replaced and I do it myself I am probably looking at over $2,000 in parts. If a shop does it I can easily see it running $4,000 to $5,000 total.

Most likely the trip next week to Deals Gap will not happen.  I suppose there is a chance that the damage is not as bad as I fear and it will be on the road by next weekend, but it seems unlikely.  I’ll post more information as I get it.

You know, this weather just won’t stop!  I can’t believe we had another excellent weekend.  I know I told everyone who asked that I would not be riding this weekend.  I know I said I had too many things to do to get ready for the next two big rides.  I really did.  The wife really, really wanted to go riding so I did not want to deny her needs.  We ended up throwing the tent on the bike and going camping up to Tionesta.  Had a great time.  We rode to Tionesta, set up the tent, and then did the 666 to 6 to 66 loop.  You just have to like that loop because of all the sixes!  This morning we headed north into New York and then back across along Lake Erie and home.  It was really nice too do a more relaxed ride.  We only rode 400 miles total for the entire weekend.  Saturday night we went to sleep and did not wake up for 11 hours!   I justified this ride as preparation for the week long ride in October.  I’ll be camping on that trip and I figure this would be good practice to see if I had everything I need.  I guess I already knew that but I did need an excuse for riding instead of doing what needed done. 

Don’t forget that next weekend is the Virginia ride!  This is going to be a spectacular ride.  The weekend after that I am leaving for the Gap.  I am probably going to take several days on the way down to ride the Parkway. 

Well, another great trip south is over.  I stayed at Deals Gap from 09/01 and left on 09/07.  I took three days going home and got to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway and visited Shady Valley. 

What a great trip it was.  I was kind of worried the THP would take a lot of the fun out of it, but I managed to avoid them and had a really great time.  I really can’t say they affected me at all.  The times when they were out the road were so busy it would have been hard to enjoy the road anyway.  While I was there they did seem to be pretty decent.  I kind of forgot about them on Friday on my way out and came around a turn to find two of them pointing right at me in a pulloff.  I looked down and found that I was going over 50mph.  There was no response from them.  I think you draw a lot less attention to yourself if you have a quiet motorcycle and you are not spinning the engine up.  I suspect if they can hear you coming from a mile away it kind of gets them all worked up.  Even if you are riding slow they are going to nail you because they have been anticipating somebody who is riding really fast. 

I switched to a Metzler Tourance again for this trip, and I did miss the sticky rubber, but the Tourance will last a lot longer and I am going broke buying tires.  The first week of October I plan to get with Fat Tommy and get a new front tire.  I’ll let everyone know how it goes.

We have a two day trip planned to Virginia at the end of the month.  If you don’t know about it you are not on the mailing list so click here and send me a message and I will bring you up to date and add you to the list.  This is going to be two days of the most spectacular riding you have ever done.  It looks like we might have a pretty decent turn out for this one.