The Long Way Around

'cept it's not quite.

Well, actually, it could be worse.  It could be much worse.  So I tore apart the Cannonball bike today.

The rear wheel was wiggly and that put me on edge.  Realistically though, it wasn't just the movement but the fact that the hub could have been wearing away at the spline shaft which freaked me out, so I tore into it with Aaron.  That was an interesting experiment if only because neither of us had done that on the bike before, so there was a bit of a figuring-out-as-you-go deal.

So after we got the exhaust off, then the backing plate off, then the backing plate / swing arm, what we noticed immediately was that the nut that keeps tension on the hub and keeps it in place was...  uh...  let's just say it came off with just a little wiggle with two fingers.  It had basically broken free and left the cotter pin safety to keep the frickin' wheel in place.  Scary as hell.  I don't know how long it had been that way but it certainly explained why I had problems braking, too. 

So we looked at the splines on the shaft and everything looked "right", and not particularly worn.  Hub seemed fine too.  We replaced the rear wheel with a 130/ 70x12" Heidenau H61, and buttoned it up.

For the proverbial "shits and giggles", we took apart the transmission to check out the variator and clutch splines.  Those were potentially the most worrisome, as damage to those splines could mean a whole new engine.  The spline shaft coming into the variator is basically the crank shaft, so...  damage = broken.  Done.

After ripping it apart, though, it seems the splines were in pretty decent condition.  The spline grooves on the variator, on the other hand - and I mean both halves - were toast.  Utterly done.  Chewed up, ground down, and useless.  It was actually a bit of a pain to get the back half of the variator off. 

When it came down to it, though, the ramp on the variator was also pretty bad.  Even though it was a new one I had put on just at the start of Cannonball, it was definitely worn worse than a variator that I had put some 11,500 miles on previously.  Think about that for a minute.

So I put the old variator with perfectly good spline grooves back on, put a fresh set of rollers on, replaced the Cannonball belt with a reasonably decent-but-used belt, and then put the bike back together (after forgetting a washer once) and fired it up.  Seemed to be good.

It runs pretty decently.  Has run better but has also run worse.

I still worry about the plug.  I think what's going to need to happen is that I'm going to buy a head, then convince someone who knows how to not screw these things up help me un-do the plug that's in there.  If the threads are stripped on the head, we'll put the new one in and put in the new plug there.  

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

I still don't know quite what to do with myself at home and at work.  Funny.

Meanwhile I ride my MP3 500 everywhere now.  it's a good deal faster than the GT, from all perspectives.  I also notice that I have no concept of how fast I'm going in city.  That's unfortunate, and something I need to keep an eye out for.  Quite a hassle.

Jess came in to town after trucking the GT back from Maryland.  We loaded it off, and I took a moment to inspect the GT's rear wheel situation.  It's bad.  Oh lord is it bad.  I'm surprised.  At the very least I think the hub's shot.  There may also be an issue with the brake.  I know I'm going to be taking the thing apart soon, and it'll be probably a solid month before I can get it rideable, assuming that the variator is just fine and there's nothing wrong with the crank shaft splines on either the clutch or the variator.  Gah.

I've got some more pictures I'm going to upload, along with some videos.  I just don't have the time at present to do these things.  Hopefully should get to it some time this weekend.

More later, of course.

So day 3 has been the hardest so far. It was a short day with the exception of the ridiculous 40 miles of dirt.

Maroy so kindly referred to the day as 'Cannonfall' as more people hit the ground than didn't. The dirt claimed a lot of victims.

Both the Ruckus riders (e.g, Jim T, who I believe will be trucking it to the next most convenient spot then flying home). Both Jess and Rich went down. Rocket went down. Basically, if you went on the dirt road, you crashed.

I didn't crash. But I did lay the bike down. I had a scare where I lost my rear on some washboards, and almost bit it in a ditch.

When I came to a complete stop, I put my foot down and basically didn't have good footing on the Dirt and I tipped over towards the ditch. Thankfully, he says with a hint of sarcasm, I caught the bike with my knee, an kept it from going down hard. Instead I just let it down gently. So no crash, just bad and stupid footing.

Sigh.

Anyway, more plug drama. It popped off again, same problem with stripping the threads on the aluminum head on the plug. Cap popped right off in front of the marina at the Bullfrog ferry.

Thankfully a kind security guard came by and asked me why the problem was. I mentioned the problem and be off-handedly mentioned that he restores VW's. He mentions that, on a VW, the plug cap doesn't fit over the aluminum head on the plug, but actually clips on to the threads on the plug itself. He had one in his on-site motor home, so he drove me to his place and hooked me up with the newcap, gratis. We fixed it on, and it bit and the bike started right up. Rode the rest of the ride with the new cap, no incident.

Hopefully this will keep working and I can continue to ride this route as expected.

We've rolled past the thousand mile mark at this point. Only 2.3k more to go.

My carpal tunnel is killing me, and my eating has not gotten better.

Holy crap. Jim T went down on the Burr Trail. Cripes.

He blacked out with the bike on him for some 30 minutes, I've heard. Then he rode another 15-20 miles by my calculations and got himself to the next waypoint. Be ended up going to the clinic in the park here. Damn.

That's rider #2 here. Ugh.

Basically just missed a turn, and we caught up to him 30 seconds after he pulled himself out I a ditch.

He's fine but his GT has seen better days.

Basically, I might be at the end point of this run, but it's not clear.

The short of it is that my plug had a significant failure today. That's right, a stupid spark plug. But the thing is, now my plug might be galled in the head.

It started because the head of my plug in the bike actually had it's threads melted. So the cap basically popped off the plug. Couldn't actually fit the cap back on the plug because the head got stuck in the cap and wouldn't come out. So basically I was hosed.

This is obviously hard to describe but it really comes down to my plug cap would not stay on my bike.

At one point in the afternoon, I took the plug out and I tried to see if I could thread it into the cap, but the answer was a resounding no. And apparently the process of putting it back in may have either cross threaded it or the threads got galled somehow. This means I ant pull the plug out because I could hork up the threads on the head worse than they already may be. If that's the case, then I'm done with the ride. So I obviously can't do that.

I got another head for the plug that's in there an tightened it on the plug that's still in the engine. Took some needle nose pliers and tightened it and hopefully it's on for good and I'll have no other similar problems. Otherwise I have a few other plugs with caps that I can cannibalize.

That is my only hope.

Oh, and the last reason why this day sucked, which if I let out think about it a minute I'm sure you'd figure out on your own: since the plug cap was loose, it would come off regularly.

I had over 200 miles left for the day when the cap first came off. I had apparently got smog the top times (if not the top) for the first leg, an this happened literally at the start of the third.

For the last 50 miles, the cap popped off the plug once every 1.5 miles on average. Guess how many times I pulled over, took my gloves off, opened up my seat, took my under seat storage out, burned my hand on the head refitting the plug cap on, put the storage back in and put my gloves on then rode off again only to do the whole thing again in a few short minutes.

I'll give you a hint - so many times I got to the point where I could do it in under 20 seconds.

Suck.

Now you know why I say today was horrible.

By the way, I'm utterly amused that my post about eating actually caused discussion. Hah. Today I started the day with beef jerky and a cliff bar, then didn't eat till twelve hours later and of a steak.

Somewhere on the way to the border of California and Nevada, Joel's headset or steering bearings or something came loose. He was going pretty fast, 70s or 80s or so, an then blammo.

He kept it up for a while but ended up laying it down in the end. His bike is munged. Pretty bad. You can see the evidence yourself below.

One bike down, but the rider isn't out. He's riding Bobo's bike, as Bobo dropped out at the start of the say for personal reasons.

Both of the above are among many reasons why today has sucked.

More later.