And the repairs continue...

(May 6, 2014) There’s good news and bad news about my bike this week:

• Bad news: I burned out the rear exhaust valve over the weekend and it’s going to be expensive to correct the problem.
• Good news: The guys at Jockeys Cycle Inc. (Morrisville, NC) quickly diagnosed and repaired the (1) wiring problem with my left passing lamp, and (2) tightened down the rear exhaust port flange, replacing a nut that had fallen off yesterday. The bike is road worthy once more, though barely. The rear exhaust valve is making itself heard. 

In addition to these two repairs made by Jim at Jockeys, I made these two repairs since April 13, when I wrote my last blog post about maintenance issues:

• Installed new rear brake line switch
• Repaired wiring to the horn

I’ve been having so many things go wrong with my bike over the last year, it’s tough to keep up. I’m glad I’m recording it all in these blog posts. Someday I will look back at all of this and laugh…yeh, right. Anyhow, here are some of the ugly details of what’s been happening with my bike. Perhaps you can take something of what I’ve learned and apply it to a problem you’re having.

Horn

I returned home from Hendersonville, NC recently and saw my neighbor John outside and wanted to signal to him that I was home. I pressed the horn button and nothing. Seriously? This is my third horn in a year. So, after a deep breath, I decided to wait until a rainy evening during the week to check it out. Nature complied and Tuesday evening I went to work.

It turns out that one of the wires had broken inside the insulation. When I removed the horn from the bike, I noticed two things: (1) one of the wires was limp--indicating an internal break of the copper, and (2) that the horn itself was loose on its mounting bracket. I suspect that this permitted excess vibration, which led to the broken wire.

I tightened the horn and spliced in some wire using a butt connector (shown in the accompanying photo). I went to the local auto parts store and purchased a small package of “female” connectors (also shown in the photo). The old fellow behind the counter gave me a great tip: strip off double the normal amount of insulation and double back the copper wire on itself so you have a better fit into the connector. It worked great. I had the horn reconnected and operating in only about 20 minutes.

Just an FYI: When I looked at the photo of the old connector (right), I noticed that the wire was not making good contact in the connector. It was functional, but sloppy. Live and learn.  

Rear Brake Light Switch

Then I went to work on replacing the rear brake light switch. Rather than go stock again on a replacement switch, I went with ACCEL. Given that the previous HD switch lasted only about three years and 35,000 miles, I decided to try something new.

I bought the 181101 model for $15.36 by way of Amazon.com. It’s a wider diameter than the stock switch and I almost panicked when I realized how big it was. Fortunately, I had just what I needed: a 1” deep well, 12-point socket. Last fall I invested in a ½-inch drive socket set and it came with a set of deep well sockets up to one inch. I was really feeling like the universe was on my side. The damned thing actually worked on the first try!

Exhaust Flange

My luck didn’t last. This last weekend, my friend Mike Russo and I went for a 280-mile ride to Salisbury, NC by way of Sanford, Carthage, Biscoe, and Albermarle. Somewhere around Biscoe, I noticed that my engine was making excessive noise. After a quick examination, we concluded that exhaust was leaking from somewhere at the heads, probably from the rear cylinder. As I was riding after that, I could feel more heat than normal on my right leg. It turns out that a nut had come off the flange on the rear exhaust port and the other nut had worked its way loose. We rode well over 120 miles after that at high speed on I-85 and I-40 and that was enough to cook the rear exhaust valve.

Passing Lamp

Oh, but it actually gets a little worse, in a sick—almost funny—kind of way. As we came to a stoplight back in Cary, Mike pulled up on my left and looked at me with one of those looks you don’t want to see. He said, “I hate to tell you, but you’ve got a headlight out.” I replied, “No big deal; it’s just a bulb. We’ll replace it when we get to your house.” I’m thinking you already know how this is going to go. We got to his house and while I examined my exhaust header pipes, Mike pulled the left passing lamp bulb and installed a new one. Didn’t work. He tried another. That one didn’t work. We hooked up a volt meter to the power plug: it had 12V. OK, so now what? We decided to wait until we took it onto Jockeys and let them figure it out.

Jim rewired the socket and got it working. Apparently, there wasn’t quite enough voltage to do the job. After discovering the broken wire on my rear fuel injector, I have a great deal of respect for Jim’s skill at sniffing out and correcting wiring problems.

Valve Work Needed

So now for the really bad news. In addition to the burned out valve, I have excessive carbon buildup in my heads. Jimmy told me this a few years ago and Kevin confirmed it based on what little he could see without actually pulling the rocker box covers and heads off. The labor to clean and rework the heads is high enough to justify switching to a new set of S&S heads, which will cost me—with labor—$1400. Major bummer.

I’ve had to cancel my ride to the Iron Horse Motorcycle Lodge with the Raleigh HOG Chapter in June. I just cannot afford it given these expenses with my bike.

On the positive side, my odds of getting to and from Alberta in June/July without any major mechanical problems are getting better and better. The guys in the office have backed off on a betting pool… :-0)

I'm also expecting a huge boost in performance. When Jimmy cleaned my heads a few years ago, the bike ran like it had a brand new engine. The S&S heads should be even better.

Keep the shiny side up!

-The Long Rider

P.S. I will write more about the new S&S heads after I've had a chance to try them out. Kevin says he can have the bike ready for me by Friday evening. I will then ride to Hendersonville for a three-day weekend. That ought to be 600+ miles of testing. Good enough for another blog post. :-)