Black Dog Dual Sport Ride

Last winter, around January or February, my friend Ray talked me into entering this event, a two-day dual sport ride: http://www.blackdogdualsport.com/bd_events.htm.  I thought that with Ray also entered, although he would be riding the more difficult "A" course versus my less challenging "B" course, I would at least have somebody there that I could hang out with and maybe share a ride to and from the event.  Well, last weekend was the event, and Ray couldn't make it due to some eye surgery that he was recovering from.  So Carolyn and I showed up Saturday morning and tried to figure it our on our own.  Suiting up:

 

Before we even got out on the course they had us ride some little obstacles and I chose the slow route over some boards rather than ride over the tractor tires:

 

Once out on the course, the first challenge was learning to use a roll chart that the club had provided.  This gave turn-by-turn instructions for following the course, which only had rudimentary course marking.  I got lost within the first few miles.  The problem was that my motorcycle odometer was way off from the mileage on the roll chart so that I made a turn too early and then nothing matched up after that.  I went back to the start and gave it another go.  This time I relied on my Garmin Zumo GPS for mileage and it matched much closer. 

Within maybe the first 10 miles the course was routed down a god-awful rocky downhill that had me creeping along with one foot on the ground and releasing the brakes to gain a couple of feet and then do it all over again.  I wish I had taken some pictures, but I was in survival mode and not about to let go of the handlebars to grab the camera.  Back when I had a real dirt bike and the skill to ride it, I'm sure I would have been able to ride down that hill, but I still probably would not have liked it.  That was the worst of it, but the course continued to be really rocky, plus mud holes and steep climbs.  Finally, I fell over on an uphill and the bike landed with the wheels uphill and the tank and bars downhill.  I couldn't pick it up in that position and had to wait for somebody to come along and help me.  I was quickly getting exhausted and sweating like a pig. 

This was not starting out well.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to do 160 miles like that.  I decided to switch to the "C" route, which was supposed to be more for the bigger adventure-type bikes.  My bike is not very big, but then, neither am I, so it is more an adventure bike for little old men.  When the "B" route joined with the "C" route the riding got much more enjoyable and I ended up riding on the Old Barlow Road, which is part of the route the Pioneers took into Oregon.  I've been on this road once before and wanted to learn how to find it again, and this time I had my GPS to provide a track for me.  It had rained the two days before the even and it was cloudy and drizzling on Saturday, so the road was in perfect condition.  The only problem was that my sweat from the earlier exertion was now making me cold:

All was going well and I was beginning to really enjoy the ride, when I came to a place where the route chart just did not match the roads.  People were riding all over the place trying to figure it out.  I hooked up with another guy who said he thought the course went to the little town of Wamec, so we headed down that way.  It was a long way to Wamec and when we got there we still could not find the course.  About the only option by that time was to take highways back to the start at the Hood River county fairgrounds.  I did eventually cross the course and finished the last 10 miles or so on the correct route.   By the time I got to the finish, though, I had gone 212 miles instead of the 160 that was supposed to be the distance. 

Carolyn and I stayed in the town of Hood River, which was about 9 miles from the fairgrounds, and breakfast at the hotel was at 6 am and the riders meeting was at 7 am.  By the time we had breakfast and I suited up we were running late, so I was driving sort of fast to get to the rider's meeting.......and I got pulled over by a county sheriff.  I was lucky that he ended up not giving me a ticket. 

There was a guy behind me at the start and we seemed to be riding together for quite a few miles.  Eventually I stopped and we had a chat.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was riding a military motorcycle made by Fred Hayes, who used to belong to the same club as I (Chaparrals) when I lived in Southern California. 

 

 

 

The rider's name was Jake, and he turned out to be a really interesting guy.  He had been working his butt off in North Dakota in the oil fields and had saved up enough money to quit his job and go adventuring.  He bought the bike in Utah,  trucked it to the border below San Diego, and then rode it down to Cabo on the tip of Baja California and back.  He was next going to work his way towards Mt. Rainier which he plans to climb during the last week in this month.  He found out about the Black Dog while passing through Hood River when he stopped at a bike shop to buy a new shift lever, and decided to do the Sunday ride. 

I told him I knew quite a bit about the story of the military motorcycle he was riding and could maybe find out some details of his particular bike. 

We ended up riding the whole day together and had a good time.  The ride itself, though, couldn't have been more different than the day before.  It was basically a road ride with a lot of pavement and a few dusty gravel roads thrown in.  Jake and I kept a pretty brisk pace, which was all the more impressive because his rear shock was toast.  He had hit a ditch in Baja at high speed and blew the seals in the shock.  Consequently, it had very little oil in it and he would bounce like a pogo stick whenever he hit a bump or road dip. 

                                                                                        Jake

At the finish, after talking to Jake, Carolyn and I realized he had no place to stay and no way to work on his bike before he was scheduled to climb Mt Rainier (he was meeting a climbing partner in Seattle).  So we decided to invite him to stay with us and we would try to either fix the shock or get a replacement.  Jake stayed that night.....and the next......and the next.  We just could not find parts for the shock, or any replacement that could be obtained in a reasonable time.  We had a great visit though.  Jake is a real gearhead and biker.  He owns three other motorcycles besides the military KLR; two dirt bikes and a GSXR 1000. He told stories of the many varied and interesting jobs he has had in his 30 years of living.   I even put him to work helping me chip branches from trees I had felled in my firewood gathering work.  We put in a pretty full afternoon at it in between rain showers on Monday. 

 I also managed to get in touch with Fred Hayes and got this email response from him about the motorcycle:

"Hi Gerry:

Great to hear from you.  Hope all is well with you and Carolyn.
The bike was manufactured 04/2000 as part of a Marine Corps contract as shown on the data plate.  There were several hundred auctioned off between 2004 and 2009 that didn't get into the diesel conversion contract.  This is one of those units.

This unit is one of the earlier units as it doesn't have the vents in the front of the gas tank.  If he ever wanted one of the new tanks, he may be able to get one from IMS Products.

I'm still building diesel bikes and you can check out what I've been doing at www.dieselmotorcycles.com

Again, great to hear from you.

Best to all,
Fred & Kay..."

By Wednesday, though, we had given up on finding a solution for the broken shock, and just put some gear oil in the old one and put it back on the bike.  We figured the gear oil might not leak out of the blown seal as fast as real shock oil.  Jake left on Wednesday morning and Carolyn and I wish him well and safe climbing on Rainier. 

 

Mustang Motor Tear-down

Brian and Colin were down this weekend and we put the Mustang away for the summer, but also got the old motor out and took it apart.  I'm pretty sure the plan is to buy a new drop-in crate motor, but I still wanted to see if the old motor was salvageable.  I also wanted to give Colin and Brian a chance to do some "wrenching" and see what the inside of a car engine looked like.  When we took the engine out of the Mustang we put it on an engine stand and it has been there in the equipment shed for the past two years.  We got it out and over to the shop and started taking it apart.  We had the intake manifold and the heads off before I thought to take some pictures, but what we found was the most caked-up engine I have ever seen.  This photo of the lifter galley was taken AFTER a lot of the gunk had been removed:

Then we turned it over and took the oil pan off:

 
Some residual coolant drained out plus more gunk:

 

Colin got to take the oil pan bolts out the old way while I used the quick and lazy way:

 

Next came the lower end con rod bolts:

 

Once we started taking the pistons out we were in for a big surprise; two of the pistons had broken skirts:

 

We found the broken pieces and they were intact and had not been ground into little bits, but it must have made a heck of a racket to have them rattling around in the crank case. 

Many of the bolts on the motor were quite a bit looser than I expected, especially the intake manifold and head bolts.  Maybe this engine had over heated and stretched them.  The crankshaft bolts were another matter, and it took Colin some extra effort to get them loose:

 

Once he popped a few of them loose, I showed him how much easier it was by using an air wrench:

 

We didn't actually take the crankshaft out as it was getting time for dinner and we still needed to get the cam chain off, which meant a bit more disassembly.  I will do that later, and also try to find a way to measure the bore diameter of the cylinders to see if the block can be bored again.  I don't think it can, as a crude measurement with my calipers showed it was already about 0.045 in. over and there are some scratches from those broken pistons that would have to be removed. 

The next day was Brian and Colin's day to help gram and gramps with some home projects.  The first was the removal of a tree that we had planted when we first moved in that was now so big it was shading other plants that Carolyn wanted to get more sun.  I made some partial cuts and then hooked the tractor up and pulled it over:

 

 

Then we chipped the branches:

 

And hauled off the big pieces.  That Colin is a strong kid; I don't think I would want to try to lift that log:

The next project was to help me with my firewood gathering.  I'm getting close to completing my yearly 4.5 cords, but any help is appreciated.  First we load up rounds I've cut from our property next door:

 

Take it to the wood shed:

 

And commence splitting and stacking:

The axe man:

 

The loggers:

It Was a Perfect Ride Until.........

Recall from earlier posts that I had fixed up a motorcycle for our daughter Jenny and we took it to her home in San Francisco.  After we left her, I hatched a plan for Carolyn and I to do a ride with her down the famous California Highway 1, along the coast north of San Francisco.  The plan was for us to meet Jen in Garberville, which is about 210 miles north of SF on highway 101.  We would spend the night in Garberville and then ride south together down highway 1 back to her house.  The only weekend available for Jenny to do this was Memorial Day weekend.  This had me nervous, since I make it a rule to not ride at all on weekends, and certainly not on a holiday weekend.  However, since we would be meeting on Saturday and riding back to SF on Sunday, I thought we would at least avoid the mad rush back into the city at the end of the holiday weekend. 

Carolyn and I had a pretty long ride just to get to Garberville, and riding two-up, we don't like to do a lot of miles each day.  So we started on Thursday, and took a route which took us over the Cascades to Central Oregon and then back over the mountains near Crater Lake and over to highway 101 at Crescent City, California.  On the first day, riding over Mt Hood, we took a little detour to Trillium Lake for the classic photo of Mt Hood reflected in the lake:

The Cascades are beautiful this time of the year (actually, any time of the year), with lush new growth and lots of water in the rivers from snowmelt. 

After our second night out, which we spent in Crescent City, we detoured again to the city of Ferndale, California.  This is one of our favorite little towns.  It has lots of restored grand old homes and nice gardens.  This is a typical house:

 

 



We got to the motel in Garberville just minutes before Jenny arrived.  Since it was too early to check in, Jen and I went for a little ride back up 101 to the Humbolt Redwoods state park while Carolyn watched the luggage and waited for the rooms to become available.  Here is a shot of a bubble-headed alien checking its cell phone:

After we got back to the motel and the riding was done, it was time to kick back and relax by the pool:

The next morning we headed down the coast highway.  Highway 1 is always an iffy proposition, since it can be very foggy and cold at any time of the year.  But we lucked out and the weather was perfect.  There was a pretty strong wind, but generally, it was at our backs, which helps reduce wind noise in our helmets.  Before this trip I had bought some upgraded intercoms that allowed for up to four-way open conversation.  We could talk to each other just as if we were riding in a car together.  It helped immensely to make us all feel connected and be able to discuss what we were seeing. 

We stopped at Fort Ross, which is a fort established by Russians in the early 19th century when the unexplored west coast of North America was pretty much up for grabs by any country.  Here are some pics of the group at the fort:

We had absolutely cloudless skies the whole way down the coast:

 

BUT, as we were approaching the end of highway 1 in Mill Valley, we got into heavy traffic and I was not paying much attention to the gauges and lights on my bike.  We got stopped in a shady part of the highway and the voltmeter light caught my eye as it was BLINKING RED!  I had never seen it do that before.  It meant the battery was getting seriously discharged.  I tried reving the engine, but it made no difference.  Obviously, the alternator was not sending current to the battery.  There wasn't much I could do except hope the indicator was faulty, but it was not to be, and shortly afterwards the bike quit with a dead battery.  We were 15 miles from Jen's house, but no way to get there.  Time to call a tow truck:

 

We got to Jen's house late Sunday night.  Since Monday was a holiday, no shops or even online sources for parts were open.  I spent the day researching the problem and found that there had been stator failures reported on my make and model.  The stator and the rotor are two parts that make up the alternator, but the rotor is basically just a spinning magnet and not much can go wrong with it.  I got real lucky in that Jen's next door neighbor had a fairly extensive set of tools and he and I set to taking the bike apart to get to the stator.  This is what we found:

 

Note the crispy looking coils......not good. 

In addition to not having my own tools, I really missed my motorcycle lift.  It would have allowed me to stand alongside the bike while working on it, instead of doing it like this:

By Monday afternoon I had the old stator out and the gasket surfaces cleaned.  I managed to save the old gasket. 

 

Note the garden trowel used as a wheel chock.  The garage floor was sloping slightly towards the front of the bike. 

Tuesday morning I started calling around for a stator that I could get ASAP.  It wasn't easy, but eventually I found a shop in downtown San Francisco that said they could order one and get it the next day.  As a side benefit, it was made in the USA and cost less than half what a dealer part would have cost. 

They called me Wednesday around noon, so I borrowed Jen's bike and headed downtown to get it.  The shop was a funky little place called Tokio Moto:

 

But the parts manager, Michelle, obviously knew her stuff:

 

The new stator looked a lot better than the old one:

 

I got back to Jen's, had a little lunch, and then her neighbor Joe and I started the reconstruction.  By dinner time we had it back together, including an oil and filter change which Cathy recommended was a good idea after a stator burn-out. 

Not knowing how long it would take me to get the bike running again, Carolyn bailed on Tuesday and took a plane back home as her sister Lynda was coming down on Friday for her birthday celebration with lunch reservations. 

Thursday morning I took off on the solo ride home.  I managed to get in some twisty roads that I knew of around Weaverville, CA, where I stayed the first night.  The next day I jumped on Interstate 5 and got home after 12 hours and 520 miles. 

So, it was a bit of an adventure, but a lot of things worked out well......being close to jen's house when the bike quit, having a garage to work in and tools to work with, getting the new stator so quickly, and having great weather for riding the whole time.