Oh boy! What a day!

As I alluded to last evening, my bike had a breakdown. It wasn’t catastrophic, but very concerning. As we were making our way through the mountains of northern Georgia, my bike started making clunking and grinding noises. We stopped to check it out and couldn’t see anything obvious coming apart. After a while I recognized the clunking sound as probably coming from the compensator.

Once we got to our hotel, I called Harley-Davidson of Asheville and made an appointment with them to check out the bike in the morning. The bike was making noises, but it was ridable.

First thing in the morning we got packed up early and back on the road shortly after breakfast. (The Sleep Inn had a very good hot breakfast.) We hooked the trailer to Beth’s bike. Sound familiar?

The tech at the dealer did a test ride and heard the noise immediately. When he opened up the primary, he found that the compensator nut was not very tight. We decided to have him torque it to spec and put everything back together. A new compensator had been installed just 4000 miles ago. On his check ride, the tech found the problem that made us adjust our plans. The rear motor shock mounts appear to not be functioning as they should. Under heavy stress the motor vibrates enough that the primary cover bangs against the swing arm. That banging is one of the noises I was hearing on the mountain road. We don’t want to risk breaking the primary cover, so we considered coming back home and starting over while we had lunch in the parking lot.

Once the problems were identified, the sales team put together a proposal to take my bike in on trade for a new bike. They could offer me only wholesale for my bike. While they were doing their research, I called my salesperson in St. Pete. She felt she could put together a better deal, and I would have the opportunity to trade in two bikes. We decided to ride the bikes home and perhaps buy a new bike.

Once on the road I could tell the compensator sounds were completely gone. I could make the primary cover bang, but I tried not to. The interstates are pretty smooth, so it wasn’t difficult to hold the vibration to a minimum.

We stopped for gas and some Dunkin’ coffee at a Pilot truck stop. Notice in the background of the picture below that the left fender is on the trailer.

We ran into some rain a few minutes later.

We pulled under a gas station canopy and waited it out.

Not too long after we got back on the road, Beth said she saw something like a piece of black plastic fall off the back of her bike or the trailer. When we pulled off into a gas station, we saw what fell off. The left fender of the trailer. It just wiggled loose and broke off. Unbelievable!

Also, the tire was worn down to the fabric in one area.

We changed the tire and pressed on.

About 8:00 p.m. we decided to have some fast food and get a room in Walterboro, SC. We’ll get ourselves home tomorrow and go to the dealer on Sunday to see what kind of a deal we are offered on a new bike.

I’m not ready to be old yet, but I feel I’m too old for these breakdowns. Maybe the issue is that I buy old stuff and attempt to fix it up. Something to think about.