‘thebikersmeyer’
Our Bikes
1974 Honda
CB360 – Purchased new 1973.
1997 Honda
GL1500 – Purchased used in 1998 with 17K miles.
2002
Honda GL1800 – Purchased new 11/2002 & trade-in for current ride, 03/2007 with
80K miles.
2007 Honda GL1800
– Current Ride, purchased new 03/2007. 72K
and counting (01/2011)
2009 Kawasaki
KLR650 – Current Ride, purchased new 10/30/2009. 2600 and counting (01/2011)
1997 Honda
Magna - Purchased used 11/2001 with 5K miles.
Trade-in at 11K miles 11/2002 for Gary’s 2002 GL1800
1997 Honda
GL1500 – Inherited from Gary 11/2002 with 50K miles. Sold to private party 05/2004 with 75K miles
2004 Honda
GL1800 – Current Ride, purchased new the end of 03/2004. 119K & counting (01/2011)
2009 Kawasaki
KLR650 – Current Ride, purchased new 10/30/2009. 2400 and counting (01/2011)
1/5/2011
– Ride, love, and enjoy life.
2011: Gary racked up the miles last year with Guy
trips and vacations. Alice vows to do
the same this year.
Alice caved
in and joined Facebook - Trying to get back in touch with friends and family.
We did get
involved with a couple other motorcycle related Forums – Two Wheeled Texans and KLR650.net. We have met some impressive people and
expanded our list of friends. We’re
hoping we learned a few things too. We
even hosted a tech day for our new KLR friends.
Luckily we had a few folks show up that actually knew how to work on
these things! ; ) Gary did the “Doo Hickey” upgrade on my
bike. We’re still working on his “Doo
Hickey”. We bought ourselves radiator
guards and upgraded bash plates for Christmas.
Santa also brought Alice some hand guards. Gary won a Gerbings
heated Jacket liner this past year and he’s been enjoying it quite a bit. Need to find out if he can use it on the KLR.
4/6/2010
– Yes, we have fallen off the face of the earth.
After getting
the KLRs, we found ourselves in a very wet and cold winter. One of Alice’s riding mantra’s
is ‘I’ll ride in the rain and I’ll ride in the cold, but I really do not enjoy
riding cold and wet’. Thank goodness
winter seems to have departed. We’ve
managed to get some riding in and have done our best to blow the rust off, so
to speak. I guess it’s now time to look
into dirt bike school so we can use our KLRs with more confidence.
5/22/2009 – Alice “Just glad to be alive!”
After all the
work/maintenance we put into Haole Girl in February,
I had a bit of an incident on the way home from vacation. By the way, I did take her into to the shop
for the remaining clutch & brake fluid change before I left. She did make the 100K milestone and then
some. Read more about my adventure here:
"GoldWings Really do Fly".
Cycle Center
of Denton called today to tell us they have a preliminary $5K repair estimate
to get her fixed up. I got out of the
doctor’s office with only a $160 bill. Haole Girl will also need an oil change and a good bath,
but that will have to wait until I heal a bit.
Now we just need to get a visit from our Insurance Adjustor to tell us
how much we can expect to get for the necessary repairs.
4/22/2009 – Alice’s ’04 GL1800 Accessories List
I was asked
what I had done to my bike, as far as modifications and started a list… OH
MY! I keep telling folks that the bike
is just the down-payment… I guess now I can believe it. Check out my
list, I haven’t added up the costs yet.
Guess I’ll need to go through all my receipts.
3/11/2009 – Gary’s ’07 GL1800 New Suspension/Transmission Status
& Alice’s ’04 GL1800 Maintenance status
So far so
good with Gary’s bike, it appears anyway.
He hasn’t had a lot of quality time with his bike to really give the new
suspension a workout.
We did manage
to get my bike back together Thursday (2/25/9) so that I could ride her to my
class this weekend. Because I was riding
mostly in urban commuter traffic I didn’t get a chance to give her a work out,
but was confident in the test run. I did
notice that she was a lot smoother running overall. Not that she was all the terrible before, but
just shifting, idling, running, accelerating and decelerating smoother. Perhaps because it’s been about a month since
I had a chance to ride her? Dang it
feels good to be back in the saddle again!
The
unfortunate thing with getting her back together and ride-able,
is that I keep forgetting I still have more work to do! I need to change the brake and clutch fluid,
still. A friend has loaned me a bleeder
kit that should help. I also haven’t
sent in my rear shock and spring to Progressive. Read on their website that their shock only
has a 1 year warranty. I’ll have to see
what it would cost for them to test/rebuilt it.
Lessons
learned - if you take your time to do your research, get the right tools, give
yourself time, it really isn’t that hard to work on your own bike. It also helps to have a friend who’s “been
there before” when you find yourself in a troublesome spot. I feel a lot more confident in not only my
bike, but also in my abilities to handle this bike – on & off.
I am
confident that we’ll be doing this again in another 5 years! So, I’ll wrap this up by saying… Haole Girl and I have some memories to make. See you on the road.
2/22/2009 – Gary’s ’07 GL1800 Transmission Repair & Alice’s
’04 GL1800 Maintenance status
Gary got his
bike back late yesterday (Saturday)! His
bike did have the dreaded bent shift fork.
Which caused damage to other gears. Good news – it was covered under
warranty. So, Gary got his
Birthday/Anniversary/Christmas/any other holiday gift early this year – Traxxion Suspension.
He got the “full meal deal”: Front - Fork Springs, All Balls Steering
Head Bearings, & Fork Brace w/ guard; Rear – Spring,
Shock, & Steel Braided line to the preload adjustor. So I dropped him off and told him to have
fun, I was going back to work on the bike some more.
Saturday, we
had been working on trying getting the rear spring & shock off the bike,
but realized too late that the lower mounting bolt was blocked by the centerstand. The centerstand was blocked because it was a lifting point on
the lift. I did find that the preload
actuator wasn’t engaging until it was pumping for 8 on a scale of 0-25. Got the spark plugs gap
checked and installed. Well, now
that we have the covers off let’s try getting the valve clearance checked. Got all the covers and additional plastics
removed. Got to the point of needing to
release the timing chain tension and found that our screwdriver just wasn’t
long enough. Managed
to make a tool, which worked once, then bent under pressure when turning the
motor to check the next cylinder.
We also managed to round the head of the cap bolt for the timing chain
tensioner opening for the right side. It
was time for bed - we were frustrated and tired after not making a lot of
progress.
Sunday, we
had some ideas for how to remove the stuck cap bolt and make the timing chain
tensioner tool, got out in the morning while it was still cold to get
supplies. Got home and tried again on
the rounded head to no avail. I decided
it was time to call in a friend. Now
this friend is more than a friend, he has a lot of knowledge of bikes and in
particular, this bike! Him and his wife
were there in not time, got the stuck cap bolt unstuck and brought us the
tensioner tool he had bought! He also
shared with us that it would be easier to turn the motor with the spark plugs
removed. Dang it that’s valuable
information not included in the BIG service manual! We also found we didn’t need any adjustments
to our valve clearance, so after another hour of work - the engine is back
together – yippee!
Our friends
also brought a spare rear shock set up (with progressive spring), and assisted
Gary in getting the lower mounting bolt loose, without taking it off the
lift. So we also got the rear suspension
system installed. His spare preload
actuator engaged at 4, much better! My “phone a friend also evaluated my rear
brake rotor, final driver, and caliper and said, all looks good, so I got to
check those off the list without doing work.
So let’s see,
where am I at on my to do list: Coolant, Replace Spark Plugs, Valve
Clearance Check/Shim, Replace Final Drive Unit, Clean Brake
Calipers, Rear spring/shock/actuator removed, Replace Rear Brake
Caliper, Check or Replace Rear Shock Actuator
Sending
the rear suspension items to Progressive for eval
next week (lifetime warranty!)
Fork oil and disabling the anti-dive is next on the list. While there, we’ll retorque
the steering head bearings and replace the air filter. Before putting up all the dash components I
have to figure out where I’m going to move my headlight modulator switch. At some point in there will be the clutch
fluid and fog light lens replacement.
Last we will do stuff that can be done when the bike is back together –
brake fluid, engine oil, & final drive oil.
2/8/2009 – Gary’s ’07 GL1800 Transmission Failure & Alice’s
’04 GL1800 100K Maintenance
Late in 2008 Alice started to plan her bike’s
5th birthday / 100K milestone (March/April
2009). She started to pull together
resources and information about some items to look at, parts and tools needed,
and a host of other items to consider.
She decided that February would be a good month to do the job since
February in Dallas, TX is notoriously a one of those winter months with
unpredictable weather and at least one ice storm for good measure. She started her list of maintenance
items: Replace Fluids: Brake, Master
Cylinder, Clutch, Coolant, Fork Oil, Final Drive, Engine Oil, Replace Air
Filter, Replace Spark Plugs, Valve Clearance Check/Shim, Disable Anti-Dive
Unit, Replace Final Drive Unit, Clean Brake Calipers, Replace Fog Light Lens
Covers, Move Headlight Modulator Switch, Have Rear Spring/Shock
checked/repaired, Replace Rear Brake Caliper, Retorque
Head Bearings, Check or Replace Rear Shock Actuator, and few more that are
surely forgotten from this list. The final
drive and other rear end components were found cheap as left over parts from a
local Trike Conversion. All other items,
list of tools and supplies was growing quickly.
What we didn’t know,
was that before Alice could get started on her bike, Gary’s bike would take a
vacation. On the way home from an
unseasonably warm & sunny Sat (Jan 31st), his bike dropped out
of 5th gear with no inclination of returning. Coming to a stop sign, he now noticed that
1st gear was nothing more than grinding noises.
We were about an hour out from home and the closest dealership to
us. Luckily he made it to the dealership
before closing, but not before his bike sounded like a box of rocks. We feared the worst – a bent shift fork. We had been reading the tales of others on a
message board (GL1800 Riders) with such symptoms. The shop, down on mechanics due to illness
and planned training, didn’t even get a chance to look at it until a week
later. The verdict is still out, but the
Service Manager has been very optimistic.
We are waiting to hear what Mother Honda has to say, before we more any
further. After all, they just started to
tear the bike apart. But Gary does get
his Birthday/Anniversary/Christmas present at the same time – new upgraded
suspension (Traxxion).
So, this weekend was the weekend we started Alice’s Bike Teardown. Friday worked against Alice with issues turning from an hour into several. She did manage to get four of the six gallons of gas removed from the tank via siphon hose. Yes the garage still smells of gasoline. The other two gallons were removed the old fashioned way – by riding. Gary wouldn’t ride pillion, so once again, Alice had to ride on the back of her own bike! Saturday turned out to be a good start on the projects at hand. We got down to the air filter and gas tank removal, removed the lower cowl plastics and front fender. While we were there, we rerouted a breather tube drain plug, so we wouldn’t have to remove the lower engine cover AND highway boards in the future. Sunday (today) turned out to be another day of obstacles. In attempting to do the brake fluid change, we managed to get air in the lines. After a full bottle of brake fluid, we decided we had enough and buttoned it up. That will be attempted again later. We did get the wheels removed and prepped the rear for the final drive removal. We will need to get some more items for that before starting on that project and are seriously thinking of using our “call a friend” list for supervisory duty. Should be plug & play, but with something this vital (and potentially expensive), we really don’t want to mess things up. This coming week and weekend we have a lot on the plate, so looks like this project will be on hold for a while. Pics Stay Tuned!….