CharlieT
I remember the days before there was dirt.
Well, that was a short lived vacation. The old lady and I were headed to Colorado for a two week vacation to see our youngest in Colorado Springs. We were taking our 1984 Goldwing with its California sidecar.
Day one, Tuesday. Hit the road headed to Colorado. Aiming for Hannibal MO for the first night. Every thing had been going great. Brief thunderstorm around Watseka IL....pulled into a gas station with a large over hang when small hail started smacking us. Storm blew thru in about 15min and the sun came back out.
Continued on and was cruising down IL 54 at about 65mph when I noticed the temp gauge had gone up one bar. Not to surprising, it was in the mid-high 80's. A few more miles and all of a sudden the temp gauge goes way up. nurse it a couple of miles to a gas station. When I stop, in the mirrors I noticed a cloud of white smoke behind the bike and there is that sickingly sweet aroma of antifreeze in the air. Shut it down, let the fan runn and cool it down. Once its cooled down, fire it back up. Starts right up, sounds fine, but *both* pipes have faint white sweet smelling smoke coming from them which gets worse reving the engine.
WTF??? Looks like we blew BOTH headgaskets. H2O level is only down about 6-8oz. No drainage from the waterpump weep hole. Suspect the 30 y/o thermostat gave up the ghost and stuck shut or partially so.
So we are in Farmer City IL, about 20mi from CHampaign/Urbana. Ain't nothing in Farmer City. Call Uhaul trying to find a truck with a trailer. THey got just what we need, or so they thought. Tried finding a ride into Champaign to the Uhaul store. Call uHaul back to get directions and diwscover they had no clue what a sidecar is. There 5x9 trailer with a built in wheel chock for the bike ain't going to work for a Goldwing hack that's 6ft wide!! The have nothing for one-way rental that will work.
SO we hatch plan B. Rental car, drive it back to Kazoo, get my truck and trailer, drive back to Farmer City and pick-up the bike. THought about continuingon to CO with the rental car, but no where to leave the Wing for two weeks, and we would still have to get it back to MI.
So through the miracle of the internet, a Do The Ton chat group I'm in, a guy in Atlanta knows a DTT member lies near Champaign, but has no contact info. Another member, in North Carolina, chimes in that they have his contact info and wants our phone #. In short order we are talking with the gentleman he drives out to Farmer City, picks us up and takes us back to the airport in Champaign to get a rental car.
So get up the next morning, drive the 300mi back to Kazoo, turn in the rental car, hook up the trailer to the truck, turn around and head the 300mi back to Farmer City. Get there about 8pm, CST. Get the ramps set and the wing lined up, but with only Steph and I, we can't push the Wing/sidecar up onto the trailer. Well, over at the gas pumps at this truck stop sit three decked out Harleys. So I start walking over where the bikes are and out of the station come three gentleman, obviously the bike riders as the are decked out in their denim patch covered colors, bandanas, tats and all. SO I walked up commented on their bikes and asked if the could help out a fellow biker.
Told them what happened and that Steph and I could not push the bike onto the trailer by our selves. So the three outlaw bikers come over and help us load the Wing onto the trailer. THanks to the "Sinful Sons M/C" we were ready to roll on home back to Michigan.
Between DTT and the ADVRider forums, we had numerous calls, texts and emails offering assistance, some from as far as two hours away willing to drive that far to help out. Just goes to show what a good group of folks bikers are.
Day one, Tuesday. Hit the road headed to Colorado. Aiming for Hannibal MO for the first night. Every thing had been going great. Brief thunderstorm around Watseka IL....pulled into a gas station with a large over hang when small hail started smacking us. Storm blew thru in about 15min and the sun came back out.
Continued on and was cruising down IL 54 at about 65mph when I noticed the temp gauge had gone up one bar. Not to surprising, it was in the mid-high 80's. A few more miles and all of a sudden the temp gauge goes way up. nurse it a couple of miles to a gas station. When I stop, in the mirrors I noticed a cloud of white smoke behind the bike and there is that sickingly sweet aroma of antifreeze in the air. Shut it down, let the fan runn and cool it down. Once its cooled down, fire it back up. Starts right up, sounds fine, but *both* pipes have faint white sweet smelling smoke coming from them which gets worse reving the engine.
WTF??? Looks like we blew BOTH headgaskets. H2O level is only down about 6-8oz. No drainage from the waterpump weep hole. Suspect the 30 y/o thermostat gave up the ghost and stuck shut or partially so.
So we are in Farmer City IL, about 20mi from CHampaign/Urbana. Ain't nothing in Farmer City. Call Uhaul trying to find a truck with a trailer. THey got just what we need, or so they thought. Tried finding a ride into Champaign to the Uhaul store. Call uHaul back to get directions and diwscover they had no clue what a sidecar is. There 5x9 trailer with a built in wheel chock for the bike ain't going to work for a Goldwing hack that's 6ft wide!! The have nothing for one-way rental that will work.
SO we hatch plan B. Rental car, drive it back to Kazoo, get my truck and trailer, drive back to Farmer City and pick-up the bike. THought about continuingon to CO with the rental car, but no where to leave the Wing for two weeks, and we would still have to get it back to MI.
So through the miracle of the internet, a Do The Ton chat group I'm in, a guy in Atlanta knows a DTT member lies near Champaign, but has no contact info. Another member, in North Carolina, chimes in that they have his contact info and wants our phone #. In short order we are talking with the gentleman he drives out to Farmer City, picks us up and takes us back to the airport in Champaign to get a rental car.
So get up the next morning, drive the 300mi back to Kazoo, turn in the rental car, hook up the trailer to the truck, turn around and head the 300mi back to Farmer City. Get there about 8pm, CST. Get the ramps set and the wing lined up, but with only Steph and I, we can't push the Wing/sidecar up onto the trailer. Well, over at the gas pumps at this truck stop sit three decked out Harleys. So I start walking over where the bikes are and out of the station come three gentleman, obviously the bike riders as the are decked out in their denim patch covered colors, bandanas, tats and all. SO I walked up commented on their bikes and asked if the could help out a fellow biker.
Told them what happened and that Steph and I could not push the bike onto the trailer by our selves. So the three outlaw bikers come over and help us load the Wing onto the trailer. THanks to the "Sinful Sons M/C" we were ready to roll on home back to Michigan.
Between DTT and the ADVRider forums, we had numerous calls, texts and emails offering assistance, some from as far as two hours away willing to drive that far to help out. Just goes to show what a good group of folks bikers are.
