So I ate crap today.
The very first time I took my bike out, I headed down a long and quiet road, then after about a mile I tried to make a U turn and head back. At the far right of the road, a little off the side and into the gravel, moving about 4 miles per hour, 1st gear, clutch pulled in, I lost my balance turning left and put my left foot down. The gravel shifted under my foot and the bike started to fall. My instinct in that moment was to grab the neck of the frame and try to pull it back up, but my foot was sliding out from under me as I did that. My instinct was wrong, BTW, because when I pulled my left hand off the clutch to grab the frame, the back wheel began to spin, and as the bike was headed toward the ground, my right hand rolled the throttle back. The rear wheel lurched forward and out, away from me, as the bike fell. I landed flat on my side- head, shoulder, hip, asphalt. I hit the engine kill switch immediately, even before I tried to get up. I barely remember picking the bike up, and I'm sure adrenaline assisted. Gas leaked out of the cap when it fell. I started it up and it ran home just fine. But I did break off the right turn signal with my foot when I tried to jump off the bike. It made me scared to ride it again, for a few minutes. But I found a quieter, cleaner road and started from scratch. The bike is in my parent's garage, and I don't plan on relying on it for commuting any time soon. I'll stick to wide open roads on the weekends until I really kick ass.
I feel old as hell today. I
feel like I fell off my bike going 40 mph. No bruises or anything, but I'm finding myself moaning and grunting to get on and off the couch this evening... But I rode the bike for like 5 hours today, and 2 issues arose.
1: Charging issue. I understand this is common with this bike, and before I took it from the shop the guy said it seemed fine, based on the lights not dimming or something as the bike ran. But after 5 hours of riding, the battery was dead. I was about to buy a new battery, but called my mechanic guy and he said it's most likely the rectifier or (gee, I forget). I'm not too worried about this, my friend says it'll be a quick , easy fix. But what I am concerned about, is problem 2, which is an irregular idle.
When I come to an idle, 4 out of 5 times it's normal, smooth, hangs out around 1,000 rpm. But that 5th time it'll either get stuck at 2,000 rpm, or it will continue to drop past 1,000 until the bike dies. It doesn't make the bike unridable, but it is annoying. My friend says he has no idea why it could be doing that. We replaced the jets and all of the O rings, and cleaned every nook and cranny of the carb. Took like 12 hours (6 of them to jam the thing back into the bike). My friend got out a set of gauges that he hooked to the carb to measure the vacuum, and he said that the right two and the left two aren't reading the same. I didn't note either reading, but I can if that would help you to help me.
Any idea what could cause that?? I've already asked the guys at the Suzuki forum. Probably no harm in asking all over the place...
