murray
Sep 6th, 2007, 10:26 am
Here is my brief IBR ride report.
First I would like to congratulate all LT riders on there ride, I know most of us had adversity.
Overall the LT did well here are some of the challenges we had to deal with.
Day 2 my Aux. fuel cell would not transfer fuel.The electric fuel pump was fried fortunately I had a spare. The repair took about 1 1/2 hours.
Day 4 after departing from Biloxi Mississippi my center stand exploded while riding down the road ! I had my legs down and felt the centerstand hit me in the left boot. The left side of the centerstand was dragging on the ground, the right side was held up by the spring.The broken stand forced me to pull over. My first thought was to salvage the stand , hold it up with wire and get the stand welded at checkpoint #1. Further concerns prompted me to remove the stand when I questioned the security of the mechanics wire.The center stand was not easy to remove due to the mounting being resistfull. Down time just over 1 hour.
After scoring about 9 pm that night it was time for maintenance. The plan was to check fluids and swap the rear wheel.This normally would have been a easy task and a 10 min. job but without the centerstand I was forced to improvise.I was able to use a scizzer jack to lift the rear of the bike after removing the reaction link and change the wheel.This could not be done alone thankfully I had the help of 4 other checkpoint spectators stabilizing the LT.My maintenance took about 2.5 hours when it should have been 30 min.I had some major help with the wheel job from one of our forum members And a big THANK YOU goes out to you.
Day 5 -6 hours and over 100 vague bonus locations later the adversity continues not with the bike but just prior to downloading waypoints and routs to my GPS my laptop shuts off DIES !! This is a major kick in the teeth. I regain my composure restart the computer and all is lost.At this point I switched to my tablet computer and reloaded about 70 of the bonus locations and replott my routs and transferred the info to my 2 GPS units.I was relived but did not depart RHQ until 2: 30 pm .
The scramble was on this delay cost me numerous time sensitive big point bonus locations throughout the rest of the rally.
The big killer was the almost 25,000 point bonus at the observatory in California I missed by 25 minutes, this was a 1 ay only bonus.
Moving on Day 9 the last bike problem I had was my hedder pipe on the exhaust broke reducing power and gas mileage. The reduced power forced me to use more throttle which increased motor temps. This was a factor in Nevada Utah and Colorado where high ambient temps and altitude forced my bike to almost overheat, I had to slow the pase considerably to keep the fans from engaging.
Bottom line the LT made it, and considering the varied adversity with mechanicals and lap top.I am thankfull to be one of the IBR finishers.
Like others who had problems one will not know for sure how many more points could have been scored if there ride was trouble free.
IBR #359
First I would like to congratulate all LT riders on there ride, I know most of us had adversity.
Overall the LT did well here are some of the challenges we had to deal with.
Day 2 my Aux. fuel cell would not transfer fuel.The electric fuel pump was fried fortunately I had a spare. The repair took about 1 1/2 hours.
Day 4 after departing from Biloxi Mississippi my center stand exploded while riding down the road ! I had my legs down and felt the centerstand hit me in the left boot. The left side of the centerstand was dragging on the ground, the right side was held up by the spring.The broken stand forced me to pull over. My first thought was to salvage the stand , hold it up with wire and get the stand welded at checkpoint #1. Further concerns prompted me to remove the stand when I questioned the security of the mechanics wire.The center stand was not easy to remove due to the mounting being resistfull. Down time just over 1 hour.
After scoring about 9 pm that night it was time for maintenance. The plan was to check fluids and swap the rear wheel.This normally would have been a easy task and a 10 min. job but without the centerstand I was forced to improvise.I was able to use a scizzer jack to lift the rear of the bike after removing the reaction link and change the wheel.This could not be done alone thankfully I had the help of 4 other checkpoint spectators stabilizing the LT.My maintenance took about 2.5 hours when it should have been 30 min.I had some major help with the wheel job from one of our forum members And a big THANK YOU goes out to you.
Day 5 -6 hours and over 100 vague bonus locations later the adversity continues not with the bike but just prior to downloading waypoints and routs to my GPS my laptop shuts off DIES !! This is a major kick in the teeth. I regain my composure restart the computer and all is lost.At this point I switched to my tablet computer and reloaded about 70 of the bonus locations and replott my routs and transferred the info to my 2 GPS units.I was relived but did not depart RHQ until 2: 30 pm .
The scramble was on this delay cost me numerous time sensitive big point bonus locations throughout the rest of the rally.
The big killer was the almost 25,000 point bonus at the observatory in California I missed by 25 minutes, this was a 1 ay only bonus.
Moving on Day 9 the last bike problem I had was my hedder pipe on the exhaust broke reducing power and gas mileage. The reduced power forced me to use more throttle which increased motor temps. This was a factor in Nevada Utah and Colorado where high ambient temps and altitude forced my bike to almost overheat, I had to slow the pase considerably to keep the fans from engaging.
Bottom line the LT made it, and considering the varied adversity with mechanicals and lap top.I am thankfull to be one of the IBR finishers.
Like others who had problems one will not know for sure how many more points could have been scored if there ride was trouble free.
IBR #359