Sunday, Apr 13, 2003

April has not been a good month for me and vehicles.

• On the SMBC ride to Death Valley (http://smbc.snafu.org/trips/2003/dvspring/) my R1150RT tipped over in a parking lot and scratched a valve cover.
• I took the car to breakfast with the Saturday group and scratched a fender skirt on a high curb.
• Today I low-sided the R69S when I lost traction on a very slippery road.

I’ve had better months!

The new valve cover I ordered arrived a few days ago and it’s time to put it on the bike. The strong coffee gives the necessary energy to insert the studs. The loctite probably isn’t needed, but I used it anyway. Damn, those studs are hard to get in.

This is the exterior of the old valve cover. The scratch on the left is quite deep considering I was only going 10 MPH or so and the bike was sliding on a wet roadway.

These two pictures show just how deep the scratch went. You can see rippling on the inside. The second picture is a close up that makes me think if I was going 5 MPH faster or if the roadway wasn’t wet I’d have holed the cover. Had that happened I’d have reversed the cover so the hole was up to minimize oil loss and continued on my way.

All’s well that ends well. The new cover looks OK on the bike and all I’m out is some more money… and they say owning boats is expensive!