Assorted stuff

The windscreen on my BMW K1100LT will no longer adjust up and down and it seems the motor is inoperative. Can't see spending $300 for a new motor. I'll run with the shield up all the time before I do that. I removed the motor from the bracket and activated the switch but all's happens is I hear the solenoid/relay clicking..both of them. So, if those click it means power is getting to the motor, right? Assuming the plugs/wires are OK. Since the motor does not spin I take it apart thinking the gears might be jammed. With the motor separated from the "gearbox" I can turn the sprocket, so, gears probably OK. I don't want to take this apart, so I put the motor back on the gearbox and run over to Taylor Auto Electric. They work on starters, alternators, but I got them to look at my motor. I stood there by the bench while the tech checked it out. He thinks it is indeed something inside the motor but doesn't want to work on it...not much, anyhow. He said I could leave it and when they ran out of "other stuff to do" they'd look at it. Thinks there might be an internal fuse like thingy that they could wire around. I told him it wasn't blowing fuses, but never mind that. He told me they wouldn't rewire the armature, but that they could make some new brushes, maybe, if that was the problem. He said there was an open circuit, bottom line.

So, in a few days I'll be living with, or without, an adjustable windshield. No big thing. Always been a pain in the rear anyhow.

Oh! Almost forgot the switch on the handlebar. My dealer evidently broke a wire and really buggered up a solder job when he fixed it. This ended up chafing away the insulation on an adjacent wire, but didn't blow a fuse. Hmmm! I had wanted to take it apart just to clean it when I discovered this. Well, push came to shove on this and it would be best to just replace it. $60. Arrrgh! It's on order. I'm gambling I'll get the motor running, but I'll bet not. I'm gonna hate having a useless $60 switch whose real value is about $3.

By the way, I thought I'd maintained this item pretty good, but when I took it apart it was just plain nasty. Especially the cables in those tubes.

Since my last post I went on another little camping trip up to Cedar Breaks State Park. It is about 350 miles from here, hard on the Red River right where the panhandle of Texas takes its northern turn. It is where the famous Quanah Parker lived and in fact the town there is called Quanah. It rained a lot of the way up there, in fact I was going to get away from the rain. Looking for some sunshine. That night in the tent it rained more. Really hard with continuous lightning and thunder. I lay there calculating in my mind the distance to the lightning based on distance sound travels in one second. Once I looked outside and the water was literally running around the tent. I stayed dry inside. But the main thing was the 50 mile winds (estimated) didn't blow the tent down. This has happened to me before which is why I now use this Harrier North Face shelter.

I tried to go for a hike the next day, but had to put that off because of more thunder boomers. And that night it rained ever harder. With marble sized hail. That was a first for me. Again, my equipment withstood this onslaught perfectly. I got to do my hike the next morning. Four hours and about eight miles and I had covered the 1500 acre park pretty well. I couldn't keep huge clots of red clay mud off my boots so it was a pretty good workout. It is really beautiful with a truly wonderful canyon right in the middle.

The third night was quiet, but hot and humid, so I was ready to leave that Friday morning and came home riding hard on the K bike. At home I had a real mess to clean up from all the rain and red mud on my stuff, but all's well now and I am getting ready to go out again and conquer some asphalt.

As soon as I fix this bike.

Last night about tenish, my friend Kristi came over and brought me a chicken enchilada with sour cream stuff on it. This was delicious. She hung out for a while drinking wine. Llano Estacado special reserve. I love this stuff. She had brought it over too, the day before. Said she wanted ME to drink it. But hey, she always drinks my wine and I always bitch that she never buys any.

Gotta go ride my bicycle.

Update: Taylor Auto Electric just called and said the motor is good after all. His test equipment was bad. His best bet now is that in spite of the fact the relays click they could still be bad as in not making good "enough" contact due to burning/carbon build up in the points. Interesting.