The week following my trip to Carolina BMW was incredible... 80 Degrees and completely clear. Too bad I was sick, very sick. I usually only have the 24 hour flu for about 6 hours. I don't usually stay sick very long. However, this time, I had bronchitis and it's lasted two weeks now. This sux!!! For the 1st week I stayed in bed the entire week. The 2nd week, I was feeling only a little better, but still no desire to ride. Besides, the weather has been near freezing. Now I am close to the 3rd week and what do we have, rain! Go figure. Being sick sucks, beautiful weather at the same time your sick... That really sucks!

My buddy Bill and I heard that there was going to be free food in Greensboro this week end. What better excuse for a motorcycle ride than free lunch. Bill and I met at Sheetz in Rocky Mount, VA and then off to Carolina BMW Motorcycles in Greensboro. Now, normally, this is an 85 mile trip from my house to BMW Motorcycles (I guess I shouldn't say "normally" as I have only been to Greensboro once before). However, due to a slight communication error, Bill and I (and his wife, Liz) ended up in Danville before heading South on Rt. 29 to Greensboro.

Bill & Liz met a friend of theirs, Gene (and his wife, but I don't remember her name). In the picture, Bill is on the Left and Gene is on the Right.

Gene rides a BMW K-Bike with 345,000 miles on it... WOW! He also runs a website, I think the site is located at RatRun, but I might have that wrong. Gene and his wife are really nice people. They do quite a bit of the Rally circuit, so if you see them out, tell 'em I said hello.

All in all the Vision did 240 Miles today and was running pretty good. All systems (oil pressure, voltage and water temperature) were consistant for the 200+ mile ride. Oh, the Bar-B-Que was pretty good for being free.

It was going to happen sooner or later. This morning was my 1st spring time ride in the rain. I rode the bike to work last night and well, this morning, five minutes before leaving work, the sky just opened up. I loaded the saddle bags, went inside, shut the door and turned around and it was pouring. I stayed pretty dry with the rain suit on, but the roads were lots 'o wet. The Avon Super Venom tires really suck in the rain. I had to keep the bike mostly vertical in all the curves otherwise I could feel the bike slide slightly. Not a good feeling.

You gotta luv riging a Yamaha Vision. Just when you get the bike to running beautifully, Mr. Murphy decides he wants to take a spin on the bike. In this case, he decided he thought I should have a stuck float needle in the carburator. Thanx Murphy. How did I know this is what was wrong? In the picture below, you can see gasoline running out from under the bike as if i was just pouring the gas onto the ground. At $2.19 a gallon, I doubt I would be doing this on purpose.





Luckily, this is a simple fix and it was only on the front carburator. I started by draining the carburator float bowl. I drained the float bowl with the large brass bolt on the left, opposed to the float bowl drain screw on the right. The brass bolt covering the main jet is sealed with a washer and the drain screw is sealed with a small "O-ring". I didn't want to disturb the "o-ring" and risk it leaking on me as I didn't have one to replace it. Of couse after I took out the brass bolt, I promptly lost it somewhere in the bike or the grass or the fairing or somewhere.





Once the float bowl was completely drained and found and reinstalled the brass bolt over the main jet, I disconnected the overflow drain hoses and stuck the nozzle tube of some spray carburator cleaner into the plastic outlet. I hosed the inside of the float bowl pretty good. Then tapped on the side of the float bowl several times, hoping to dislodge any dirt that might be making the needle hang up. Then hosed it some more. I just used generic spray carburator cleaner.





I hooked everything back up, set the petcock to prime for a few moments, then tried to fire her up. Of course with all the carb cleaner in the float bowl, it took a while to fire. When she did eventually fire, it appeared that I have fixed yet another problem with the Vision. I usually use SeaFoam in all of my gas engines, but.... (Here's my excuse) I had run out a while ago and had not bought more, call me lazy. I do swear by the stuff, and as you can see when I don't use it, Mr. Murphy seems to be able to find where I hide the keys to the bike.

Finally, I found a set of hard cases for the Vision. I've purchased a set of Krauser cases for my bike. These cases were originally made to fit the Yamaha Vision way back in 1983. Once I figured out how to mount them, the istallation was simple.

I need to thank my friend Bill Lewis for allowing me to borrow his soft luggage for the past year (at least). The soft luggage worked well and actually holds more than the Krausers, but from them rubbing on the side of the bike, they were starting to scratch the plastic underneath.

The next step is to find a way to remount the small sissy seat on the back for my wife. I may have to break into "Fabrication Mode" and try to figure this out. I wonder if I can remove the grab handle and fabricate something up from those bolt points.

Here is a picture of the new bags installed. The picture sux, but hey, it's posted. When I get out and about, I will take and post a better picture. Until then, you're stuck with this one.

I just love Blogs, especially Blogs about motorcycles. In particular motorcycle Blogs with the main character being a Yamaha XZ550 Vision. I found this one, BikeVision, while plodding along at the Rider's of Vision web site. Hopefully, I will be meeting this author the last weekend in July at Deal's Gap to Ride the Dragon.

Enough Said!