Yeah, well the high for tomorrow is forecasted to be 72, but it "feels like" 81.  The locals find it hot.  At least you've got a water-cooled bike; makes riding in that kind of heat easier on the engine.  Might cook your knees, though.

 

John St John posted these on facebook so I figured I'd post them over here so when I go look for them I can find them again. It looks like there are going to be a few events we're going to have to stop in at along the way  ... three weeks is clearly not long enough.


NC July 12-14 Klassic K Riders #347
The perfect place to start your journey to Salem! It’s hard to believe that this year will be the Sixth Klassic K Kampout. The rally was started as the only rally to honor the Klassic K BMWs. The Sixth annual Klassic K Kampout will be held July 12–14 at the Blue Ridge Motorcycle campground.
The 41st BMW MOA International Rally
Salem, Oregon July 18-21 BMW MOA
Join us all in Salem, Ore., for the 41st BMW MOA International Rally. We’ll be at the Oregon State Fairgrounds. Great riding, seminars, workshops, live music and friends – the list is endless. Visit
www.bmwmoa.org
 and read the BMW Owners News for continual updates. 
41st Annual Top o’ the Rockies Rally
CO July 25-28 BMWMCC #66
Our annual premier rally is located in the friendly and beautiful mountain town of Paonia, Colo. Situated in the center of some of the best motorcycle roads in the state and country, both paved and dirt, and a short distance to three national parks.

Tires ordered. I'll be taking the K100 in tomorrow to have the mixture adjusted.

Mixture?

Ian, so I've had this intermittent ignition problem for years on end where one of my coils would drop out, the bike would only fire on two cylinders and the tach would drop to 0. 

Historically, this has happened at a frequency of about once every two years or so. Recently, it's happened more often. On the Blue Ridge trip with AGrip it happened daily.

I have suspected that it might be the "output stage" otherwise known as the "ignition control module" for some time because reseating the connector, or even just pressing on it, makes the symptoms appear to vanish.

So on Saturday as an experiment, I replaced the ignition control module with a spare I bought some years ago, lost and then refound recently.

Strangely, the bike immediately felt completely different. It started up with more authority, idled much more smoothly and overall felt completely different. This was encouraging.

I took it on a 200+ mile ride on Sunday and the problem I had been experiencing daily did not recur. However, the bike started running hot. Additionally, my fuel economy went through the roof. (I haven't measured the whole tank but I bet I'm getting close to 60mpg.) Also, the other riders reported that they did not see any of the characteristic black smoke out of the exhaust and did not smell any of the rich exhaust fumes my bike is known for.

Based on all on all of this, and some discussions with the others, we suspect the old ignition control module has been intermittently faulty for some years and this replacement is now causing cylinders 1 & 2 to fire correctly causing the mixture to be leaned out. (My bike has no oxygen sensor so can't adjust itself.)

So I'm going to take it into Bob's tomorrow to have the mixture checked/adjusted to see if my hypothesis is correct ... 

Sounds promising!How quaint to have fuel injection that isn't entirely computerized. ;)You should be in good shape for your cross-country travels.

It's getting down to the wire. Replacing the coolant temperature sender turned out to be a huge many-hour job involving disassembling a good section of the front of the bike. All the hard parts were finished and I was re-installing the coolant drain plug, itself also a fragile sender for the temp gauge which I slipped and snapped the bloody thing. 

Fortunately, I was able to get the part that was left in the hole out without too much difficulty. But now I'm faced with finding a replacement sender or, as a worst case fallback, a plug. The secondary sender/drain plug only feeds the temp gauge on the dash so I can run without it. The overheat warning is driven from the primary sender so it wont' be affected.

I hate it when I make stupid mistakes like this. Tomorrow should prove to be eventful as I run around like a madman and try to get everything done.

Bummer, dude.  That's another hidden trap of older gear.  Plastic and rubber bits get more brittle and are more likely to fail during maintenance.

Good luck with the rest of the prep.

Victory from the jaws of defeat.

I put in a solid day of work to get everything back together again. I took it out on a test run for 30 minutes of rush hour traffic and it seems, fingers crossed, that the running hot issue has been resolved.

Yun Lung Yang detailed the bike. It is simply amazing how good he can make machines look.

Day 1:

We're using the maps for planning. I'm marking out intended targets and roll-through points with the Meeting icon and tagging them with #intention to indicate that it's an intended target.

If you are logged in you can type the intention hashtag into the search box and get a list of all of our intended targets (or click the tag above).

There was so much I wanted to get done on these maps.

Road Report Day 2:

Day 3 Map:

Ride Report Days 4 and 5: Getting into and Out of Dodge

Words do not describe. Mount Evans. It must be done.

http://miles-by-motorcycle.com/fv-b-6-649/2013-gap-to-s...

http://miles-by-motorcycle.com/fv-b-6-651/2013-meanderi...

The whole trip on one map:

Road Report: An Abrupt End

http://www.affordablebeemerservices.com/bmwthoughts/

Some very interesting and helpful insights into final drive failures. Worth the 5 minutes for sure.

isurfne That was a really interesting article and, sadly, has some parallels in the car world as well. Mercedes fundamentally changed their approach in 1994 and suffered mightily for it. It is only recently that Mercedes has begun to have reliability and build quality approaching pre-94 levels again, though they still lag far behind others. Lexus recently suffered a similar spate of issues (self inflicted). It also reminds me of the first time I brought my BMW (car) in for service after the factory maintenance coverage expired and the charge for an OIL CHANGE was over $500. Six months later the front brakes needed pads and rotors, $2,500! When I told the dealer that these were just ridiculous he said "The new models have longer maintenance intervals, you should look at trading up". Basically their solution to a $2,500 maintenance charge was to drop $70K on a new car. I've never gone back.

Agreed. Very interesting article. The final drive and clutch spline issues on oilheads are well known but the rest I was unaware of. I had thought the new final drives used on modern BMW's had finally fixed the failures. FWIW, I've only heard of one failure of that final drive (and I think it was actually the unit pictured in the article.)

The comments about the Ironbutt Rally are interesting as well. I wonder if this is the reason for the ascendancy of FJR's in the rally.