The advice I was given is counter to this, that working in gradually larger circles around home until the bugs are gone is a good thing to do.
I got the shovel out for a ride Saturday. Leaked oil and gas. The oil leak turned out to be a poor job tightening a braided oil line I installed to replace the tubing on the rear cylinder oiler. It may have been finger tight. The hilarious thing is that I had pretty much decided that finding the leak was going to be some mysterious process of working until I found the leak, which seemed pretty unlikely. I really didn’t want to remove the primary setup again as it seems to be otherwise good. And the oil seemed to be everywhere, on both sides. I think it wound up on the left side only when parked, as it was coming from the right side. The fuel leak is a float valve issue, which also affected the intake and flooded it pretty bad at idle.
Rather than try to fix it right away, I let it bleed oil onto my driveway while I took the training wheels off my four year old’s bike and watched him quickly get into being a free rider of confidence and power.
I’ve been reading Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I haven’t looked at in years. Pirsig spends some time in the book differentiating between classic and romantic thinking. Classic seeks to reach understanding by cataloging and defining parts and relationships in a system. Romantic thinking is largely “inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive.” What I’ve learned to understand as right- versus left-brain thinking.
I realized that the position I was seeing the oil leak from was the romantic. Shifting over to a place where the leak was identifiable made the process much different, and quickly solved. Next, on to the carburetor.
Oh the joys of owning a Shovelhead. Chasing down those pesky oil leaks.
I did find what was making the strange noise in my primary, the drain plug had decided it didn’t want to friends with the bike anymore and left. Hence the fluid drained out, the chain got dry and eat the crap outta the adjusted shoe. Now I have to wait till Hayden opens today to order another. The beauty of an sealed primary is that I need not worry about the plastic crap getting into the engine. The only good part.
Tom
Having this stuff break down hundreds of miles from anything is how you meet new people.
Nah, most accidents happen in the home; the bathroom or kitchen. So stay away from home.!! Alan’s right about meeting people when you are broken down. But I hope you also meet people when THEY are the ones broken down !! Zukiman