From: steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu (Steve Garnier)
Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles
Subject: Aged Ambrosia Rev.6
Date: 16 Apr 92 20:50:13 GMT
Reply-To: steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu (Steve Garnier)
Organization: North Carolina State University

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What follows is the first of four installments on this particular
thread.  It involves Brucer's continuing love/hate relationship
with his bike, Norton, and more fine writing.
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 From: brucer@druwy.ATT.COM (RobinsonB)
 Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles
 Subject: Norton bites it again
 Summary: Waiting for the wrecker
 Message-ID: <4087@druwy.ATT.COM>
 Date: 5 Jun 89 15:43:34 GMT
 Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO
 Lines: 83
 
Wonderful weekend ride.  The weather was perfect, a few clouds decorating
an otherwise gloriously blue sky, no traffic in the mountains to clutter up
the excellent clean twisty roads, several friends on well maintained and
immaculate machinery, a great ride with no mishaps, and then reluctantly
home to rest, basking in the afterglow of a fine day's ride.
 
And if you believe that, I have an absolutely maintenance free non-leaky
British motorcycle for sale.  Such a deal.  Way below what it's worth.
 
Oh well, what's interesting about a textbook weekend ride anyhow?
You would probably rather hear the truth.  The truth is that it was a
drizzly, overcast, miserable kind of day.  Most of the gang decided to
stay home and watch TV, which left me and Don Montgomery to ride out
together.  I'm from California and too dumb to know better, and he's
from Oregon, and probably didn't notice that it was actually raining.

We rendezvous'd and gassed up at the 7-Eleven (Tom's idea, but was he
there?  Noooooo.  He was at home watching TV, or thinking weighty thoughts
about first principals of fizziks, or some such warm and dry activity).
 
Don and I promised each other that if conditions became unsuitable for
riding we would forego machismism and head home, which promise we instantly
forgot as we rolled out into the rain and headed for Coal Creek Canyon.
The road was wet, and sandy from yesterday's storm.  Neither of us rides
with a windshield so we were pushing a 60 mph wall of cold damp air with
our chests.
 
As we gained elevation in the Canyon, we rode into the fog/cloud layer.
Needless to say, my chucks were numb.  So were my fingers.  When we
got to Spruce Hill Road (I think that's what it's called; the first
intersection in Coal Creek Canyon, entering Golden Gate), we turned
left, and rode up to the top, about ten miles of dirt road, washboards,
puddles, mud, and slick rocky outcrops.  We stopped at the top, shut down
at a place called simply "overlook", walked out on the blind, tucked
our fingers into our armpits, and overlooked.  It's a sight rarely seen
by rec.fairweather.motorcyclists, but worth the pain.  Fog clinging
to the trees, dripping pines and aspen, and dead silence ringing louder
in my poor abused ears than even Norton's thunder.
 
Down the other side (five more miles of sand and mud), left at the
pavement, a quick flick down the canyon to coffee and a sticky-bun at
the roadside dinner in Black Hawk.  My clutch was acting a little weird,
so after coffee I pulled the transmission inspection plate and inspected.
Clutch activator lever seemed OK, maybe a little tight, so I replaced the
inspection plate and hoped for the best.  Ah, ever the optimist.  We
decided to ride back up the canyon to Nederland, then down into Boulder
and home.  Almost to Nederland Norton's clutch gave up the ghost entirely.
I though I would go ahead and ride it down into Boulder; what's forty miles
without a clutch?  Piece of cake, especially since there aren't any
stop-lights until you get into town.  Little did I know what evil brew
the demons of the primary case were cooking up for me.
 
Just past Nederland, at the middle of the reservoir, with the wail of
a wounded banshee, Norton gave up.  I shut down the engine and coasted
to a stop at the side of the road.  Don pulled up and made some humorous
remark about always having a Japanese bike around so somebody could run
for help.  I tried to pull the clutch inspection plate, but it was frozen;
an ominous sign.  So I got out my allen wrench and yanked off the primary
case, pouring 20-50 weight all over the precious ecology, and discovered
to my utter and nauseating dismay that the entire clutch cage had slipped
off of the transfer shaft from the transmission, and was sitting at an
angle, warping the triple row primary drive chain.  The howling sound we
had heard was the chain rubbing against its cover plate before I got the
engine shut down.
 
Don offered to go get his truck, repeating his humorous remark about
always having a Japanese bike around (I of course find this remark funnier
every time I hear it), and leaves me to guard the ruins.  You know, the
longer I own Nortons, the easier it gets to sit by the side of the road
and enjoy the peaceful sounds of nature; birds chirping, the gentle sound
of rain in my hair, and Norton creaking and dripping oil on the ground.
It's a good thing, too, because I seem to get a lot of practise waiting
for the wrecker.
 
More to come ....
 
	66
	 >
	 ^ .......................... brucer

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Steve Garnier - 1979 Yamaha XS1100SF Special with 156,000 miles and *climbing*
DoD #00000005 - KotF (The Daemon's Byte and Keeper of the Flame), NC Chapter
steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu       "Ineluctably Prolix" - John Norman Sims, Jr.
Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles