Oil Change 101 - Part II
Yeah there’s a part 2 in the adventure of “make Janet’s bike run again”. This time I dragged Mike into this because…I need a ride to Geoff’s hideout in Maple Valley.
Geoff managed to get the bike started earlier. But the engine spud like an old lady. Geoff decided to take the engine apart to give a good clean up.
Mike and I can’t help much, so we did our best to ‘blend in’. We circled Geoff with 2 white plastic picnic chairs; a can of beer / soda in our hand; cranked up that 80’s Rocks radio station; and just chilled in Geoff’s garage. Our redneck impersonation reached its climax when 2 monster trucks drove by; both equiped with huge Confederate flags flying on the sides. Ha!
Geoff suspected the carburetor is causing the engine to spud. Surely he was right about that. The bike sounded much better after he cleaned and reassembled the parts back. Geoff was eager to test the bike, and also I think he was a little crazy. He jumped on the seatless bike ( basically he was seating on battery) and took off in top speed. Before any of us can make a clever remark, he was back from the end of the road and made a sharp stop in front of us.
Looked like we are good to go! Geoff’s wife joined us in the garage as Mike and I were getting ready to leave. I want to give the bike a good warm up so I casually started the engine. Big mistake, I forgot to check if the bike was in neutral. And just so Geoff happened to leave the gear in first after he did that amazing stun. The bike shot out and landed sideway on me. It happened so fast all of us were frozen for few seconds. Then Mike leaped out and quickly pick up the bike on me.
Amazingly there was no visible damage on the bike. And all I got was a bruised up middle finger. However we made a pretty good dent on the shell of Geoff’s $400 server just happened to be next to us.
Before we headed out to the open road, Geoff gave some advices just like a good doctor after a major surgery. Apparently Geoff added couple gallons of high performance gasoline in my tank that I should run the fuel out as fast as I can. This fuel costs $12/gallon and is meant for race bike in a race. Mike was scratching head and couldn’t understand why Geoff would put so much of that good stuff in my bike. Frankly my bike ran just the same…it’s pretty much a waste of fancy fuel.
The picture was taken 3 days after the accident. You can still see my injured middle finger in a darker shade than my other fingers. Pretty neat eh?