Sunday, May 17, 2009

Great River Run Rally (GR3) 2009

2009-05-17 GR3 2009 013
It is great to have a neighbor on the same street that likes sixes too. Pat had this idea, hey, let's go to the Great River Run Rally in Soldier's Grove WI this weekend! Motorcycle camping! Sure, I'd love too ... except that I don't have the six done yet. He has a 1975 R75/6 and I really want to travel with my R75 too. I'm in a pickle. The RS front end is making clunking noises (later I tighten the steering stem bearings and replace the damper valve circlip), The R100 is stripped of luggage and is not set up for camping ... I need to get this R75 done. All the previously mentioned work is done and I am working out the bugs in the dual-plug, electronic ignition system. I worked for hours on this from Sunday to Thursday and did get it done for leaving Friday morning but barely. The long story short is that I had to Dremel the advance mechanism base plate so that I could set the timing to 1° ATDC, replace the spark plugs with 5k ohm, route one cable from each coil to both cylinders and move the Dyna III ignition control out into the breeze to keep it cool. Sounds simple now but it took a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error to figure what worked best. I really believe that the biggest improvement was moving the Dyna III out from the hot place that the PO had mounted it, on top of the engine under the tank. It must have been overheating.
Anyway, Friday morning we finished up packing and hit the road. It was pretty cool to be cruising on pretty closely matched mounts ... two R75/6's. We had some rain and drizzle and hard south winds as we traveled but no problems. The rally was great like they said, the roads were nothing but fun, the camping was an adventure but even though it was 29° Sunday AM I slept real good and warm. We took the long way home and found some great deserted roads.

No comments: