28 May 2013

Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head...Good thing I have a Helmet

So much has happened since my last post. I’m finally not living in my mom’s house. Yay! A former college room mate of mine got hired where I work so now me, him, and his girlfriend are renting a small house 2 miles from our job. The savings on gas are pretty nice, though I still manage to put a lot of miles on my car. Helping with that however is my Buell, which is finally inspected. I’ve already put about 200 miles on it and it’s getting about 64mpg.  Hopefully it’ll do even better after the carb is cleaned out, which leads to a bit of a story…
Last weekend or so, a friend of mine gradumacated from Bloomsburg University. She invited a bunch of us up for it. Parking would be at a premium so I decided to take the bike. It was a little over 70 miles each way. I headed up Friday after work. The weather was gorgeous albeit a bit breezy and the bike was running great…until I hit the interstate. On the smaller highways the bike did great, but out on the interstate while maintaining a consistent speed, she’d bog down and stall. So for the next…40 miles or so I’d stall every 5th mile and have to take refuge on the shoulder. Eventually I made it to the town of Bloomsburg and upon entering stop and go traffic (lights, stop signs, etc) the Buell ran like a champ again.
Then Saturday came. The morning was overcast. After the ceremony I parted ways with my friends and proceeded to stall out in the parking lot. Yip. Eee. I could tell the carb was flooding so I opened the air box to let the gas evaporate some. This helped more than I expected and I was soon on my way. Once out on the interstate again….it began to rain….and the bike continued to stall every couple miles. In the rain. (Mind you, I have less than 4 months’ riding experience) There were a few other bikes on the road and one guy on a big touring bike stopped to see if he could help me anything. There wasn’t much he could do but he did ride behind me to the next exit where I got off in hopes of finding…something. I found a gas station with a canopy and bathroom. Gave me a dry place to call my dad from. Being without a GPS (had one in my pocket but no way to use while riding) I couldn’t track down any mechanical help type places so I decided to just continue on. The bike stalled once on me after that and I realized that if I kept varying the throttle, she’d keep going. Wasn’t happy, but kept running. Once I was back off the interstates and on the smaller highways the Buell ran with no problems. Only thing I stopped for was to check out a new McLaren at a gas station near my house.
Anywho, it’s been determined that the carburetor needs a desperate cleaning. The previous owner used to run the bike with no air filter…surprise surprise. If that doesn’t help, a new spark plug may be in order as well.

I think that’s all I’m going to tell for now as I should be sleeping….

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