Part 8
2 Sep 2010
Part 8
I rode 900 miles to Calgary and 780 miles to Salt Lake City to get to Wrights. By easing the key out of the tank cap and leaving it open I managed to fill up at gas stations without having to switch off the engine. There were times on the flat near Edmonton at night when it would have been impossible to push start and no one would have stopped to help – but that didn’t happen!
I always get my bikes checked at Wrights, they are the friendliest and among the most enthusiastic bikers I know. I asked Tim, my friend and the boss to explain exactly what they did to keep this journey going. I had suggested that if we couldn’t rectify the problem I would cancel the project, but they fixed it and I haven’t!
"Initially Nick's visit was planned to be a minor stop involving routine maintenance; tires, chain, oil, etc. However, by the time Nick arrived some several hours late, we required some extra repairs. A stone had broken the fairing stay breaking off the left mirror. In Alaska the starter on the R1 failed and Nick had been bump starting the motorcycle for over a day. We were able to overnight a new fairing stay from a local dealer but a new starter could not be delivered on such short notice. A few hours before Nick's arrival a starter was contributed from Steadman's Recreation Inc. located in Tooele, Utah by cannibalizing a new 2009 R1!
Nick arrived just after dark at 9:30pm to an empty parking lot, to closed, dimly lit shops, only a sole garage door open with an anxious and eager crew to welcome him. It was good to see Nick. The look on his face was that of exhaustion, but when he spoke to us we knew he was doing great. Nine people began feverishly working on the R1. The routine stuff went quick, followed by the fairing stay and the starter motor. In swapping the starter motor we discovered a problem with the starter relay. Our theory, the bad motor burnt out the relay.
It was 11:30pm now with no chance of finding a factory replacement relay until well into the following morning. By chance we had a basic grounded body relay on the self we thought could work. Without a wiring diagram we were concerned that we could potentially cause more problems by splicing into the wiring harness. Also, we wanted whatever we did to be easy to undo should Nick acquire a new factory R1 relay.
Eventually we found a way to bypass all the other electrical components other then the starter. We ran an additional cable from the hot side of the factory R1 starter relay to the hot side of the bypass relay. Disconnected the wire connecting the starter motor to the factory relay and reconnected this wire to the bypass relay. To operate the bypass relay we installed a normally open button on the handle bars. We grounded the body of the relay with a wire to the battery, weatherproofed everything the best we could, and Nick was back in business." Tim
