After bricking my way to the coast from my dad's place on Sunday on some of SoCal's finest motoroads, I made it to the coast south of Big Sur, set up my tent and watched the sun set on The Pacific. It doesn't get much better than this.
On Monday morning, I broke camp and headed north on Hwy 1, truly an epic morning with Hwy 1 all to myself and destined to be the greatest of motobricking days.
BUT when I hit Carmel the hose from the radiator to the water pump blew about a 3/4" gash in itself and peed out most of the coolant. I made it to Santa Cruz until the dreaded Motronic overheat light came on so I pulled into a parking lot and was forced to do something about it.
I called the two BMW dealers that were within 25 miles of me but my bike made the mistake of blowing up on Monday, when all of the dealers are closed.
Fortunately, I found a shady parking stall and there was an auto parts store only a couple of blocks away. The radiator hose repair tape they had was complete shite but I was able to effect a temporary, though still somewhat leaky, repair with that and some zip-ties.
My public workspace:
I called Roy S. and asked if him if he could put me up for the night if I were able to limp to his place. Being a true morobricker he said no problem. Once I had things together and some coolant back in it, I hit the road. With a little experimentation I discovered that the speed which balanced the heat generated by the head against the cooling of the wind rushing past to minimize the stress on the cooling system was about 70mph. If you have a crippled bike that needs to get somewhere 165 miles away then 70 mph is a good thing. :2thumbup:
I made it to Roy S's place a little before six. He was already taking the low seat off of his recently purchased K75RT so that I could use it to retrieve a new hose from A&S in the morning and wouldn't be cramped riding a low seat but put a Corbin Dual Tour on instead. (Fingers crossed that they had one in stock.) Not only that but he'd gotten me some fresh Heineken which was coolly waiting in his garage fridge and very much appreciated. Roy certainly has earned Motobricker of the Week/Month/Year for how helpful he was to me. :mbird
I called A&S BMW right after they opened at 9am and they confirmed that they did indeed have the needed radiator hose in stock. (I asked the guy I spoke with to physically confirm that they had it on hand because computer inventory and real-life inventory often differ.)
So then I took Roy's "new-to-me" K75RT for a 30 mile ride up to A&S to get said hose.
And then I installed it.
Thank you very much, Roy. I know that it probably wasn't a big deal to you but the help you provided me was invaluable.
THANK YOU! I owe you one.