He's riding a clean V65 Sabre with a 100000 miles on the Engine. He rebuilds his own stuff, and keeps it pristine....unlike me. He left at first light, and reported a safe trouble free return trip. That's always good news.
Nip and I were left to continue the trip. I had told Nip that I was going to Toroweap, and he said that he'd ride around Kanab and Panguich for the day. Cool.
I unloaded the DR350 and got my tools strapped to the back. My DR is a 94 and it's done about 30000 miles. It's been Reliable, but you never know.
It had a new chain and tires, but the carb had been giving me trouble with particals in the orifices. So I took tire repair tools and enough stuff to disassemble the carb.
It had a 4 gal tank and I figured it was good for at least 50 mpg. That gave me a 200 mile range and Toroweap was about 80 miles away. I should have had plenty.
I had no idea of what Toroweap was. It could have been an Indian Village with gas for all I knew.
As it turned out the round trip was 140 miles out and back to Fredonia. That included the 10 miles of pavement....Toroweap 61 miles dirt road
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
Here's the first picture of the DR just after it crapped out 20 miles into the trip. Double Darn!
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
That's a lonesome feeling right there. :cry
I had lots of time so I got to it. There is a place that is awfully tight to getting the carb out of its location. I dropped the carb on that operation. A quick check showed no damage...possibly too quick.
I was happy to find a big bugger in the main jet. I cleaned that out and reassembled the bike. The bike started right up.....but it wasn't running right at the low RPM. Oh well, it was running. I suited up and continued....
Somehow, I miss read a Natl Forest sign. I took the wrong fork and went about 10 miles before I was convinced that the lack of Toroweap on successive signs meant that I was going the wrong way.
I stopped on a hill and checked my map. Oh there's where I went wrong. Humm ....the bike would start now but die when I gave it any throttle. I was on a hill (not by accident) so I Bump started it and got it above the idle point so it would run for me.
I began to figure that I'd need to go back into the carb sooner or later. I'd just added 20 miles to my trip. Coupled with a lower ratio with the new sprockets that I'd installed on the bike, and the bike running bad I wasn't so sure about the 50 mpg mileage anymore.
Now I'm back on the right road. The bike runs strong if I'm on fairly hard throttle, but coming off of deceleration the bike stumbles till I hit it again. It was ride-able, but not a lot of fun.
Anyway, I stuttered and stumbled out the next 30 mile to the last 5 miles that changed to a jeep trail out to Toroweap. A car that I stopped to talk with said there was no gas there....and he gave me a weird look.
The bike was harder to ride at the slower speed. I finally pulled into a campground at the end of road which was all that was out there. Toilets but no water...I believe that's what you call primitive. Yeah, Primitive is what you call it. :freaky:lol3
I decided to look for summat in the low speed jet, that I didn't check earlier, in the shade of that small tree.
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
There was one guy in the Campground with his wife. He was nearly at my geezer stage of life. Turn out Gery with a 'G' was from New Youk, and his business was restoring old air cooled Porsches. Well, we had something to talk about. Air cooled German cars.
I was lucky to Have Gery there as he was travling in an 85 VW van. He had a lot of tools with him and he had the small screw driver that I needed to get the low speed jet out of the carb.... I never found anything wrong with the carb so I put it back together and sure enough it ran just like it did when I rode into the campground. Another double darn was uttered.
I still had a 1/2 mile to get to the rim of the Co River. so I bid Gery a good trip, and rode down to the River's canyon Rim. I finally figured out why There was a place Called Toroweap. It's the easiest place to get down to the River in a 100 miles in both direction. There's a trail down to the river, I learned later.
Here's Toroweap....to the east
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
...across the River to the south
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
...Kinda to the west
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
The rim there is only about 3000 ft above the river....that's and the trail is what makes it easy to get to the river. In the old days if you lived in this area, you run down there once a day for water. :rofl
It was 2:30. I needed to get out of there. I fired it up and nursed it off of idle. That process was taking a couple minutes of starting then giving it a little throttle then it dying...repeat, repeat ad nauseam.
I figured to just keep it running till I was out of there. The scenery was just as good on the way out. I Stopped at about 120 total miles an leaned the bike over to get the gas from the right side of the tank into the left side. That's necessary if you don't have dual petcocks. Of course, I had to shut it down to do that, but I did it on a hill for insurance with the restart.
I could see in the tank that I was running low, and about 10 miles short of the pavement I ran out of gas. Hummmm....more lonesomeness ensued. :cry
Don't that look pitiful?
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
I contemplated my navel for a while...about 15 minutes, when A guy and his wife came along. He said, "sure get in', when I asked for a lift. I didn't need to be asked twice.
My plan was to go get my street bike and trailer and come get the DR. We had a nice half hour ride to Fredonia. Turns out the guy was a boy when he lived here in the 50s when the main road was still dirt. He had walked all over this area as a boy. Their answer to public transportation back in the day was to get to the road before the postman came by because he would give anyone out there a ride.
I asked about an old corral that we were going by. He said it was a central location where all the valley's sheep came to to get their shearing done. I enjoyed the time I spent with the guy, and was very grateful for the lift.
There was no incident with the DR retrieval ....prolly took me an hour to get the bike. All systems were go, and I was happily back at the motel by 7pm. Nip showed up at about that time.
We yacked about our days as we finished the hot dogs of the night before. I had some Ramen Noodles to add to the meal.
......all in all, it was another good day. Tomorrow we'd move to the Navajo Natl Monument.
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