So yesterday we had my first real Sally scare. NOT to worry there wasn’t and accident or anything (although the car’s track record isn’t so sparkly! We have been dangerously close to mowing down a few pedestrians in the last two weeks and we haven’t really even been driving it.) by scare I really mean Sally had what at the time seemed like a catastrophic failure on the lion’s gate bridge last night. So the story goes like this. Last night was sushi night at Zen Sushi on Marine in West Vancouver. The North shore crew including a couple of Calgaryians that qualify as honorary north shore crew members were meeting Miranda and I at the sushi place and we opted to scoot there mostly cause scooting kicks ass. It was also the first time that I had Sally over the Bridge since the CDI was done by Jiang Wayne, in fact I haven’t really had the opportunity to have sally on the open road since it was done.
I was overjoyed to learn that sally did over 60kph up the south side of the Lions Gate Bridge and the speedo was buried on the way down, which is until it felt it needed to stall. I coasted to the end of the bridge and pulled into a pull out. I tried to start it again but there was a loud clunking noise that comes from the engine area although truth be told with all the road noise going on around me, there could have been a caterwauling cat trapped in my seat and wouldn’t have known. Luckily the north shore crew were driving cars (ick) so I coasted to the tourist booth on marine and they meet miranda & I there. I then tried to start it again and it works! It fired right up!! OK….. I go to spin it around it the parking lot to see if it has power and it stops and won’t start again. OK …..there is a nasty burning smell that wafts in from what we presume is the scooter. Ok….. sounds (smells) broken….We best just go for dinner.
All throughout dinner I am wondering what could be wrong and based on what I know at this point I am sure that the engine has blown or something that was as equally devastating. Diner was good but all I could think about was Sally is dead I am going to be scooter less could I afford to fix her right away or would it be smarter to go for a new sally? Could I afford that?
After dinner Josh and I come back to where it was parked and prepare to tow using Josh’s ruckus and a hunk of rope! (which we were actually quite excited about) While we were hooking up I decide to try to start it once more, and what does it do? it starts up no problem and sits there happily idling! No burning smell no loud clunking! just happy idling, We played around some more till we discovered that it runs till you sit on it. We listened closely now that traffic noise is less and you can hear a snap when you sit on it just before it stalls. WTF……..
When we pulled the seat bucket out and looked with the lights off you could see a spark when weight was added to the bike!! Looking deeper we realized there was a broken wire the goes to the distributor and when the bike flexes with weight the wire would come loose and stall the bike. We repaired said wire and sally rocks on!!
The loud clunking noise and the burning smell really made us think that the engine was in serous trouble. Turned out the burning smell was a campfire and we are working on the hypothesis that the loud clunking noise was because the engine basically stopped at 75/80 km’s and coasted down the hill all in all Sally is a happy camper once again.. Big shot outs to Josh for helping me figure out wtf and Shan & Kimli/Ed for helping cart us around and junk!
i am a jerk, and I have a camera