naked bike luggage

If you've read very many of my posts you know I have a preference for naked bikes.  My Harley Strreet Bob and vintage 75 GL1000 are naked most of the time but sometimes there's just no getting around it, you have to carry something.  Maybe it's your lunch that you're taking to work, or maybe it's a couple of things the significant other needs from the grocery store, or parts from the dealership.  What do you use to carry stuff and still keep the sleek naked look?

When my only bike was my Honda I got by for a long time just putting things in the shelter.  The shelter is a small space inside the faux gas tank.  It is handy for a lunch, a few papers or odds and ends.  When I started going on long trips with my brother, I bought a small Tourmaster bag with built in bungee cords that would attach to the back half of the seat.  I would go for 4 days or so and if it didn't fit in that bag it didn't go.  The nice thing about that little bag is at the end of the day I would just unhook the bungee cords in 10 seconds and carry it into the motel.

I travel light when I'm on the motorcycle.  I also pack clothes to wear that are mostly worn out so at the end of the day I just throw them away.

The Harley Street Bob was a different story.  There was no faux tank to stash my stuff in the Harley.  I rode it for quite awhile before I finally gave in and bought and installed a luggage rack to my Harley.  It's small.  It's black.  It isn't very noticeable, and it works pretty well.  I bought another Tourmaster bag that had a profile that fit the Harley better than the bag I use with my GL1000.  Even though this bag is small it still holds enough for a 4 day trip.  If I really need to I can stack the two bags on top of each other and the bungee cords hold nicely.  They both have a rain cover that work perfectly.

I have a third bag that I use quite a bit with the Harley.  It's a tank bag with magnets that hold securely.  This fits nicely on the tank and it even has a clear plastic compartment that allows me to write out a list of the highways I want to take on my trips and I can stay on course with a quick glance to see what junction is coming up next. More often though I use the tank bag on my daily commute.  Its magnets hold tight to the luggage rack in back and is just the right size for my lunch and a few papers or a book.

       
You have to carry things from time to time but the best thing about these bags is that when you don't want them cluttering up the look of the bike you can just take them off and you have a naked bike again.

Vintage Goldwing rally in PA

I attended my first Naked Goldwing Bike rally and despite some of the wings being fully clothed it was still a lot of fun.  The rally was in PA and my son AMH and his family lives in Eastern Ohio so it was a great chance to see his family, attend the rally and get out of town with MKH for a few days.

We loaded my 1975 naked Goldwing into the back of the truck and away we went. Putting the bike in the back of the truck is always a hassle but in many ways I prefer that to putting it on a trailer, mainly because it seems more secure.

All my gear came out for the trip and I took off through Eastern Ohio to my destination near Cook Forest and Vowinckle PA.  I'll have to say that traveling the back roads of Eastern Ohio was beautiful.  Entering PA really got my attention because there was a huge bump in the road that felt like it destroyed my kidneys.

The next thing I noticed was that PA must have a lot of money because they were reconstructing every road I took. Just the money they spent on detour signs must have been astronomical.  So much for my carefully planned route.  I just kept saying to myself, keep going North and East.  Five hours is not too bad for a three hour trip but hey, it was beautiful and I had some wonderful accommodations waiting for me.

I had a cabin all to myself, in fact I had all the cabins to myself since no one else in my club rented one.  They were all in motels that had trivial things like air conditioning and swimming pools for the 90 plus degree days and nights.  Who needs air and pools?  I had two fans.  And notice in the picture, I had a clothes line, a pretty blue tarp on my roof, an overhang to park my bike under and two lovely rustic blue plastic chairs with tremendous patina.  You can't get that just anywhere.  

I also basked in the glory of a deer head hanging on the wall and lovely fruit decals on the beams.  "Wipe your feet" was written in magic marker on the threshold and who doesn't need to be reminded of that?

Really, the bed was comfortable and I slept well once I stopped sweating.  I woke up thinking that something was nibbling on my toes but it was probably just a bad dream.  I took a quick check out the window each of the four times I woke up in the middle of the night to make sure my bike was still there.  It was.  The shadows from the moonlight shining on the trees was quite lovely in fact.

The two fans ran all night and I'm sure this place was as nice as any blast furnace in the country.
Nearly thirty vintage Goldwings were lined up at our various stops.

It was great to see all those bikes looking so good and still in such wonderful shape after 30 plus years.  I felt secure that no matter what happened to my bike there would be someone there who could fix it whether I could or not.

       

Honda GL1000 starter fiasco

For a couple of years my 75 Honda Goldwing GL1000 has had a tired starter. The starter would work, sort of, mostly.  If I rode somewhere and parked it for an hour it would be fine, but if I needed to start it up in 5 minutes after I had just ridden it,,,,sometimes it would start and sometimes it wouldn't.

In the meantime I had been wanting a motorcycle lift table to make working on the bike easier.  I don't like to hear all the snap, crackle, and pop in my joints every time I get down on the garage floor to work on the naked Goldwing.  I had been saving my money and for two years in a row I had carefully inspected the Titan tables at the Motorcycle Expo in Indianapolis.  I finally took the plunge, pulled out the plastic and the black Titan beauty was mine.  I was so excited to use the lift that I pulled the bike up on the lift, cranked the lift up as high as it would go and removed the starter.  I was on my way to a starter rebuild.

I kept telling my wife, "This lift is awesome."  The only problem was, in my excitement about the lift I had forgotten to read the instructions about how you're supposed to have the bike on the side stand when you remove the starter. If you don't ...warning... warning....warning...you will have to pull the engine to get the starter back in.  It's too bad I didn't heed the warning.

So now I had a problem that loomed enormous in my mind.  I would have to pull the engine, or at least that's what the instructions said.  I've pulled the engine before, twice, but I work slow so it would take a month of Sundays to get the bike back on the road.  So I was just sick, and embarrassed.

I was going to rebuild the starter myself but someone who (unlike me) actually knows a lot about motorcycles recommended that I take the starter to a place that rebuilds starters.  So I got a recommendation on a place to go in Indy.  Unfortunately, they damaged my starter shaft when they rebuilt it and they didn't tell me, and never did 'fess' up.

I took the starter home from the rebuild place and tried several times to get the starter shaft in the sprocket but it wouldn't go.  I thought, yep, sure enough, you must have to pull the engine to get the starter back in place.  

But then I started looking at the shaft and realized it was damaged.  I took the sprocket off of the chain and tried to put the starter shaft into the sprocket.  It wouldn't go together.  It wasn't even close.  It was like the two had never known each other.  So I took the starter apart and to my surprise it hadn't even been packed with grease.  Now I was really upset.

It's a good thing I belong to NGW Club because one of the guys came to my rescue with a reasonably priced shaft and I swapped them out.  This new/used shaft fit in the sprocket perfectly.  The starter also slipped right in to where it was supposed to go.  Now that I have the bike back on the road the starter works great.

So, what was the deal with the instructions saying that you had to have the bike on the side stand when you pull the starter or you'd have to pull the engine to get the starter back in?  And what if you did pull the engine, what was the procedure for putting the starter back in with the engine pulled?  I don't know.  Maybe God was just merciful to me once again.  I'm just glad I didn't have to pull the engine.

So, if there's a next time, maybe I'll rebuild the starter myself.  For sure I will have the bike on the side stand, just in case.