Wife and I decided to take a ride today, her on her CanAm Spyder and I on my 1992 Sportster with sidecar.
All was going good until around halfway through a 100 mile ride. I started noticing a slight jerkyness at times in the Sportster. Thought it might be a intermittent miss but some how that didn't make sense as there was nothing noticeable in the exhaust note. So I kept going and did not mention anything over the intercoms. Then when we got back to a bit more populated area I decided might be worth checking out.
I told wife and she suggested seeing if I could make it to a volunteer fire house in the next village so that's where we headed. We pulled into the drive of the fire house and noticed they had a nice covered place with cement floor and a roof for shade. Once stopped I decided to check out the drive belt as that was the only thing I could think to check thinking maybe some of the cogs on the belt might be damaged. Well turned out I was not too far off but instead of a few missing cogs I found maybe a six inch section with cogs still there!
Good news is I actually carry a spare belt and a good assortment of tool in the trunk of the sidecar. As we had someone coming possibly in an hour or so to work on house water system, filter change, I convinced her to continue on home and I'd stay and work on the belt change. I managed to swap in the new belt and reassemble bike enough to ride home, I'll worry about proper belt adjustment and heat shields some other day.
As it was I was home a little more than an hour before water filter guy showed up! Now I guess I need to see about buying another spare belt and add a couple tools to the ones in the sidecar just in case!
All was going good until around halfway through a 100 mile ride. I started noticing a slight jerkyness at times in the Sportster. Thought it might be a intermittent miss but some how that didn't make sense as there was nothing noticeable in the exhaust note. So I kept going and did not mention anything over the intercoms. Then when we got back to a bit more populated area I decided might be worth checking out.
I told wife and she suggested seeing if I could make it to a volunteer fire house in the next village so that's where we headed. We pulled into the drive of the fire house and noticed they had a nice covered place with cement floor and a roof for shade. Once stopped I decided to check out the drive belt as that was the only thing I could think to check thinking maybe some of the cogs on the belt might be damaged. Well turned out I was not too far off but instead of a few missing cogs I found maybe a six inch section with cogs still there!
Good news is I actually carry a spare belt and a good assortment of tool in the trunk of the sidecar. As we had someone coming possibly in an hour or so to work on house water system, filter change, I convinced her to continue on home and I'd stay and work on the belt change. I managed to swap in the new belt and reassemble bike enough to ride home, I'll worry about proper belt adjustment and heat shields some other day.
As it was I was home a little more than an hour before water filter guy showed up! Now I guess I need to see about buying another spare belt and add a couple tools to the ones in the sidecar just in case!