When we last left our hero (uhm...that would be me, I guess...although, considering I just stuffed my bike into a tree, perhaps "zero" would be more apropos...)
Latest develpoments are; I wasn't able to dig up a front end so I had to go to the stealership and order new fork assemblies. They come with the lower sliders which is probably just as well, as there's no way to be certain that my old ones survived the impact without any damage at all. They look fine...but who knows if there's anything out of whack on the inside...and I don't want to suddenly find myself tankslapping when I'm shooting down the highway at 100 miles an hour (er...I mean 65, officer).
The cost was a painful $460 for the pair, and that was bad enough. However, insult was added to injury when I was told that it would take 10 days for them to come in. Egads - I could drive out to the York plant, pick up a set of forks from inventory and be home again in one day. But I digress...and again; I have no one to blame for the situation, but myself. So let's move along, shall we?
About two hours after I'd left the stealership, I remembered that I also had to get a new axle. So the next day I went back and ordered that. The parts guy then told me there was a slight chance the forks could come in today (8/2), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, toes crossed, arms crossed, eyes crossed (I was going to keep my legs crossed but that looks like I have to take a leak) in the hopes that I'll get the call. Day is half over and nothing yet...
The good news is that my tire/rim/rotor assembly showed up yesterday! Sweet Magnolia Brown, that is one nice looking setup - I sure lucked out; it looks brand new! The guy who was selling it said that it had less than 100 miles on it and I would have to agree. Now if I just had some forks to mount the tire onto...(sidelong glance towards the phone...damn, nothing...)
But while I was waiting for the parts to come in, I figured I might as well do some minor upgrades/changes while I was at it. I'd picked up some exhaust heat wrap last winter and had planned on wrapping the pipes but never got around to it. After yet another season of all-weather riding, the chrome on them is pretty beat up so it made sense to knock this out while the bike is laid up. I'll get into the details of the project in the next post. Another project that I'm going to do (and will cover in a separate post) is to install a suicide clutch and jockey shifter. That's right!! Jockey Shifting!! I've had this plan in mind for years (was going to set up the Shovel with it) but figured what the hell - might as well do it now, on the Fatboy. The kit showed up in the mail earlier in the week and I'll get to that as soon as I can. If the forks come in today, then the priority is going to be to get the bike rolling again in time for the Philly trip, and the clutch/shifter setup will have to wait until afterwards. Otherwise, it'll be rolled into the current plan.
I'll take pics and try to go into some detail as I go through the process. There's a website out there (Bikernet.com) that has some fantastic tech tips/articles and they happen to have directions/advice for both the heat wrap and the shift/clutch setup. But I'll get into all of that later.
So until we meet again kids, ride hard and take chances. (But watch out for the trees.)
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