I should have known.
The day before I left, I had to add 2 inches of distilled water to each battery
cell. I was just doing some routine
checks and the battery was on the list.
I had only done about 1,500 miles on this 1982 Suzuki GS1100G, in the 12
months since I had acquired this quite tired but perfectly serviceable example
of the Universal Japanese Motorbike.
Evaporation in the last 6 months since the battery was bought new, was at
a perfectly acceptable rate. Surely?
I had also changed the motor oil, the oil in the forks,
checked the tyres, installed a windshield, added vibration dampers to the
handlebars (I later discovered that they also had a Cruise Control system built
into them) and I even bought £200s worth of Raask rear-sets, which were a
complete mystery to install but ended up working really well.
Our last “Assassins” trip to the continent, a relaxed jaunt to Bruges, in Belgium (round
trip of about 400 miles) had highlighted to me the uncomfortable riding
position that these US style bikes want you to adopt. The feet are too far forward and with the
bars installed by the PO, I was riding like I was sitting on a cruiser with all
my body weight resting on my buttocks.
These rear-sets brought my feet further back and a couple of inches higher. This meant for me, that my legs were actually
helping to support my body weight and thus relieving the pain in my backside
that inevitably occurred on long rides.
Our first day out was a 400 mile motorway blast to Karlsruhe,
Germany. Just inside the border with
France and in the Southern part of the country, we were in for a treat staying
in the centrally placed and brand spanking new Novotel. We did look a little incongruous walking into
the glistening marble and stainless steel reception area, togged up in leathers
but the Germans (we discovered) love bikes and bikers. We were welcomed along with the be-suited
business travellers and the romantic weekenders. The City was a brilliant place to our first
stop. The four of us took a taxi to the main
restaurant area and sat outside with 100s of people, enjoying a great
meal. The only niggle about this place
was that some of us were charged 16 euros for parking. Others managed to circumnavigate the short
barrier arm at the car park entrance and get away without paying, in our
typical British “Let’s try and beat the system” way.
It was a Sunday and the German bikers were out in great
numbers. Pack after pack of 20 or 30
bikes would pass us in the other direction and in some cases, the more
enthusiastic riders would overtake us going in our direction. All of them, without fail, giving us the
bikers V sign or the extended leg. One
particular German gave us an amazing display of one handed cornering, his other
hand extended downward towards the white lines in the middle of the road with
his two fingers out, literally grazing the road surface, looking like a speed
skater going round an icy bend. We
talked about it endlessly afterwards. It
was a beautiful (if not foolish) sight.
It was almost as if extending this bikers sign of acknowledgement was of
far greater importance than personal safety.
Quite honestly, there are times when I do not feel it is safe to even
look at other riders, let alone take my left hand off the bars and salute them.
It reminded me of the time a French man drove off the road and nearly had a bad
accident as he gesticulated at our Volvo, with its daylight running lights,
which he obviously thought should not be on.
For these Germans, it seemed, the whole point of riding a bike was the
opportunity to salute your fellow riders.
The hotel was also astonishing from the point of view that the whole enterprise was operated by one lone Fraulien. She signed us in at reception, ran over to the bar and poured us all a beer, ran back to reception, answered the phone, came back to fill up the beers and ran into the kitchen. Presumably she was preparing the evening meal as well. Although she did have a helper to serve up the 40 covers in the dining room later on. She even had time to smile and stop for a photo.
We arrived in Riva Del Garda which was very much like
arriving in the South of France. A
holiday atmosphere prevailed and tour busses and hotels were the predominant
scenery. We hadn’t booked any
accommodation for this leg of the journey so we started a new version of the
SatNav game; iPhone “Near Me” Hotel look ups.
Who was going to be the first person to find a hotel near us, with an
English speaking receptionist (many Italians speak no English at all, not even
understanding “Do you have 3 double rooms”) and what was the price. We quickly found the Hotel Giuliana not far
from the petrol station where we were all stripped down to our Ts and made our
way over to it.
It was the next morning when it finally hit home. Because I didn’t have designer luggage which
was detachable from steel framed holders, I needed more time than the others to
baggage up the bike with my bungees and soft bags. Getting to my bike first, I rolled it out of
the parking spot I was sharing with a BMW and hit the start button.
The dreadful sinking feeling hits you hard in the gut. I knew immediately that I was completely stuffed. I knew the battery had lost its
charge and I was about to become the first casualty of the trip. And more specifically, I knew the most likely
reason; the stator or rectifier had failed, possibly both of them. There was no road side fix for this type of
catastrophic failure. I was doomed.
There was the slightest chance I could bump the bike and
ride on hoping I had mis-diagnosed the whole thing and the charging system
would miraculously fix itself. I had
bumped this beast before when I had a dead battery. With help from the crew, a quick bump got me
going. I loaded up my bags and with a
deep apprehension and 1,000 questions racing through my mind, we headed off
along Lake Garda. I was not going to
leave the pack if there was any chance I could keep going. I didn’t want to hold anyone up either. So I took the decision to ride with them as
long as I could keep going.
The SatNavs, despite hours of deliberations, had not agreed on a
route for the day. We rode somewhat aimlessly for several hours through the thick
traffic of the Lake Garda tourist towns.
At one point all six of us were overtaken by a shapely young girl with
very bare legs on a twist and go scooter.
This caused howls of laughter as one of our US brethren had claimed
never to have been overtaken by anyone on 2 wheels in his whole biking career. These little moments are what make trips like
this memorable
.
What was no laughing matter was how I was going to make it
home. There were endless deliberations and possible scenarios spinning around
in my head. Divine intervention seemed
like the only way I was ever going to get this bike back to its home and we
were still heading away from England.
We stopped again after several hours in a small town about
20 miles south of Modena in Italy. We
rolled into the town square with thoughts of lunch and a review of the
satnavs. When you know that your battery
and charging system are completely goosed and that you are likely going to need
a bump start to get going again, you always look for higher ground. I therefore parked away from the others and
pointed the bike in the direction of the gentle downhill slope of the town
centre.
I called my breakdown company in the UK and started the
procedure for getting help. Their first
suggestion was that they would send a local mechanic to see if the bike could
be fixed by the side of the road. I
tried to convince them that there was no chance that it could be fixed and that
we should start the process of getting me and the bike home. But the system was set up that the local
mechanic needed to visit first and then if he could not fix it, it would be
taken to the nearest garage. If they
couldn’t fix it, then it would be shipped home.
I would get a couple of days in a hotel and a flight home. There was one provision the operator needed
to check. Apparently the bike would only
be repatriated if the value of the bike was more than the cost of
repatriation. I quickly estimated the
value of my bike for insurance purposes at £500 and the cost of repatriation at
over £1,000 considering the distance we were away from home. This wasn’t going to work. “Don’t you understand, this bike is worth
millions to me?” I replied. “ It might only have a book value of £500 but I
specifically took out Classic Bike European cover to get me and my bike home if
it broke down”. This was going to be
interesting.
There were several in our group who were quite technically
minded and were curious as to the cause of my problems. None of them ever having owned a GS Suzuki
before, were aware of the electrical pitfalls that besiege these bikes. But before they went to lunch they stayed
with me as I stripped all the luggage off the bike, laid out my tools, rolled
out my mechanics prayer mat (small piece of carpet to kneel on when fixing your
bike by the side of the road) removed the seat and side panels and started
taking out the battery and check the wiring.
As soon as I got near to the battery, I could feel it was
hot and my worst fears were confirmed; I
knew that it had been overcharged by a broken regulator. What I didn’t know was the extent of the
heating (boiling) and that the battery was completely devoid of water. I held up the battery to the assembled crew
to show them the damage and the finality of my decision to stay here and be
left behind. There simply was no cure to
this problem. We were going to part
company and I was resigned to this scenario.
“Hold on a moment!
Just put some water back in it” quipped one of my crew. I have to admit I had never thought about
doing such an elementary fix to such a terminal failure. I pondered the logic of this simple solution. I’m a mechanic by nature and I have buried my
head in the sand when it comes to the fettling of the electrics on my
bikes. Even though I have read endlessly
in the forums about these problems and even replaced a previously dead
rectifier and installed additional earth loops, I am still a rookie newbie when
it comes to electricity. I’ve never
understood how a battery can store this invisible power and then spit it out
when you need it. But here was a member
of our touring group who knew about such matters. “It’s simple.
The battery won’t work without water”.
I did know that you never needed to replace the acid in a
battery. Probably something my Dad had
told me back in the early ‘70s when I was watching him readjust the primary
chain on his Triumph 650 Tiger for the umpteenth time. It was a job he hated doing but it gave us
time together and was probably instrumental in developing my love of 2 wheel
mechanics. All I knew was that batteries
sometimes needed topping up with water.
Well here was a battery that needed completely refilling with
water. The suggestion my touring
companion had made to do this had credence.
I was stuffed in any case so why not try it?
The next problem was finding some water. Between us we mustered up 200 cc of Evian and
a bottle of Sparkling mineral water. The
Evian went in first. But not without
complications. The little battery water
holes are not really designed to take water from a bottle. You need a very thin funnel to avoid spillage. At least half of the Evian ended up on the sandy
floor of the town centre parking lot. We
were still way off from filling it so we broke open the sparkling mineral
water. At this point I was prepared to
try anything. I had nothing to lose. The sparkling water went in.
With the water topped back up and the battery put back in
its holder, I attached the positive and earth leads. At this point I had no expectations. I was resigned to the idea of finding the
nearest airport, flying home and having the bike repatriated somehow. After my call to the breakdown service back
home in the UK, I knew this was going to be a struggle or at least very
expensive but it would be possible.
The fact that the bike fired up with the first touch of the
button, turned all of my thoughts of breakdown services completely on its head. There was lots of congratulatory back
slapping at this point and the lads went off to lunch whilst I put the bike
back together and put all my tools away.
I immediately deduced that the battery had only been gently boiled over
the last 3 days and if I was able to keep it topped up with water I might at
least be able to make it some of the way back home.
I called the breakdown service back and cancelled the
impending roadside assistance. I would
tackle the issue about repatriation at another time. The bike was now back to its old self. It would start immediately as it always
had. The sparkling mineral water has
worked its magic and was now even making me feel better.
When we set off after lunch I was in a completely different
mind set. We had got the bike going,
there was a possibility that the problem was not as terminal as I had first
thought and so far, I caused little or no disruption to the progress of the
group. I was still in the game.
We rode on, still with no particular destination in mind but
generally heading south. Around 5 o’clock
we pulled into a petrol station, stripped off to cool down and took our phones
and satnavs out to look for a bed for the night. We were in Castelnovo ne’ Monti, about 30 miles south of Parma and we found a
hotel, rode on and booked in. It was
beers all round as there was a general sense of relief that the group had
managed to stay together and perhaps even enjoyed a touch of drama on the way.
I was more than relieved to be in a place of sanctuary and refreshment which
would give me time and space to consider my next move.
The charging system quick test called for 13.5 to 14.0 volts
to be going into the battery when the engine was at 2,500 rpm. My readings were
between 14.75 and 15.0 volts. To my uninitiated mind, a few volts here or there
didn’t seem too bad. I consulted my
forums and even called a mate in Kenya who contacted another mate in the US to
determine my next move. At this point,
as it had got dark and the engine was running so I could take my voltage
readings, I saw that the main headlight wasn’t working on its dipped beam. It was all coming together now. The excess voltage had blown the bulb
exacerbating the overcharging problem. My mate in Kenya had suggested putting
an extra headlight bulb into the charging circuit to act as a resistor. This would reduce the volts going into the
battery. I twigged that with a headlamp
replacement and this possible extra circuit, I could probably reduce the
charging voltage enough to save the battery and get me home.
As luck would have it, directly opposite the hotel was an
auto electrics shop and garage. And
given that Italian shops stay open late, it was still open. I went across the road to get a new headlamp
bulb and to see if they might have a car regulator rectifier that I might press
gang into the bike, which was another suggestion that had been made. I showed them the broken bulb, which they
easily understood needed replacing, then I started asking about a “regolatore
raddrizzatore”. This is where things started
to get complicated. I was able to point across the road to the bike. The store manager picked up an oily address
book and flicked through it with a look of triumph. “Suzuki” was all I could understand and I
wrote down the address of what was clearly a some kind of motorbike parts shop:
Speedmania.it. I quickly looked them up
on the iPhone and saw that they had regulator/rectifiers.
Initially I was quite distressed to see not a single
motorbike anywhere in sight. It was a
regular shop front in a modern shopping mall with outside parking. Where were all the bikes? The shop windows were full of generic parts,
accessories and clothing. There was no
mention of the word Suzuki.
I went inside and simply said “regolatore raddrizzatore” and
pointed to my bike outside. All three of
the employees started to either go through catalogues or start on-line
searches. I could see that they would be
able to identify the part quite easily and I was waiting for the news that it
would take 2 weeks to be ordered and delivered.
For the 5 minutes or so that I stood behind that counter waiting for the
answer, I was in a state of suspended animation. My mind was racing and every part of me was
proverbally crossed. One of the lads
went into a back room and immediately came out again carrying a small white
box. It was the right size. He put it on the counter, opened it up and
with a big smile on his face, took it out of the box and handed it to me. Have you ever wanted to kiss a complete
stranger?
At the same time I thought it prudent to get another battery. They had one in stock so I put one on the
bill. They took it to the back of the
shop, filled it with acid and put it on charge.
I was delirious. All for the sum
of 175 euros. Yes, it was far more than
I would have paid for them on eBay at home but I wasn’t at home and I was more
than willing to pay the price. The boys
in the shop were delighted to help out and offered me the use of their
washroom, told me where to get some lunch and later on lent me some gaffer tape
to complete the wiring.
But I was travelling and I was travelling with the knowledge
that the bike was fixed and I had triumphed over this potentially disastrous
situation. I was on top of the
world. I felt great. The engine was purring, the battery was
charging, the headlight was working and there was no way I was now not going to
get home. Every car I overtook on the
motorway was a triumph. It seemed like
ever y gear change was sweeter than I had ever realised. Every blast up to 7,000 rpm was like I had
never had before. The SatNavs had no
idea what they were missing. The
connection between me and my machine was now spiritual and on a level that an
electronically controlled BMW and it’s rider would never experience in a
lifetime of being digitally dictated to by their machines.
Travelling on your own is a completely different experience
to travelling with a group. You have to
choose your route and decide on your pace and where to stop. Up till now I had stepped back from all that,
enjoying the freedom of having to follow the group rather than to be making
decisions all the time. Riding now was
somewhat more stressful than switching off and following as I was used to but I
was enjoying the moment more than I realised.
I batted on travelling up to 85 mph for stretches of 2 or 3 hours or
until I needed to stop for fuel.
I wound my way up the Aosta Valley using the A5
motorway. This is a sensational road
which runs alongside the Fiume Dora Baltea river, which brings the melted snow
down off this part of the Western Italian Alps and is surrounded on both side
by steep and imposing mountains. It was
a fitting adjunct to feeling on top of the world.
There are 282 components in my set of 4 Mikuni BS34SS
Constant Velocity carburettors and I have had every single one of them in my
fingers. From the carburettor body right
down to the little washer and rubber O ring from the pilot screw. Each component is critical to the operation
of the unit and built to withstand the rigours of their workplace
environment. Component failures are
thankfully rare. The rubber parts perish
over time and the needle valve springs lose their spring which can lead to overflowing
float bowls. But the main causes of
problems are from contaminants in the fuel or from fuel putrefaction due to
long periods of inactivity. There are
small pipes, holes and passageways with minute apertures that can easily get
clogged and cause a disproportionate degree of malfunction. Clean carburettors are the first place to
start when refurbishing or overhauling one of these engines.
I am something of a carburettor nerd. I think most of my appreciation and love of
this type of bike is simply because they have these fine pieces of engineering
and craftsmanship attached to their engines.
I tore this set apart as my first job after taking ownership of the
bike. Get the carbs sorted to start with
and then everything else falls into place.
This was a particularly good rebuild.
None of the jets had seized and everything went back together
nicely. Now these beauties were
delivering up to 8 litres of fuel to the cylinders every hour. On our first day alone, they were washed with
44 litres of unleaded. And now they were
delivering a perfect mixture, as I climbed up the mountain motorway. This was what riding was all about for
me. Man and machine blended into one
moving item. I have not been digitally
distanced from the operation of my machine by ECUs, CPUs or electronic chips. I can see and feel that golden liquid
travelling through those beautiful pipes, bowls and tubes. And that puts me on top of the world.
The journey began to get expensive. I had chosen the most direct route home and
also the most costly. This motorway
section cost me 56 euros and I was going to have to pay another 28 to get
through the Mont Blanc tunnel and more on the motorways on the other side. We had managed to get all the way down to
Italy with any tolls but now I was paying the price.
I reached the entrance to the Mont Blanc tunnel and rode up to the
checkpoint. The tunnel is just over 7
miles long and you are required to drive at a speed between 50 kph and 70 kph
and at least 150 mtres behind the vehicle in front of you. Inside the tunnel the air is very warm. It doesn’t prepare you for the massive drop
in temperature when you exit the other side.
You enter at an elevation of 4,531 ft (1,381 m) on the Italian side and exit
on the French side at 4,180 ft (1,274 m).
But in between you move from hot to cold. And in the middle it’s stonking hot. In that 7 mile section of tunnel, it feels
like you move between continents. Well
at least between climate zones.
38 people died in this tunnel in 1999 and there is an aura
of “memorial” to the place. Plaques
commemorating those who lost their lives are highly visible on the French
side. Verbal and written instructions passed
to all drivers before you enter the tunnel are most instructive. It feels like you are about the enter
Disney’s Space Mountain. You are given
every opportunity to chicken out after you read the warnings. But your own
sense of daring-do draws you in. There
is a sense of danger, excitement and mystery all at once.
The next morning was picture postcard. Snow capped mountains greeted me after I had
had a fabulous “only in France” French breakfast and set off on my way again.
A quick Google Maps made it to be 554 miles to the port of
Calais where I would get the Eurotunnel train back home. That looked like being 4 petrol tank fill
ups. It was 100 miles more than our very first long day. I didn’t even consider
if I was capable of doing of doing it. I
was on my own and would simply set off and see how it went. In the back of my
mind were the stories I had heard from our US friends who were Iron Butt
participants. One guy had done the 4
corners of the US, 48 States and 11,000 miles in 11 days. How was that even possible? I set off with no
fixed target but a determination to make the most of the good weather I had in
front of me.
I had been posting regular updates of my trip on
Facebook. I am a member of quite a few
bike related pages (Suzuki Owners, GS1100 owners, GSX/GS1150 Appreciation Page
and so on) and there was this one guy back in the UK who latched on to me and
my solo navigations. He started
suggesting routes for me and helped me plan my journey home. He seemed to be available at just the right
time when I needed advice or a route suggestion. It was a great help and I
loved that I was being mentored in such a fashion. He was sharing with me all about his trips in
France and suggesting routes. I was sharing my journey with someone who had
been there and done it all before. It was a comforting and entertaining use of
social networking especially as the guy turned out to be an expert on
electronics and Suzuki GS motorbikes. The journey home was turning out not to
be as lonely as I thought and a good deal more entertaining with our Facebook
updates and chats at each stop off.
I hit the motorways hard, keeping in the 80 to 90 mph
range. Pushing the bike to a higher average
speed than at any time previously. I had
already put in the spare half litre of oil I had brought with me and I was
conscious of the fact I was now entering the zone where this had probably been
consumed and I was again getting to a low oil level. I was up to about xxxxx miles on this trip and
had added the oil around the 1,000 mile mark.
Pulling into service stations and slowing down for tolls, I swear I
could hear knocks, rattles and noises I had never heard before. Was this from lack of oil or was my
imagination playing up on me?
Not only was I now pushing the bike at a pace where I felt
it was being tested but my own endurance and sanity was also being tested. My
body and mind were beginning to tingle along with the vibrations of the motor.
I was moving into that semi-zombie like state, which I had only experienced
once before. That was doing an
all-nighter, biking across the Prairies of Canada back in my youth. It’s that
sort of state that your mind and body enters when you have thought all your
thoughts and there is nothing else to think about except the road ahead. My Facebook buddy was sending me mileage
reports and estimated times of arrival and the port of Calais. If I just focused and kept going I could even
make it that night.
But there was something else too, that started to take over
from this fixation to complete the journey.
Something that would continually take my attention, divert my eyes and
cause my mind to start a new trajectory of thought. For some unknown and inexplicable reason
(perhaps it was because I had moved into an elevated level of vibrations due to
my increased speed) one of the two screws holding the speedometer facia decided
to unwind and eject itself into the space between the facia and the speedometer
glass.
This happened over a 120 mile
section of motorway and there it was jiggling around under the glass screaming
at me to notice it. This little screw started to do things inside that
speedometer that were simply unbelievable. I discovered that if I held the engine
at just
the right number of revs, the silly little thing could be made to
move around the outside edge of the speedometer in an anti-clockwise
manner. I could get it to the 3 o’clock
position, which equated to 75 mph on the dial, before it would hit the
speedometer needle and be forced back down.
It was a great game to play to see how far I
could get it to move up the face before it met the needle coming in
the opposite direction. However hard I tried, it was almost impossible to
ignore this new distraction. I realised
that it was a hazard and compromised my attentiveness to the road ahead but at
the same time was a distracting little game that helped while away the time and
take the focus away from my aching back, tingling feet and sore butt.
Within what seem like a fairly short time, even though I had
now been in the saddle for 7 hours, I was seeing sign posts to the Port of
Calais. My destination was in sight. I could taste it now. Even a loose
speedometer screw would not divert me fully from my purpose. It was to be; home
or bust.
Because it is such a popular destination (it is the route to
the UK), Calais is signposted from a greater distance away than you would
expect for a city of it’s size. This
lulls you into a false sense that you are nearer to your destination than you
actually are. So despite seeing the
signs, I never seemed to arrive. This
problem was further aggravated by that fact that when I did arrived at Calais,
I had forgotten that I still had a little way to drive to go past it and get to
the Channel Tunnel terminal at Sangatte.
I know its not far but by now I had had enough. The last hour was pretty much the most tiring
of the trip. It was dark, I was hungry,
I wanted to get home and it seemed like this hour lasted for days.
There was one guy and his wife on a well kitted out Gold
Wing, who had traveled 700 miles to get the train that night. And the other guy on a beat up Bandit had
done 4,000 miles in the last 4 weeks.
Made my little trip seem trivial by comparison.
The Gold Wing was complete with lounge type seating, heated
everythings and 3 Satnavs. One for the
passenger on a moveable stalk, who would plot the routes as they travelled and
2 on the bars (the displays set at different degrees of enlargement) for the
driver to navigate the roads ahead. It
had more screens and buttons on it than the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise. There was even a display to
give a running read out of tyre pressures which was somehow wirelessly linked
to pressure sensing air valve caps. The
owner described how necessary this was as the bike was so heavy and traveling
at speeds would cause the tyre pressures to nearly double in number, so he had
to be careful not to over stress them.
He had just given me another thing to worry about. What would my tyre pressures be like when I
was doing 85 mph on those hot Italian roads?
What would have happened if one of them had exploded? Now I could understand why flats were
sometimes called blow outs. Perhaps I
needed to get a tyre pressure readout system?
Perhaps not.
The other guy was an oil rig worker who was on his months
shore leave. He had bought a beat up old
Suzuki Bandit for a few hundred pounds the week before he left and set off to
visit friends in Norway (in the oil business) and other friends in Italy. Thus he racked up 4,000 miles in a four week
period with an unknown bike and with just a back pack strapped on his
seat. I never had time to recount any of
my adventures (the train only takes 30 minutes to reach the UK), which were, by
comparison to his, of very little drama.
These 2 bikers certainly brought me back down to earth. I had almost got to the point of believing my
own publicity about this trip. That I
was an heroic survivor of an epic journey and that without my ingenuity, skill
and determination to get home, my trip would have ended in that town square in
Italy. Here I was thrown back into the
reality that there were plenty of guys out there doing stuff like this with
bigger, better, harder and faster stories than my little, what now seemed
like, school boy adventure.
When I rolled off the train in England, I did so with the
knowledge that I would be home soon. I
had a sense the other guys were still in the midst of their adventures and I’m
sure they could see the relief in me that mine was about over. The Gold Wing guy was heading off to
Manchester (another 295 miles away) and the Bandit Boy was going back to oil
city Aberdeen (another 600 miles away).
Both saying they were continuing their journey that night. I offered Bandit Boy a stay over at mine but
he had to get back for work! That was
impressive. We said our farewells and
set off in the dark for our final destinations.
And 30 minutes later I drove straight
into my garage, which was welcomingly open and waiting for me. Bike and rider and new rectifier and battery,
safely restored into their rightful place.
A lesson well and truly learnt. I should have known.
THE END
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