Your Hottest Motorcycle Ride

[exeric]

My hottest motorcycle ride is more appropriate for me as I live in Florida. My hottest ride was about 1985 and in the dog days of a Florida summer. A friend of mine loaned me his 1968 FL to see if I was interested in buying it. I rode it to Tampa from Orlando with no problems; other than it was very hard to kick through. I stayed in Tampa visiting friends and was ready to come home on Sunday and of course I picked noon to leave. I got about 20 miles east of Tampa on I-4 past the weigh station when I smelled something really bad. The motor lost the front cylinder and I pulled over and shut it off. The engine would not start and I had no tools with me. After jumping on that miserably hard to kick through starter, in the bright sun @ an ambient temp. of about 95 and matching humidity; I was all in. There was zero shade, two lanes of speeding maniacs to the left, burning blacktop under my feet, and fire ant mounds on the right shoulder. I started pushing that big old dead pig because I had no other recourse and I couldn't risk losing my friend's bike. I could push about 500 feet before I needed to rest, however, I did not know how far I had to go to the next exit. The highway went off to a vanishing point and there were no signs to say how far the next exit was. I probably should have gone back to the weigh station but it was closed on Sunday and that wouldn't have helped my situation. I continued to push east (literally) and finally saw a rise in the highway which meant I-4 was going over a surface street and I knew that was the Plant City exit. It was probably a 3 hour push to get to the rise and now I had to grunt that thing up a long grade. The really bad part was, there are no sidewalks on interstate highways and the overpass had a very narrow shoulder. I had to wait until there were no cars comming so I could run it across the bridge. The good part was, it was down hill on the other side and I could coast down the grade. I could see a gas station at the end of the exit road but I still had a good 1/4 mile of level grade to push. By this time I was in bad shape and close to heat stroke. I was pushing past a Holiday Inn located on the other side of the highway fence and I watched in agony as the maid dumped buckets of melting ice in the parking lot. I finally got to the gas station, left the hog at the very edge of the parking lot and staggered to the stainless steel drinking fountain. One of the slack-jawed yokels remarked that it was a pretty danged hot day to be pushing a motorcycle. My comment was; " No Sh*t ". It turned out that my friend had leaned out the carburetor and didn't get the front wrist pin clip into it's groove. When I tore it down I found a piston with a hole burned through, and a cylinder with a deep groove from the mis-placed clip. I keep that piston as a painful souvenier.

[Bills37]

Sorry to hear you had to go thru all that trouble. I've been fortunate the two times in 30 years of riding that I broke down, someone stopped to offer help before I had time to figure out what was wrong. I've even had people stop and offer help when I have pulled over to take a break. I guess I've been very lucky to have good hearted souls come my way when I needed it.

[t-jacobs]

As much as I hate them this would have been a good time for a cell phone. Thats if they were invented yet when this happened.

[exeric]

I've been lucky in the past with good Samaritans and I do believe in the kindness of strangers but there were none to be found that day.

[Robert Luland]

Eric I feel your pain. Back in 1989 I went to my local Harley dealer and bought a new oem kicker gear for the pan. I wanted to try the 59 and up one (14 tooth if I remember right?) Two days later I over extended my knee when the thing sheared off half the teeth. My first thoughts were, I didn’t know I owned a Sporster. After hobbling around for a week. I returned the gear and they gave me a new one. Mind you I had to pay for it since they wouldn’t refund my money until prick MCO said ok. No problem. The following Sunday (Eric why does this **** always happen on a Sunday and were do socks go when they get lost in the washing machine?) I went for a ride to Albany and back down to New York City. I pulled into the Harriman toll booth (All most home, only thirty miles to go!) as the ding dong is taken her time to give me my change. My foot slipped on the grease patch and stalled the bike. I was in the center lane of 14. I risked my life and slowly crossed over to the right side waiting area. For anyone that lives around here you damm well know what I’m talk’in about. I’m already dehydrated from the ride. It’s 94 degrees out with blazing sun. I collect my faculties and go to kick the bike. The new gear sheared right off. I’m now down to being a cripple (I know what you’re thinking! A miracle happened! Wrong!) It took me thirty minutes of push starting to get her going again. Do you think anyone stopped to help? Hell NO! One bad ass biker after another passed with out a glance. I made it back to the shop in one piece. Harley finely refunded my money for both gears but it’s a day I’ll never forget. I don’t care if you’re just taking a break on the side of the road. I stop and ask if you need help. I have many stories of breaking down and all the good people that did stop but this not one of them. If you run a belt drive? You to can meet all kinds of people looking to help on a Sunday afternoon! Bob L

[MJW]

Back in 95 me and a bunch of buddys rode out to Sturgis for the first weekend for the usual festiveties. Monday we all packed up for the ride out west to Yellowstone and hit the road. We were just about to Buffalo, riding in a hundred and six degrees, when I noticed my friends girlfriend, who was taking her first long distance ride weaving back and forth so I pulled up next to her and told her to pull off the road. She made it to the shoulder almost to a stop before dumping her shovel and rolling down the ditch. I picked her up, put her on the back of my bike and found a rest stop about a mile up the road, some cool motor home people helped me ice her down and just let her sip water and rest for a while till she felt better. We went back for her scooter and finally made it into Buffalo and found the rest of the group sipping gin tonics in the local tavern. turned out they were a little de-hydrated too!...

[Slojo]

My hottest motorcycle ride is more appropriate for me as I live in Florida. My hottest ride was about 1985 and in the dog days of a Florida summer. A friend of mine loaned me his 1968 FL to see if I was interested in buying it. I rode it to Tampa from Orlando with no problems; other than it was very hard to kick through. I stayed in Tampa visiting friends and was ready to come home on Sunday and of course I picked noon to leave. I got about 20 miles east of Tampa on I-4 past the weigh station .

I have been there on I-4 between those two cities in heavy stop and go traffic on my St4s Ducati YES that is a hot zone. The bike quite running for no apparent reason. My best guess was vapor lock (with fuel injection?). Allowing it to cool for about 20 minutes would let it restart for about five minutes then repeat process. Finally an exit and some shade trees solved the problem. It has not reoccurred since.
Joe

[Eddie G]

Eric I feel your pain. Back in 1989 I went to my local Harley dealer and bought a new oem kicker gear for the pan. I wanted to try the 59 and up one (14 tooth if I remember right?) Two days later I over extended my knee when the thing sheared off half the teeth. My first thoughts were, I didn’t know I owned a Sporster. After hobbling around for a week. I returned the gear and they gave me a new one. Mind you I had to pay for it since they wouldn’t refund my money until prick MCO said ok. No problem. The following Sunday (Eric why does this **** always happen on a Sunday and were do socks go when they get lost in the washing machine?) I went for a ride to Albany and back down to New York City. I pulled into the Harriman toll booth (All most home, only thirty miles to go!) as the ding dong is taken her time to give me my change. My foot slipped on the grease patch and stalled the bike. I was in the center lane of 14. I risked my life and slowly crossed over to the right side waiting area. For anyone that lives around here you damm well know what I’m talk’in about. I’m already dehydrated from the ride. It’s 94 degrees out with blazing sun. I collect my faculties and go to kick the bike. The new gear sheared right off. I’m now down to being a cripple (I know what you’re thinking! A miracle happened! Wrong!) It took me thirty minutes of push starting to get her going again. Do you think anyone stopped to help? Hell NO! One bad ass biker after another passed with out a glance. I made it back to the shop in one piece. Harley finely refunded my money for both gears but it’s a day I’ll never forget. I don’t care if you’re just taking a break on the side of the road. I stop and ask if you need help. I have many stories of breaking down and all the good people that did stop but this not one of them. If you run a belt drive? You to can meet all kinds of people looking to help on a Sunday afternoon! Bob L

Your probily better off if the Belt drive wannabees don't stop. They have never seen a kickstart anyway. Could loan a cell phone though. A couple of years ago at Bike week we were waiting in a large crowd for breakfast when one of the more vocal wannabees started shouting " who ownes this Indian " i replied "i do" He said you left the key in it! My reply was " doesn't matter nobody here could start it anyway!

[LouieMCman]

I resisted the Cold Ride (an Alaskan ride story) thread but couldn’t resist this one.

It was a typical July week along the Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuna. The wife and I were heading to the annual Motor Maid convention in Del Rio, TX from eastern GA. All was well until she threw a chain on her Shovelhead just passed the Mississippi river bridge close to Baton Rouge, LA. Well this was her ride so we traded bikes and she headed on to TX while I stayed behind to fix the chain. It wasn’t to hot then only about 100 in the shade. I put a new chain on and caught up to her about midnight in San Antonio. That turned out to be the coolest ride of the trip. From then on the coolest day was 108 and the hottest 115. Actually peeled some of the paint off the poor shovel motor and wasn’t too kind to the tappets either which were complaining loudly. One night we stayed in the pool until about midnight and got out and felt chilled, went in the room and saw the temperature on the TV…95 degrees. We saw numerous dead deer and other animals along the road that looked mummified with dried skin pulled tightly over the bones, it was eerie. Spent about 5 days down there in Hell and when we headed east we didn’t stop until we got back in LA. That was a HOT ride!

[LouieMCman]

Joe, Roses Duck pegged the temp gauge at over 200+ when stuck in traffic in West By God Virginia a couple years ago, didn't shut off but I thought it was going to blow!