I am going to make this an on going post since I am at Marcus Dairy every Sunday.
For those who do not know, Marcus Dairy is located in Danbury, CT and every Sunday morning 100's of bikes from all over show up there. People come for the excellent food in the Marcus Dairy restaurant, and to share their love of bikes with other like minded people.
On a typical Sunday, you will find a vast variety of bikes. It is not uncommon to see brand new bikes, vintage bikes, custom choppers, trikes, and even scooters sharing the parking lot. I try to get a few of my friends to ride up with me, but at the very least I ride alone with my wife and son following in the car.
Photo AlbumSunday, August 10thThis morning I waited at the DMV for JJ and Anthony to arrive on their bikes. JJ was riding our friend's 2008 Yamaha R6, and Anthony was on his 1990 Kawasaki ZX6. I, of course, was riding my 1982 Nighthawk CB750SC. As Anthony rolled in, JJ and I could tell something was bothering him. It turned out his bike was not running right. It wouldn't rev all the way up, and was losing power. As he pulled in the parking lot, it even died on him. He tried to restart it, but he had no battery power. I sent my wife back to our house, which is only a mile away, to get my tool bag.
I found a broken ground wire by the battery, so we fixed that and decided to pop start the bike. I got it started, and it seemed to be running fine so we started on our way up Route 7 towards Danbury. Everything seemed to be fine, and we were having a nice enjoyable ride with me in the lead and the 2 of them having fun behind me. As we got to the Ridgefield line, I noticed that Anthony's headlight wasn't on anymore. Shortly after that, both Anthony and JJ disappeared from my site. I pulled over and then saw JJ flying up to catch me. It turned out that Anthony had lost all power and the bike died. We turned around to meet back up with him, and after a quick inspection decided to call for help. Anthony made a call to his uncle, who said he would come up with his truck to get the bike. After all of us waiting for a while, another call confirmed that his uncle would have a ramp to load the bike. Anthony told us to go ahead and he would catch up with us after we got back. He even told Kari, his girlfriend, to go along with us. Kari hopped on the back of the R6 with JJ, and we continued on our way with my wife and son following in the car.
When we got to Marcus, the lot was packed with bikes and we headed inside for some much needed food. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast, and went back outside to look at some of the bikes. As we got back across the lot to our bikes, Anthony called to say he was on his way over to my house to wait for us. We loaded up and enjoyed a nice ride back down Route 7 to Norwalk. When we got home, we found Anthony sitting in his car and his bike parked in the lot. Anthony and I started taking apart his bike to investigate an oil leak while others went to Walmart to pick up a new battery. We also decided to do an oil change while we had the bike apart. Now comes the good and bad news. The good news is that the battery was the power problem, and not an alternator issue. The bad news is that the oil leak was caused by a blown head gasket which was causing his coolant to mix with the oil.
The bike is now sitting in my garage waiting for us to pull the engine and replace all the gaskets. Maybe next week's trip to Marcus will be one without issues.
