Polar Bear Motorcycles: Baptism by Ice

Schaefferstown CT Bears, from left: Grumpy, new guy Paul, CT Blogger, Captain, Token2 and Mac.

Motorcycle Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear Grand Tour, ride to Schaefferstown, Pa., February 5, 2017

By: Chris Loynd, a.k.a. CT Blogger

Admittedly riding interstate highways at 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a motorcycle is not for everybody. Even so, anybody can be on the Connecticut Polar Bear distribution email. So what happens is I send weekly emails about our Polar Bear departure time to many more motorcyclists than show up for any given ride. Some never show. Some ride occasionally. And every now and then an email recipient surprises us all.

Sunday may have been our coldest ride of the season so far. It is long too, a rare six-pointer. At 200+ miles and four hours' travel one-way, the cold can start to get annoying. Even Captain, who eschews electrics, admitted he was getting more than a little tired of being cold that last half hour of our morning ride to the destination. Coming back home in the afternoon we enjoyed another 10 degrees of temperature, still chilly but not biting. Believe me, it makes a difference. On the way over I cooked my toes.

People who don't ride motorcycles in winter ask me, "Well when it's that cold, what does 10 degrees really matter?" But if you think about a summer day, the difference between 80 and 90 degrees is the spread between hot and miserable.

Just because I ride in winter does not mean I like to be cold. In fact, I am fairly cold intolerant. Not like Polar Bear Grand Pooh Bah Bob who strolls around the parking lot as bikes arrive in 20 degree weather in nothing more than one of his hundred polar bear themed sweatshirts. He's like our Scott, never cold.

Last season I switched to the full electric set after years of toughing it out with just an electric jacket liner and gloves. I used to wear multiple layers of long johns and put those disposable HotHands(r) packs under my toes. On really cold days I'd put two under each foot, one for toes another under the insole. One year, early on in my Polar Bear riding experience, a couple of us went in together to buy a case of the things directly from the manufacturer. The next year they would not sell them direct. Now, every November I'm stalking sporting goods aisles, buying a full box when they first appear.

Retailers are season sensitive and you cannot find the warmers in March, sometimes neither in October. When you do find them, you must guess correctly about how many you will need to fill out the Polar Bear season, I ran out one year when my daughter was a high school cheerleader and we blew through my supply trying to stay warm at football games.

I carry them still on the bike as backup in case my electrics fail. If your electric clothing stops working, you still have to get your motorcycle home. Unless you're like Token2 on this ride. You'll have to read a bit further before I get to his drama. Right now I'm writing about, what was it, oh, cooked toes!

I have my new, full-suit, Warm and Safe gear wired with a dual thermostat. (If you don't know, the electric clothing plugs into a lead attached to your battery terminals. It runs off the alternator, electric current coursing through multitudes of special wires woven into the special clothing.) One thermostat dial controls my gloves, the other is for the rest of the suit: jacket liner, pants liner and socks all together. That way I can control the amount of heat for the suit versus the gloves.

This is helpful because I've not yet found a pair of electric gloves that truly keep my hands warm enough. For one thing, I have long, thin fingers. For another, my hands are the part of me most exposed to the wind, unprotected by windshield or fairings. So on a day like last Sunday, I have the gloves at full crank -- thermonuclear hot. If I had the suit at the same setting, my body would melt. I've yet to see a day cold enough to turn up the jacket, pants and socks full blast.

After our last few rides I tried something new last Sunday for the inadequate gloves and it seemed to work. I supplemented my electrically heated gloves with a HotHands packet in each glove. Not bad! My fellow Polar Bears tell me I need heated motorcycle grips. I am amenable, but my finances are not.

So the hands held up fairly well last Sunday. Unfortunately, I did not properly set up the rest of the getup. My heated socks were over just silk socks. Overtop both silk and heated socks I wore heavy, insulated wool socks. Whereas the pants and jacket liner were over my insulated riding onesie. Therefore my chest and legs were cold, my feet were hot, too hot, way too hot. I couldn't crank the thermostat on my riding suit enough to warm most of my body without burning my toes. And it was cold enough toward the end of our morning ride to Schaefferstown, and I was annoyed enough with being cold the past 100 miles, that I did just that.

When we got to our destination restaurant, Franklin House Tavern, as discreetly as possible, and before lunch was served, I took off my boots and socks to check for damage. There was a red circle on top of each foot from the heating element. One toe blistered on top pretty bad . . . it is blistered still almost a week later. Lesson learned. I switched my heated socks to the outside of my heavy insulated socks and rode home warm and happy.

Our new rider last Sunday, my friend Paul, picked one heck of a cold and long Polar Bear challenge for his baptism. We've known each other for years as Stratford neighbors. He was also in one of my motorcycle riding classes, where he first heard about the Polar Bears. After being on the Connecticut Polar Bear email list for something like a year-and-a-half, Paul was suddenly there Sunday at our departure Dunkin' Donuts ready to ride. Paul complained not a bit. (In contrast to me whining to everyone about my cooked feet.)

Paul fit right in, rode well in formation and seemed to like it. In fact, he's looking to do a late season signup for the Grand Tour. Chairman Bob was willing, but did not have his release forms with him. Paul will sign up on his next ride and we hope to see him earn his red rocker this season. There are plenty of rides -- and miles for Connecticut Bears -- for him to achieve it.

(If you're not familiar, the Polar Bears give you two points for showing up to the destination on a motorcycle, plus one point for every 100 round trip miles you rode to get there. Being from Connecticut, we have much longer rides than a majority of our fellow Bears from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware. The Grand Tour is not really for us, but they have graciously accepted us for 15 years now, since I first discovered them in a magazine article.)

Paul rides astride a big Honda Valkyrie with lots of personality, the bike, not Paul. Paul is more quiet and mild mannered than the skeleton hand mirror mounts and gun permit saddlebag statement would have you believe. Although we did not talk much politics, I am guessing he's a conservative, so that faction of our group will be pleased.

Thumper, if you're reading this, Captain actually said he missed you. I guess I'm not strident enough a liberal to keen his conservative sparing wits. We have some shorter rides coming up. Chances are good that President Trump topics for discussion will continue to proliferate.

As I hinted earlier, there is one part more to last Sunday's story. Token2 earned his nickname for riding foreign motorcycles. At first it was just one. Then he bought another and we squared his nickname. I guess he couldn't help himself because he tumbled down the exotic bike brand slippery slope finding Moto Guzzi somewhere near the bottom. He hasn't found bottom yet. There's probably a Ural or Royal Enfield or Hyosung somewhere further down the slope in Token2's future. (Sorry Lynn, your travails may not yet be concluded.)

Owner of a rock-solid Honda and well-engineered BMW, Token2 decided to bring his Guzzer on this long and cold ride. And it operated as expected.

At least the Italian showed good manners. It stranded Token2 in the parking lot of our destination. We could have all been piled up on the shoulder of an Interstate instead. His bike rode just fine to our destination. But after sitting out in the cold parking lot while we ate lunch inside, it refused to shift into gear. Token2 is a pretty good mechanic; he was stumped. After some fits and starts around the parking lot, he gave up. The folks at Franklin House were very supportive. They gave him a place to park his wounded bike directly in the unblinking gaze of a security camera.

Logistics of getting Token2 back home without his bike were our next priority. Captain suggested I take him. Certainly I was willing, but I have the worst second seat of our crew, with the exception of Paul who has none. Our next challenge was finding some power for Token2's heated clothing. No one had the right adapter for the outlet on Captain's Goldwing. Fortunately I had a Y splitter cable that allowed Grumpy and Token2 to share the same lead on Grumpy's Harley. And we had those extra 10 degrees of warmth for the ride home.

We got to the stop at the top of the Garden State Parkway just fine. There Token2 called his wife Lynn who fortuitously was out driving nearby and she picked him up there. Token2 rode the rest of the way home in warm car with a full seat.

Grumpy offered rescue the next morning. He and Token2 drove back out to Schaefferstown in Grumpy's monster truck to retrieve the Guzzi. I will post Token2's technical explanation of his mechanical travails below.

I do not believe in jinxes, but Token2 pointed out this is the very same destination where Fonz had an issue with his bike. He, unfortunately never made it all the way there. And the broken springs fished from deep inside Token2's Moto Guzzi make the number 60 (see photo below). And the New England Patriots came from behind in an unprecedented sudden-death Superbowl win, the final score 34 to 28, added together that's 62, all made possible by a second Patriots 2-point conversion. Subtract that 2 points and the Patriots never had a chance. Take two away from 62 and you end up with . . . 60. Coincidence?

Token2's Account:

Hi All:

First of all big props to Grumpy for retrieving the bike and getting me to the dealership on Monday. Thanks Big Guy.

I spent a couple of hours in the shop with the tech yesterday trying to get to the reasons for the mechanical problem.

So here is the skinny, the starter motor was removed and yielded a steel fragment (the larger of the two in the picture) from the gear well. After examination and checking another Guzzi starter for appearance it was concluded that it did not originate from the starter. It looks like a fragment of a spring, but does not fit the shaft diameter of the starter. However it was sufficient to wreck the starter.

After removing the starter and turning the crankshaft the clutch was locking up at certain points. The bell housing was scoped and another piece of metal was fished out from the bottom of the housing, it appears to be another piece of spring but of different diameter to the first part. Take a look at the clutch friction plate pictures from the shop manual I have attached and you will see four cush springs (which appear on pictures to be a spring within a spring), the belief is that one (or more) of them failed, or were released from the captive housing. (You are viewing the engine block looking forward).

A piece of the larger spring ended up in the housing of the starter as the clutch rotated, probably before arriving in the FH. That was jamming the first attempts to start the bike after lunch. It moved a bit allowing it to start…which is when the death rattle was heard. Thankfully the busted clutch made it to the destination and after we got it started at FH the rest of the spring was rattling around and with the difficulty changing gears it was parked.

The motor was then started in the shop, no rattling, so it was possible all the pieces were ejected. Today with better weather we pushed the bike outdoors and ran it through the gears under power with the bike on the center stand several times. At one point as it was running (low revs of course) through the gears the motor locked a bit like a stall. Then reason to run it is that those springs only serve to reduce clutch chatter, one missing would leave the bike serviceable. The other parts of the spring could have dropped through a drain port at the bottom of the bell housing.

So the conclusion is that either more bits of failed spring are in there or there is a more significant failure of the friction plate, which released the spring and is now interfering with the smooth operation of the clutch. To find out it needs to be opened up, open it up you put in a new clutch of course.

So, new starter motor and new clutch assembly required. Eye-watering repair bill as the engine has to be dropped and the back half separated to get to the clutch. Before the job is started I have asked for the tranny oil to be drained, if there is metal in there as well then even more damage has occurred at which point I will reconsider options.

Just have to shrug and be happy the problem did not reveal itself at speed within the center of the CTPB group and reflect on the fact that with 200,000 miles under my belt since getting back in the game this is the first serious pocket hitting repair event (got the money returned on the Buell thank the Lord for CT lemon laws and warranty).

Of course such a catastrophic failure should not happen on a clutch that has not been abused with only 24,000 miles, but it did. I got unlucky with the failure, but lucky with the point the failure revealed itself.

Hope we get out on Sunday.

Cheers.

A bit of the local charm in this beautiful colonial town.

Our destination really is an old colonial inn.

Token2 earned his gold rocker on this run. Hmmm, maybe wrongly so. He likely reported ROUND TRIP mileage for points and I don't think riding back with your Moto Guzzi in the back of Grumpy's pickup truck counts for that. But then again, I do believe passengers get equal credit for miles and points and rockers. So Token2 is likely okay.

Grumpy to the rescue did earn his gold rocker this run.

Mac has furthest to go of our CT Bears so he earns big miles. But he misses some rides due to Caribbean vacations and other such retirement distractions.