Posted by INTRUDN on June 12, 2000 at 08:57:41:
Well, the title says it all! Stef and I went to the Delta Cycle Classic this weekend which is held in Greenville,MS. It is a charity rally with all the proceeds going to the Mississippi Firefighters Memorial Burn Center. At the last minute, totally on the spur of the moment, she decided to enter her bike into the bike show. It was entered into the Non-Harley section, in the Sport class. We had talked casually about what a kick it would be to enter, but neither of us wanted to do the cleaning and detailing, we just wanted to HAVE FUN! Well, fun for me was seeing her face when she was told that she had placed and a trophy awaited her. We were both totally stoked! There were some very nice bikes in her category, and we were TOTALLY blown away. Like I said, we entered just for the heck of it.
To give you the proper perspective, in her category at the Bike Show, there were, among others, two CBR's and a Nighthawk. Her's was the ONLY Savage to be seen in Greenville this weekend at the rally or at the Street Dance down by the river. There were PLENTY of Harley's of all models, and more Goldwing's than you could shake a stick at. Other makes and models roamed around too, but the HD's and Goldwing's had the numbers. The trip was a real joy for us, even without the trophy. Aside from buying some bad fuel for the trip home, everything went very well. Bad fuel WILL make you lose your mind trying to diagnose the problem! My bike started acting sickly first--I lost power intermittently in my front cylinder, everytime I would let the bike idle down or turn it off for a few moments, the power would return. After a couple of stops along the highway in the middle of nowhere, I noticed that my fuel pump was constantly trying to prime the system when I would kill the engine and turn the key back to the run position. I of course feared for the worse--fuel pump going bad. I thought "It couldn't be the fuel that we just bought because we filled both bikes from the same hose and Stef's bike is running perfectly." Well, that theory didn't last but about twenty more miles. Her bike started losing power too. I was very relieved when she told me her's was acting up--relieved because I knew then that it wasn't my fuel pump, but the fuel. We stopped at another gas staion and I split a bottle of STP fuel treatment between the bikes (it's SUPPOSED to treat up to 20 gallons or so, so I figured it should do one hell of a job on our problem). We took it easy for the next twenty miles or so, just poking along, with no further problems. We decided to test fate and open up the throttles on our machines to see if the problem was fixed. Stef reached 70/75mph readily without any power loss several times, and I backed off my throttle at 90/95mph several times without so much as a hic-up (before, with the afore mentioned power problems, 40/45mph was the best I could muster before losing the front cylinder, and Stef would feel the power drop in her bike).
So, a word of advice to all---keep a bottle of fuel treatment in your saddlebags if you are taking a road trip. You never know when it will come in REAL handy. BTW, we didn't put cheap gas in--it was 93 octane from an established petroleum company. That just goes to show that you can get bad fuel from ANYWHERE at ANYTIME.
I had a brainstorm tonight when Stef and I went out for her victory supper (well, it was more of a drizzle in my case than a storm), anyway, it has to do with a way to "clean/tidy up" the area that is left when you remove the sissybar. If it works, Y'all will be the first to know. You know if I'm going to tackle it, it will have to be SIMPLE! Ha-ha! Who knows? Maybe next time she will win first place! I'm posting this here for all to read---I'm very proud of my wife and her bike. As I stated on my website, the bike is her vision. I just find the stuff and try my best to make it work. I give her ALL the credit.