I was up at 5:30 but needed to wait for a little daylight to check the motorcycle. First thing I did was turn it on to check the head light. Nothing. I didn’t even pull the ABS sensor. I replaced the blown fuse and\u00a0sent an email to Rick in Louisville that I was heading that way and started packing the bike.<\/p>\n
I could deal with no speedometer, an inacurate odometer (huge pain in the butt when you don’t have a fuel guage), and no ABS. I felt no head light was an official show stopper.<\/p>\n
Rick and I talked and he came to help me check out the motorcycle. The fuse was blown again<\/em>. Since the HID ballast could be causing electrical problems he thought I should switch back to the OEM bulb.\u00a0I still had no ABS and the speedo was off, so I decided to take it to the local BMW dealer that was, fortunately, only 5 minutes away. Rick let me follow him and came in to make sure the service guys took care of me. Interesting dealership. The local Harley Davidson dealer bought out the BMW dealer and now carries both motorcycles under the same roof. The mechanics moved too. Am I the only one that thinks HD and BMW are a strange mix?<\/p>\n As soon as I arrived they pulled the motorcycle in, put it on the computer and there was only an ABS fault. I can’t get the motorcycle on the center stand. Once on the stand one quick spin of the wheel showed the problem. About 25% of the ABS ring on the rear wheel was missing. Just broken off and gone. I guess that explains why the speedo\u00a0wasn’t right and why the ABS computer couldn’t figure out what to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The tech\u00a0had never seen a broken ABS ring and didn’t know they break. Good news was the ring would be covered by my extended warranty. Bad news was they weren’t carried in stock (since they never break) so it would have to be overnighted from BMW.<\/p>\n Unfortunately 2 hours of labor later (on my tab) all that was found was a loose positive battery post connection. This could definitely cause the fuse to blow, but no guarantee.<\/p>\n Everyone at the dealership was really great to me all day. I got a call from the extended warranty company and they wanted a picture emailed of the broken ring so they could approve the claim and pay the dealer tomorrow and I could be on my way. Wow. If you do not have an extended warranty and want one I recommend Western. I bought the 4 year extended warranty before I left on the Canada trip last year and\u00a0it has more than paid for itself and the people at the company are absolutely wonderful. I am so glad I have it.<\/p>\n Even the customers were really nice at the dealership — mostly Harley riders. One who is extremely familiar with roads headed to New England mapped out an entire route complete with recommended fuel stops (nice facilities). He knew I would be running behind and wanted to get me there as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n The tech called later in the day to ask if my tires were new — I had new ones put on a short time\u00a0before the trip. He said possibly the ring was damaged when the new tire was mounted. Considering I had to take the front tire in to have it remounted the day before I left because it was leaking air, if the rear ABS ring was broken too that was the most expensive tire change I hope I ever have.<\/p>\n The new ring, hopefully, will arrive tomorrow morning. They will put it on as soon as it gets there and hope to have me on the road by noon. The only downside being the temp is supposed to be 102 here tomorrow.<\/p>\n Once again I say you don’t find out how really\u00a0great people can be until something goes wrong.<\/p>\n I forgot to\u00a0mention — Rick called to check on me this afternoon and if the part doesn’t arrive he\u00a0wants to bring\u00a0the rear\u00a0wheel off his F50 down and swap with mine so I can get on the road. Like I said — you get to\u00a0find out how great people can be. I won’t let him do that, but how cool that he even thought of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was up at 5:30 but needed to wait for a little daylight to check the motorcycle. First thing I did was turn it on to check the head light. Nothing. I didn’t even pull the ABS sensor. I replaced the blown fuse and\u00a0sent an email to Rick in Louisville that I was heading that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip_reporting","tag-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}