September 22, 2005

My old friend is back!

Ahhhh... finally!! I've got my motorbike back again.

I was pretty surprised how different it felt. I guess I really got used to riding Sherri's little F650CS. My 'bike felt almost too big for me... I thought for sure the shop had put the seat in the highest position when they put everything back together, but when I checked it was in the right position after all. It's like riding a new bike again... !

As I mentioned previously the cause of the failure was definitely the spline issue I had talked about when the bike first died and is discussed in the BMWSportTouring.com forums here; I was able to confirm the damage visually. Unfortunately, since BMW paid for half the repair cost, they get the parts back and I didn't think to bring along my little camera so I could get some pictures. But the damage is almost identical to the damage in the photos that I linked to above. The shop replaced the entire transmission because they believe that there was an alignment issue that caused the failure.

I'm a little concerned because the new transmission sounds and shifts a bit different now. I'm not sure if that's because of the newness of the transmission or what... I'll have to give it a few miles first, I think.

In any case, it's nice to have her back. Pretty weird being with the 'bike for one month straight while travelling through Europe, and then a month later losing her for a month. I'm so very glad this didn't happen as I was doing my drive through Sweden or Norway... there were a lot of "middle of nowhere" places where I could have been stranded for a while... My cousin who lives at about the 64th parallel in Sweden gave me a cell phone to use "just in case" on my way back south, but though that would have made it a bit easier, my vacation would have been completely over. Phew, phew, phew!

Posted by Michael at September 22, 2005 07:06 PM | Motorcycles

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