Re: [ST] Bike in the trailer (long)

["Emile Nossin" <Emile@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: Al Garvin
>came upon a fellow with a brand new BMW 1200 
>touring machine.[...] He said No, No trouble, 
>just trying to figure out how to turn the seat warmer off.
>[..]a fellow on a new 999 Ducati that still had paper plates on it,
>I let him in on the secret of raising the kick stand before putting it 
>into gear. He laughed and said he had been there for about 15 minutes 

That reminds me of a couple of meetings I had in the last few years.
One guy, bit weird looking with plain clothes and a beard on some
trashy offroad bike blocking one of two lanes in the tunnel under the
Weser river at Bremen. The cameras didn't spot him becaue he had no
lights, so he was a constant sitting duck. Put my hazard lights on 
(ST1100 at the time) which prompted the guy behind the camera finally,
so he put the matrix signs on to close the lane. The guy was working
the kickstart but couldn't get it going. To be sure I asked him whether
he didn't have a fuel petcock that needed to be on reserve, but he
said he didn't have one. So I helped him with the kickstarting, but
that didn't help. After checking his bike again, it turned out he did
have a fuel petcock and putting it in reserve solved it. Guy rode
away without a helmet, very weird....

And once after having parked my office at the airport and leaving
the termninal I encountered a couple, both with Ducatis. The guy
was riding away when I got there, so I asked if she had a problem.
She said they couldn't get the alarm to disarm, so her boyfriend was
riding home to get the other remote, because they figured it was
the battery of the remote being empty. Fortunately I had encountered
that problem as well with my ST1100 at that location and told them
the little local secret that the control tower (the worlds single
tallest one, about 200 meters further) gave so much electromagnetic
radio interference that you need to hold the remote against the
receiver if you want it to work. So after finding out where behind
the fairing the alarm was located, she was able to disarm it and
start the race to catch up with her boyfriend. They couldn't have
figured that one out on their own though....

I remember that seat warmer too on a K1200 Light Truck. It fried
my ass until I figured out the switch was hidden below an edge of
the seat itself.

Most other people I stopped for had either no knowledge of the fuel
reserve concept or they just didn't have fuel (happened to me once
when the tripcounter was stuck and I thought I wasn't on reserve which
I was), or electrical faults of some kind. We were also able to help
a stranded Blackbird once at the German border. He was lucky that I
had a digital electric current meter with me (which got fried when
measuring... oops) and a friend of mine who had WD40 with him to clean
the connection of his main ignition connector or so, which was corroded
within.

Oh, and if anybody ever encounters a R1100GS or R1150GS without fuel
(standard, non adventure version), try to lay the bike down on the
right side, which will get the remaining fuel in the left lobe of
the tank towards the right side, where the fuel pump is. Just in case :-).

Emile
www.piloot.com

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