When you're spinnin' round...things come undone...

When you're spinnin' round...things come undone...

Yeah, that's a line from a song. I can't sing though, so I let y'all hum it instead.

A very true line though...

I push the Valk...and hard...

A road trip can be a month of hard riding...maybe in a couple days.

A commute in Dallas or a city like it...is just plain abuse. There's no getting around it.

Hard throttle or hard brake. Not much in between. Ride the bike to its limits or get off the road.

I do the maintenance...and regularly check for problems...but ya can't catch it all.

Fortunately, either by good engineering, or just her kick-ass personality, the Valk is outstanding at warning me of a situation without breaking down and leaving me standing.

Today, on the way home, she warned me.

I lost two cylinders. The customary smooth, outrageous power went away...and it was just power. No smooth.

Took a minute to determine that was the issue...felt at first like she was running out of gas. Exactly like that...

She cut out...sounded terrible...but still had the power to maintain the 80+ needed to keep out of the way of traffic here.

The "with impunity" part of my normal commute had to exit, stage right, though.

In Dallas, if it runs, you keep moving. I headed for the house.

Definately electrical...had a little time to play...in the moments the cages weren't actively trying to kill me. The cruise wouldn't set...that's a clue, it's signal comes from the #1 coil...but the tach still worked, I'm not sure where they pull that on the valk.

The rest of the commute I kept wondering...I couldn't remember...did she have multiple pickups? Could one of them be bad? Bad coil? Ignition box going? Voltage problem?

Nah, plenty of voltage.

Two cylinders dead. #1 and #2...the #1 coil then (left frame rail, outside).

Home we got. Pulled the tank. Nothing obvious wrong. Pulled the coil. The ground side connection was just slightly wobbly...the spade terminal expanded a bit allowing it to wobble.

Is that enough?

Oh hell yeah. Coils are interesting critters.

They are powered all the time...the field builds...to fire one you break the ground (that's what the ignition box does, clean break at precise time, based on what the pickup(s) are telling it). When the ground breaks the field collapses, ZOT!

With a loose connection...just slightly breaking clean ground...the field may never build enough to collapse...it may build fine but with the bad connection my fire prematurely...or weakly...or over an extended period instead of a "snap".

Pinched the connector till it fit tight again...put her back together, and off we go. Vroom Vroom!

It's all in the details...

When you're spinnin' round..things come undone...