I made an appointment at a Georgia motorcycle/bicycle shop to get suspension
work done on my 1800. We got flash-flood grade rain for several days, including
the appointment day. So I wimped out and hauled my bike there in my wife's
97 250 diesel...
If you make an appointment, you can show up there and, in the space of a day,
they'll install "The Full Monty" on your Goldwing - new shock, new fork internals,
fork brace, new triple clamps and roller bearings at the top of the steering head.
Here's a view through one of the "customer portholes" into the install shop...
I think the fellow in black is the main guy that does the installs. The other
fellow in the foreground works on the bicycle suspension side of the house.
This fellow seems like a very good and thorough mechanic. And its not his
first rodeo, either... my bike is sufficiently different from a normal Goldwing
that he hit numerous roadblocks and overcame them quickly. He did a thing
with the rear subframe (that he'd seen done with some kind of BMW) where
he had the bags and the fender off and he unbolted the subframe from
all but two places - one on each side - and swung the subframe up and
out of the way. While I was at lunch he ran into the problem of getting
the chrome lid off the headlight pod. Some of the other guys at the shop
googled up the solution I posted here about how I got the lid off
...
but by the time they told him he'd already solved the problem another way
and had moved on. Turns out... the fork brace and triple clamps aren't
compatible with a "Valkyrie" Goldwing. So I got the fork internals, the
new shock and the steering head bearings... a Partial Monty I guess...
He says my bike is much harder to work on than a regular Goldwing.
They were all interested in my bike at the shop since it is different than
what they usually see. Three different folks spent some time testing
it out after the work was done... here's Max McCallister (you can see him
in a lot of youtube Traxxion videos) coming back from his test ride...
I took backroads to Woodstock Georgia, where the shop is. It seems like Atlanta stretches all
the way to Dahlonega... sometimes you're in the Georgia country side, sometimes you're
driving through some place that's been bulldozed and covered in giant houses that all look
alike. An accident (I went past two on the way home) on the old roads results in an
Atlanta-style traffic backup... my lane came to a full stop at this accident a long way from
where this picture was taken.
I'll be riding the 1800 to Knoxville and then to Pikeville this weekend, can't wait
-Mike
