{"id":16416,"date":"2022-04-07T06:45:08","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=16416"},"modified":"2022-04-07T06:45:08","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:45:08","slug":"baja-breakdowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/04\/07\/baja-breakdowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Baja Breakdowns"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve ridden motorcycles through Baja probably 30 times or more over the last 30 years, and it’s unquestionably the best place to ride a motorcycle I’ve ever experienced.\u00a0 Many people are afraid to venture into the peninsula for fear of a breakdown.\u00a0 Hey, it happens, but it’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t happen often.\u00a0 They don’t call it adventure riding because it’s like calling for an Uber.<\/p>\n

Not all “breakdowns” result in your motorcycle being nonoperational.\u00a0 Some are just mere annoyances and you truck on.\u00a0 A few breakdowns result in the bike not running, but there are usually ways to get around that.\u00a0\u00a0When it happens, you improvise, adapt, and overcome.\u00a0\u00a0Here are a few of mine.<\/p>\n

Heritage Indeed<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time I had a motorcycle act up was on my beloved \u201992 Harley Softail.\u00a0 It started clanging and banging and bucking and snorting somewhere around Ensenada.\u00a0 I was headed south with my good buddy Paul from New Jersey.\u00a0 It was obvious something wasn\u2019t right and we turned around to head back to the US. \u00a0 The Harley got me home, but I could tell:\u00a0 Something major had happened.\u00a0 The bike was making quite a bit of noise. I had put about 300 miles on it by the time I rode it back from Mexico.<\/p>\n

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A roller lifter that converted to a solid lifter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the Harley\u2019s roller lifters stopped rolling, and that turned it into a solid lifter. \u00a0 And when that happened, the little wheel that was supposed to rotate along the cam profile started wearing a path through the cam.\u00a0 And when that happened, the metal filings migrated their way to the oil pump.\u00a0 And when that happened\u2026.well, you get the idea. \u00a0 My 80-cubic-inch V-Twin Evo motor decided to call it quits after roughly 53,000 miles.\u00a0 It happens I guess. \u00a0 Nothing lasts forever.<\/p>\n

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Potato, potato, potato.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s where it started to get really interesting.\u00a0 My local Harley dealer wouldn\u2019t touch the bike.\u00a0 See, this was around 2005 or so, and it seems my Harley was over 10 years old. \u00a0 Bet you didn\u2019t know this:\u00a0 Many Harley dealers (maybe most of them) won\u2019t work on a bike over 10 years old. \u00a0 The service manager at my dealer explained this to me and I was dumbfounded.\u00a0 \u201cWhat about all the history and heritage and nostalgia baloney you guys peddle?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 The answer was a weak smile.\u00a0 \u201cI remember an ad with a baby in Harley T-shirt and the caption When did it start for you<\/em>?\u201d I said.\u00a0 Another weak smile.<\/p>\n

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An S&S engine in my ’92 Softail. It let me ride a slow bike fast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was getting nowhere fast.\u00a0 I tried calling a couple of other Harley dealers and it was the same story.\u00a0 Over 10 years old, dealers won\u2019t touch it.\u00a0 I was flabbergasted. I tried as hard as I could, but there was no getting around it\u2026the Harley dealer would not work on my engine.\u00a0 It was over 10 years old.\u00a0 That\u2019s that; rules is rules.\u00a0For a company that based their entire advertising program on longevity and heritage, I thought it was outrageous.\u00a0\u00a0A friend suggested I go to an independent shop.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s why they exist,\u201d he said.\u00a0 So I did.<\/p>\n

So, I went with Plan B.\u00a0 I took the Harley to a local independent shop, and they were more than happy to work on my bike.\u00a0 I could have the Harley engine completely rebuilt (which it needed, because those metal bits had migrated everywhere), or I could have it rebuilt with an S&S motor. I went with the S&S motor (the cost was the same as rebuilding the Harley engine), doubling the horsepower, halving the rear tire life, and cutting my fuel economy from 42 to 33 mpg.<\/p>\n

Justin’s Countershaft Sprocket<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the very first CSC Baja trip, I was nervous as hell.\u00a0 The CSC bikes had received a lot of press and the word was out:\u00a0 CSC was importing the real deal, a genuine adventure touring motorcycle for about one sixth of what a GS 1200 BMW sold for in those days.\u00a0 The naysayers and keyboard commandos were out in force, badmouthing the Chinese RX3 in ways that demonstrated unbridled ignorance and no small amount of bias.\u00a0 And here we were, taking 14 or 15 guys (and one gal) who had bought new RX3 motorcycles that had literally arrived in the US just a few days before our departure.\u00a0 There was one thought in my\u00a0 mind as we headed south from Azusa that morning:\u00a0 What was I thinking?\u00a0 If the bikes started falling out on this first trip, it would probably kill the RX3 in America.<\/p>\n

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Hey, it worked. Adapt, overcome, improvise. The adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I need not have worried.\u00a0 None of the engines failed.\u00a0 We had a few headlights go out, but that’s not really a breakdown.\u00a0 And then, when we were about halfway down the Baja peninsula, I took a smaller group of riders to see the cave paintings at Sierra San Francisco.\u00a0 That trip involved a 140-mile round trip from Guerrero Negro into the boonies, with maybe 20 miles of that on a very gnarly dirt road.\u00a0 As we were returning, good buddy Justin’s RX3 lost its countershaft sprocket.\u00a0 We found it and Justin did a good enough MacGuyver job securing it to the transmission output shaft to get us back to Guerrero Negro, but finding a replacement was a challenge.\u00a0 We finally paid a machinist at the Mitsubishi salt mining company to make a custom nut, and that got us home.<\/p>\n

On every Baja trip after that, I took a spare countershaft sprocket nut, but I never needed any of them after that one incident on Justin’s bike.\u00a0 Good buddy Duane had a similar failure, but that was on a local ride and it was easily rectified.<\/p>\n

Jim’s Gearbox<\/strong><\/p>\n

Four or five Baja trips later, after we had ridden all the way down to Mulege and back up to the border, good buddy Jim’s transmission wouldn’t shift.<\/p>\n

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Good buddy Jim in the Mulege mission.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s the only breakdown I ever experienced anywhere on an RX3 that wouldn’t get us home, and that includes multiple multi-bike Baja trips, the multi-bike 5000-mile Western America adventure ride, the multi-bike 6000-mile ride across China, the 3000-mile circumnavigation around the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and quite a few CSC local company rides.\u00a0 One of the guys on that Baja ride lived in the San Diego area and he owned a pickup truck, so he took the bike back up to Azusa for us.<\/p>\n

Biting the Bullet<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of years ago Joe Gresh and I did a Baja road test with Royal Enfield press bikes.\u00a0 One was the new 650 Interceptor twin (a bike I liked so much I bought one when I got home); the other was a 500 Bullet.\u00a0 The Bullet was a disaster, but it really wasn’t the bike’s fault. The dealer who maintained the press fleet for Royal Enfield (I won’t mention them by name, but they’re in Glendale and they’re known for their Italian bikes) did a half-assed job maintaining the bike.\u00a0 Actually, that’s not fair to people who do half-assed work (and Lord knows there a lot of them).\u00a0 No, the maintenance on this bike was about one-tenth-assed.\u00a0 It was very low on oil, it had almost no gas in it, the chain was loose and rusty, and on and on the writeup could go.\u00a0 The bike kept stalling and missing, and it finally gave up the ghost for good at the Pemex station just north of Guerrero Negro.<\/p>\n

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Joe Gresh, inflight missile mechanic extraordinaire, getting intimate with the Bullet in Baja. “The Bullet needs me,” he said.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fortunately for me, Gresh had one of those portable battery thingamabobbers (you know, the deals that are good for about 10 battery jumps) and it allowed us to start the bike.\u00a0 We bought a new battery that didn’t quite fit the bike in Guerrero Negro (big hammers solve a lot of problems), but the entire episode left a bad taste in my mouth for the Bullet and for the Glendale Ducatimeister.<\/p>\n

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Big hammers fix all kinds of problems.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That bike had other problems as well.\u00a0 The kickstand run switch failed on the ride home, and Gresh did an inflight missile mechanic bypass on it. Then, just before we made it back to my house in So Cal, the rear sprocket stripped.\u00a0 Literally.\u00a0 All the teeth were gone.\u00a0 That was another one I had never experienced before.\u00a0 The Bullet was sort of a fun bike, but this particular one was a disaster.\u00a0 We joked about it.\u00a0 The Bullet needs me, Gresh said.<\/p>\n

John’s Silver Wing Leak<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah this is another motofailure that tried but didn’t stop the show.\u00a0 On one of my earlier Baja forays, Baja John had a Honda Silver Wing.\u00a0 That’s a bike that was also known as the baby Gold Wing (it had all the touring goodies the Gold Wing had).\u00a0 It was only a 500 or a 650 (I can’t remember which) and it had no problem keeping up with the Harleys (but then, it doesn’t take much to keep up with a Harley).<\/p>\n

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Baja John and the mighty Silver Wing, somewhere well south of the border.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Silver Wing was a pretty slick motorcycle…it had a transversely-aligned v-twin like a Moto Guzzi and it had plenty of power.\u00a0 Unlike the Guzzi, the Silver Wing was water cooled and that’s where our problem occurred.\u00a0 John’s bike developed a coolant leak.\u00a0 I was a little nervous about that.\u00a0 We were more than halfway down the peninsula and headed further south when the bike started drooling, but John had the right attitude (which was not to worry and simply ignore the problem).\u00a0 \u00a0The little Silver Wing was like a Timex…it took the licking and kept on ticking, and to my great surprise, it simply stopped leaking after another hundred miles or so.\u00a0 I guess it doesn’t really count as a breakdown.<\/p>\n

John’s KLR 650 OPEC Bike<\/strong><\/p>\n

Baja John had another bike, a KLR 650, that developed a fuel petcock leak on another one of our Baja trips.\u00a0 As I recall, it started leaking on the return run somewhere around El Rosario.\u00a0 \u00a0I get nervous around fuel leaks for the obvious reasons, but John stuck to his policy:\u00a0 Don’t worry, be happy.<\/p>\n

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Baja John: The man, the legend.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We stayed in a hotel in Ensenada that night.\u00a0 The hotel had an attached enclosed parking structure, which immediately started to smell like the inside of a gas tank.\u00a0 Not that I’ve ever been inside a gas tank, but that parking garage pretty much had the aroma I imagine exists in such places.<\/p>\n

John’s luck continued to hold, and we made it home without John becoming a human torch.<\/p>\n

The Bottom Line<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bottom line is you basically need four things when headed into Baja:<\/p>\n