Article of the Week – Potholes

Pothole!

Okay, no, the pic is misleading, I didn’t go diving headfirst into a pothole.  I found the pic online and thought it was funny.  However, what I did do is hit a pothole on the motorcycle.  A particularly deep pothole.  Hard.  Very hard.

I was on my way to work and apparently was not awake yet as I missed my usual turn and had to continue on and take the next turn over to the street I wanted.  As I got to this new intersection, I looked over my right shoulder just to make sure no-one was there before I took the right turn onto the ramp.  BANG!  I hit something very hard!  It felt as thought someone had taken a baseball bat and hit me in the palms of my hands as hard as they could!  After the initial pain, I noted that the bike was now running on only one cylinder as well.  I checked for any other immediate damage and didn’t see any so I continue to work, on one cylinder.

At work I was able to look it over better; both mirrors where knocked loose, the right fork was up 1/2″ in the triple clamp, and the license plate was bent up into the rear fender.  Holy cow that was a hard hit!  I borrowed an Allen Wrench from a guy at work (I left mine home) and put the fork back into place.  I tightened up the mirrors with my pliers in my tool box.  I straightened out the license plate as best I could.

After work I rode the bike home, with one cylinder firing intermittently.  Joy.  Once there I tried to figure out which cylinder was acting up.  Of course it then refused to cooperate and decided to run fine.  Okay, I’ll let it go and try to catch it next time it does it.  Well, a week passes before it finally does it.  Of course I am in traffic.  I pull over and yank the right spark plug wire – no change!  So my right coil is going out.  Nice, I just bought these last fall.

So, time for an adventure with my daughter Sabrina; fix the coils!  I have my old set which I seem to recall had a bad left coil.  Take off the gas tank and unbolt the coils.  Then I take off the right coil and set it aside.  I go dig out my old coils (good thing I kept them!).  Now we de-solder the wires to the original right side coil (they were both broken further up).  Next to de-solder the good wires off the now bad coil.  Then solder the wires to the original coil (which I hope works!).  Button the whole thing back up and cross our fingers.

Success!  The old Zombie fires up!  Now to hope they stay working.  I need to find a source for replacement coils as new ones are no longer available from Honda.  Soon I’ll be back with another story about the saddlebags Sabrina and I installed for our upcoming trip.

For now, keep an eye out for potholes!  My accident could have been much worse!

-Todd Quigley

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