My Brother ,his son, Jon and I pre-ran the August tour route last weekend(August 20~22, 2010 Dualsport Sidecar Skills Mini Tour $600 ) It includes the old Barlow Road, a pioneer wagon road at the end of the Oregon Trail. This has a few very rugged sections which should provide us with a fun, challenging ride! We sure had a good time checking it out! we stopped often so I could take route notes My fan stopped working fairly early on. We stopped and did some field tests. I ended up wiring in a connector which allowed me to hook the fan directly to the battery via my gps power outlet. When we got to the Barlow Road, we paused to wire our lunch to the mufflers. We soon were riding through the woods accompanied by the fragrent aroma of Tamales cooking! A hydration device, such as a camelbak, is a very good idea! When we got back to pavement we felt we had accomplished something! The Barlow Road is a rugged track. The pioneers had to lower the wagons down the steep sections with ropes and double up their teams to haul them back up the other side. It was an unimaginably hard trek and done after the cross country push across the Oregon Trail had worn them to the bone. Not every one survived the trail For us, it was a challenging ride and an interesting glimpse into local history
<object width="400" height="300" ><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/1526712817345" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/1526712817345" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="300"></embed></object>
Well....crap.....if I had known you had hot tamales I would have stayed for longer than just seeing if you guys were OK. Here is my ride report.
So I am trying to get my bikes prepped for the Dualsport Sidecar Skills Minitour coming up and the last sidecar class for the season which is the following weekend ( August 27-29, 2010). I was very disappointed to have the fan on this bike quit so early in the ride because this rig was 'sposed to be in good shape, aside from the tires: new brakes, recent oil change, new steering head bearings, gone through over the winter, running well. The fuse looked good and we swapped in the spare fuse and nothing happened. Today I swapped in a new relay and no joy. I was going through the wiring with the multimeter- no juice at the relay, no juice on the relay side of the fuse, 13v on the battery side of the fuse- WTF!? I bridged the fuse and grounded the fan switch lead and the fan started whirring! Both the fuse and the spare fuse had a tiny hairline fracture, only visible to my old eyes out of the holder and in perfect light. No sign of melting- a tiny, break at right angles across the metal element. New fuse and back in biz!
