Last fall, in an uncharacteristic fit of good sense, I'd parked the Connie (she has a name now, I think) in the basement, ready and waiting for my ministering hands to be applied lovingly to her vital parts. It was a long and lonely wait.
Finally, with the promise of any unusually early spring just around the proverbial corner, I started in making my lists, and checking them twice. And then a third, fourth, and fifth time. Then got on the phone, plastic in hand. Seems the deeper I got into the Connie, the deeper I got in debt.
But finally, everything was headed my way - at least that's what the order-takers told me. Now to bare Connie's soul... er, frame. The rear end came first, since it was off the ground with the bike on the centerstand. Tire and wheel off, shock off, suspension links off. Stainless brake line on, new brake pads on, new wheel seal on, grease on... everything. A little solvent and some paper towels, and now it's only on what it's supposed to be on... rather, in. Drain the shock, refill with Mobil 1 synthetic ATF. You might not agree, but it works great.
Add the electrical gizmos to the rear brake lights, do all the stuff with the rear brake, put it all back together and tighten everything to specs (tight enough not to come loose, loose enough not to break). Then on to the front end.
Jack under the engine, get the front off the ground, remove just about everything. New speedo drive adapter, new speedo cable, new wheel seals. Dismantle the forks, flush them out with solvent, reassemble with new Leak-Proof Pro-Moly seals and the new Gold Valve Cartridge Emulators, then adjust the spacers to the proper length (I hope). Add just the right amount of fork oil (my preference happens to be 5W-40 Delvac 1 synthetic HD diesel engine oil, the same stuff I put in all my M/C engines, thank you). While the front end is apart, I took off the fairing brace and welded it up where it had broken just ahead of the left hand mount, and got a good old non-metric 5/16" NF x 1 1/2" grade 8 cap screw to bolt the brace onto the steering head. That sucker's TIGHT now. Last but not least, check the steering head bearings.
Next are the new throttle cables, the Vista-Cruise, the Hot Grips, stainless steel brake lines, H/L protector, brake & hydraulic clutch drain, flush, refill, & bleed (Love those speed bleeders!). And the new H/L and dash light bulbs (preventive maintenance - it's soooo much easier to replace them now while the whole thing is in small, easily accessible pieces) and the neat little LED volt-meter. Have to wire in the H/L modulator, using the NAPA socket (much heavier duty than OEM) and anything else that should be done while the fairing is off.
Front end's done, now to the engine. Pull the carbs, drill out the pilot screw plugs carefully, & check to see what the factory adjustment is. #1-closed tight, #2-open 1 1/4 turns, #3-closed tight, #4-closed tight. Don't want to overdo this, so I open them all exactly 1 turn. If that isn't right, I can always adjust them in place now.
Valve adjust time now. Get the coils out of the way, pull the plug caps off, oh-oh! #2 won't budge. All the rest come off fairly easy, but #2 is stuck solid. BIG PULL! There. Ooops, that's only the top half. Well, it looks like we get to find out how much a new plug cap costs. $36.95??!!!! How much for the whole engine? Never mind. They get lubed up with silicone dielectric grease when they go in this time.
Carefully pry the gasket loose (we don't want to know how much a new gasket costs, do we) and set the valve cover aside. Well, this is going to be easier than the valve adjustments I used to do on the old Ford 292 V-8, isn't it. At least the Concours isn't running when I do them.
#1 cylinder goes all right. It was a little tight, but that was expected. After all, it's been about 12,000 miles since this was last done. #2 is done, #3 is done, and now for #4. Hmmm, all the rest of the locknuts were tighter than these - any of these four. Oh-oh, these valves are more than tight, they're barely able to close. Methinks the shop that worked on this bike last may have done only 75% of the valves. I'd bet that their mechanic forgot to adjust #4 cylinder. How does .0015" on the intakes, and .002" on the exhausts sound? I didn't think so either.
Well that's done. A little smear of copper silicone on the half-moons and around the spark plug holes and back in place with the valve cover. New plug wires. (If you haven't tried it yet, you can get the numbered sleeves off the old plug wires by lubing them with a little isopropyl [rubbing] alcohol and they slip right off. Some more on the new plug wires, and you can slip them right back on. They're good abrasion protection.) Now it's ready to go back together. I'd wanted to install NGK platinum plugs, but don't have them yet, so I merely gapped the old ones and reinstalled them, with a little anti-seize on the threads.
Last thing on the engine is to drain the coolant and replace it with the new silicate-free long life variety, along with all new hoses and a new thermostat. When I ordered the hoses from Ron Ayers Motorsports, I had them get me the two "O" rings I might need too. One for the t'stat housing, the other for the pipe that connects the radiator hose to the water pump. Glad I did, as I needed both of them. Put in a 195 degree thermostat, too. Got tired of seeing the needle sitting down in the little white block next to the "C" on the temp guage whenever I was riding in temps below 60 or 70.
Still waiting on the Power Plate and some switches from Electrical Connection, and I have to wire in the Hot Grips and the Heat trollers. Should be done in about another week, with luck.
What's this? My buddy wants me to ride over to Whitehorse, Yukon with him, and leave on Tuesday morning at around sunrise! It's Saturday, and I still have mucho to do. Well, I'm not going to miss a chance to go for a ride. After all, it's only about 550 miles - just a good shakedown cruise.
All right - change the oil, and put all the fairing pieces back on without having everything finished. The fairing will come back off easily, and it won't take long to finish the wiring once all the parts and pieces finally get here. Wait a minute! The oil filter in the box of parts I have marked "Concours" doesn't look like the one that came out of the bottom of the engine. In fact, the "O" ring shape identifies it as the one for the Suzuki. That means I don't have an oil filter! No problem. Call NAPA first thing Monday morning and have them get one out here ASAP.
Good. It'll be here by 8:00 AM Tuesday morning. If the engine's drained, and everything else is all back together, it won't take long to install the filter, add the oil, put the belly pan on, and fire it up.
Oh, yeah, that's right - I haven't had the bike running since I put it away last fall. Gee, sure hope I haven't messed anything up in all this work. Maybe I'd better get the Suzuki checked over as a backup just in case. Nope, no time for that. And I still need to get the Connie out of the basement.
Monday night at 9:30, with the help of my buddy and my business partner, we get the bike up the steps and out into the fresh air. The COLD fresh air. Good, all I have to do is put the Rifle base and the windshield on, along with the Baker Air Wings. Check the lights to make sure they all work. Can't check the headlight without starting the engine, and can't start that with no oil in it. Guess I'll have to trust everything to work properly.
Now to pack and get ready to leave in the morning. Finally to bed at 12:30 Tuesday morning, a couple of hours after the sun finally went down.
Up at 5:00, fix a quick breakfast, then finish packing. It would be all too easy to forget something important. Good thing I have made some lists to go by. Now if I could just find where I put them. At 8:00 sharp I'm at NAPA, and at 8:10 I'm on my way back home with the oil filter. By 8:30, the filter's in, 2.5 ltrs. of oil have been poured in, and I'm ready to start the engine. I'd taken the gas tank down to the Chevron station the night before and put in a couple gallons of gas and a can of Techron, so there was fuel. Turned it to "Prime" for a few seconds, then to "On", pulled the choke toward me and... the moment of truth, I pressed the starter.
Didn't take it long, and it fired. First on one, then on two, ...then still on two, ...then still on two. Hmmm, maybe too much choke. Push it off a little, whoops, too much. She died. Okay, press the starter again... By golly, that new voltmeter is neat - it shows very clearly and accurately that my battery is now down to about 4.59 volts. Guess I should have left the charger on a little longer last night. But I needed the extension cord for the drill. Well, the car's parked nearby, and being a typical Alaskan, I always have jumper cables in the car.
A few more minutes wasted, and then the Connie is running again. This time I leave a hefty dose of choke on until I hear a third cylinder kick in, and finally the fourth one. Now to check for oil leaks underneath, then (since there are none) put the belly pan back on, bring the oil up to the middle of the window, and get on the road. It's 9:00 AM when I put the last of the tools away and go inside to get my riding clothes on. These include a Widder vest and arm chaps, as well as the gloves that plug in to keep my paws thawed out.
Finally, at 9:45 we pull out of the Chevron station, both bikes (my buddy's on his new GL1800A, with only 552 miles on it so far) filled up, and head northeast for Tok, where we get onto the Alcan. The temperature's 42 when we leave Glennallen, but there's a heavy bank of clouds ahead of us, and when we get under that the temp quickly drops to 35. Reach for the knob, and seconds later I'm warm - almost too warm, even on the lowest setting. The coolest we see as we go over Mentasta Pass through the Alaska Range is 32 degrees. There's a light dusting of fresh snow beside the highway, but none falls now. We have dry roads, and virtually no traffic.
I'm sensitive to the ride, wanting to evaluate the changes I've made both front and rear. The back wants to launch me when coming off sharp bumps. Not enough rebound damping. The front still feels harsh. Seems Fred Harmon said that he'd originally set his emulators at 2 turns, as Race Tech recommends, and then backed them off to 1 1/2 turns. Think that's what I'll do when I get back home. But it doesn't matter right now - it just feels GREAT to be out on the road again, and traveling.
We stop at Tok, 142 miles into our ride, for lunch as we're pulling in right at noon. After lunch I remove the right side panel and set my shock damping at #3 (I'd set it at #2 in the shop, and 20 psi in the shock to keep the ride soft). This proves to be the cure, and the rear end is well behaved for the rest of the trip. The synthetic ATF also proves to have been a good choice, as the ride quality never varies, regardless of temperature or road conditions - even the miles of washboard that we hit later. [Note: The following year, to get more rebound control, I changed the fluid again to Delvac 1, 5W-40, the same oil I use in the forks and engines of all my bikes. It works excellently!] I can still add air pressure for a heavier load or to keep from making sparks in the twisties, and there's one more damping setting if I start to feeling squidly.
Through with lunch, and we're on the Alcan now, headed southeast toward the Canada border and the Yukon Territory, with Whitehorse only 400 miles down the road. Man! If we had known what we were going to run into.
It's been over 39 years since I first drove the Alcan, and during that time it has been straightened, leveled, shortened, and paved. But at its heart it is still the same dirt and gravel roadway that was originally created back in 1942. In many places here in Alaska, as over in the Yukon, what passes for pavement is no more than a couple of inches of asphalt laid over the old gravel roadbed. And why not, since that gravel road supported the passing weight of millions of heavy truck tires in its lifetime. But today the gravel is softening due to the moisture in the ground thawing, and turning the underlying soil to mud. We find ourselves having to use the whole road at times to avoid falling into the soft spots, or to stay away from the loose gravel that has been spread to fill in the holes. That means we also have to keep a sharp eye for oncoming traffic while we're on the wrong side of the highway.
We make it to the border, and after a quick pit stop at the U.S. Customs building, we're across the line into Canada, where we find more of the same kind of broken pavement. The good thing is that the worst spots are together in one area, and there is still some smooth pavement available in which to test performance before we get into the next bad area. In one of these smooth zones I got to see again how, with just a little twist of the throttle, the Connie gets from 70 to 90 so smoothly you aren't aware it's happening until you look down at the speedo. And in 3rd gear, when the tach gets up to 6k, the carb intakes start to roar, the engine takes a deep breath, and says "Let's go!". Even in sixth gear, you can feel it start pulling harder at about 95. Man! It's great to be alive!
All too soon, all the work I've done on the bike gets tested. We hit construction. The road's been brought to its final grade and is waiting for one more layer of crushed rock and the layer of asphalt that will earn it the label "paved". But for now, it's just loose gravel with no binder, and hasn't been graded for months. We're down to 35 mph or less, and most of the time it feels as though the bikes want to slip out from under us. This is dual-sport riding, and we're on loaded tourers.
We were both running low on fuel, my Connie's needle is resting on the "E" (although still not on reserve) and my buddy's low fuel light has been glowing for a few miles. About 10 miles into the construction we come on a gas station, and it's a welcome sight. After filling up and having a candy bar and something to wet our throats, we head southeast once more. The attendant at the station mentioned that the road had been graded recently in this direction, and we found it to be much better. In fact, after about half a mile I noticed that the northbound lane seemed to be much smoother and harder packed, so I swung wide to the left and proceeded to kick it up to about 65. Any of our British cousins would have felt right at home here, running along the left hand side of the road in that manner. Fortunately, this early in the spring, before the heavy tourist traffic begins, I only met one other vehicle and was able to stay on the left for the next ten miles, until I got to the pavement again. Then began the "Alcan Dance" - left, two, three, right, two, three, straight for a bit then repeat, trying to miss the potholes.
Did I mention the wind? The Alcan is built almost entirely in mountain valleys. For most of the distance between Alaska and Haines Junction (about 200 miles) it runs to the east of the Wrangell and St. Elias ranges, atop which are ice fields larger than several of the states. In the spring the winds often pour down off those ice caps with tremendous force as they spread out across valley floors. This means they are usually perpendicular to the general direction of travel. Crosswinds. STRONG crosswinds. Strong GUSTY crosswinds. I still find it uncanny, the way the Concours will lean itself into the wind, almost as though it had built-in crosswind compensation. We were VERY glad not to have had the winds while we were on the loose gravel.
Watching my friend on his GL1800, I could see that he didn't have to lean as much as I did, but he was moved sidewise about the same amount. The Concours is a great foul weather bike.
It's also a good cool weather bike. For most of the ride we saw temperatures hovering around 35 to 38 degrees, with occasional highs up to 42. I took much of my warm clothing off after breakfast and didn't put it back on until the last 90 miles into Whitehorse, when the temperature was dropping again.
We rolled into Whitehorse, the capital of the underpopulated Canadian territory of Yukon, at about 10:30 PM PDT, 11:45 after we'd left home. Not a rapid pace for a short 542 mile ride, but we were content. Didn't want to push my buddy too hard, as he's just getting into ld riding, and I don't want to scare him off. Two years ago, for him a long ride was the 187 miles in to Anchorage. Now he's talking about riding together down to Duluth, MN in September to visit his daughter and son-in-law, so I want to encourage him.
After a good night's rest and breakfast at the Gold Rush Inn in downtown Whitehorse, we rode around town to take care of business. The inevitable waiting gave me time to check my bike over. Of the stainless screws I'd installed in the fairing, not a one had loosened. The oil level was right where it was at the start of the ride - not bad for an engine with over 120,000 miles on it. The coolant level was fine, and everything else looked okay under the coat of Alcan dust. All in all, it appears to have been a good shakedown (literally, after the miles of washboard) cruise for the trip I'll be taking at the end of the month: Down to Seattle for Spring Fling, on down to the Russell factory for a Day-Long seat, then back up to Hyder, Alaska for the Ron Ayres anniversary get-together, and back home so I can hopefully earn enough to pay for this fun.
And as for a name for my faithful Connie: How about "Alcan Annie"? She's taken me the full length once, so far, and is looking at several more trips up and down in the near future. It's fun to show those who think you have to have a dual sport for the Alcan that a Concours can do it just fine.
Oh, and about hauling her home? That's why we came to Whitehorse. My friend is buying a cube van here, and we decided to ride over, put the bikes in the back, and drive it home. Gave us a chance to share another trip. Just makes me anxious for the next one. And, if you have a good bike to start with and are careful with your work, you CAN work on your bike and then take off on a long trip. Just wish I could have ridden back.
