Golden Gate Canyon Road Ride

Temperatures from high 40s at the start of the ride to high 60s by early afternoon. Sunny.

Another beautiful riding day here in Colorado and the motorcycles were definitely out in force in the parts fo the state I rode through.

Today's ride was to bag another pass for my ongoing Passbagger 50 attempt. It's a "event" hosted by my motorcycling club, the ColoradoBeemers wherein one has an unlimited time to ride over or perhaps as close as possible to 50 named passes within the state. Today's objective was Golden Gate Pass on Golden Gate Canyon Road on County Road 46.

I punched in the GPS coordinates of the pass from the COG's Randy Bishop's Pass Bagger 50 website, thanks Randy! I then wended my way through Denver using the I-225 and I-25 slabs till I got on Westbound I-70. I took this slab to the CO58 exit, following the directions from the GPS, past the Coors Brewery's buildings and then saw the sign for CO46.

This is one marvelously twisty road! It was very challenging right at the get go and really did not let up until I was near CO119! That was about 20 miles or so of nice twists and turns, high canyon walls and cliffs bordered this road and kept one's attention from wandering too far from the road. As you head uphill towards Golden Gate Pass, you can keep the throttle twisted pretty good and enjoy the twists and turns. Coming back down, you have gravity adding speed to your momentum and I found myself actually having to lightly use the brakes during several turns. Engine braking was not enough and I don't think I went over 3rd gear during those turns!

Another pass bagged, Golden Gate Pass

The Gilpin County Sherriff's patrol cars were patrolling heavily around the Golden Gate Canyon State Park area. I saw them snag three cagers as I made my way up and down this road. My skill levels made the 35mph limit on this road not something that was limiting, if you get my drift. I don't think I went much above this limit when I could see far enough ahead to do so.

Starting my way down from Golden Gate Pass

I'd mentioned before that the bikes were out in force today. I was passed by at least 15, maybe 20 sportsbikes as I took the above pictures for the panoramic shot. They looked like they were having as much fun as I was having with the curves!

I caught up with this group of sportbikes where CO119 meets CO46. They'd stopped to chat amongst themselves, I just turned around and rode the canyon road again!

Once back in Golden, I road the I-70 slab to the east side of the Denver Metro Area and took Gun Club Road home, it was quite warm at this point and though I was not sweating, I was glad to get rid of the jacket liner when I stopped to run an errand near home!

180 miles of riding today, beautiful conditions. I hope you got a ride in today, wherever you're reading this from!

Swap Meet at the Beemer Dealer

Temperatures in the low 50s and Sunny. Beautiful riding weather day.

Having successfully cleaned up my starter and gotten rid of the grinding metal noise during cold startups, I went to the BMW of Denver Motorcycle Dealership's Swap Meet to peruse the wares.

I didn't get there till after lunch since my wife made me a sumptuous lunch of stir-fried beef and snow peas which of course I would never pass up.

The swap meet stuff was pretty much picked over by the time I got there, not much left but parts for older beemers. The dealer also had some rider gear on sale but the one thing that even came close to peaking my interest was a SHOEI Multitec helmet but though discounted 40%, it was not my color at ruby red.

Instead, here's some pictures of a beautifully restored R100S Beemer that the dealer has suspended from the showroom ceiling. I've admired this motorcycle many times and this time I thought to capture it for your viewing pleasure.




The camera does not do the paint job on this motorcycle justice. She's a very pretty motorcycle, wouldn't you say?

I ended up not buying anything, and meandered home to do some chores. The weather is supposed to be just as nice tomorrow if not better....so that will be my long ride day again.

Fixing my Noisy Starter

For a while now, I've noticed usually during cold starts, a slight metal on metal grinding noise that lasted for less than a second or so when starting the motorcycle. It had me a bit worried since I was thinking it was the timing chain slapping against the housing because it might be not tight enough.

Luckily, I found this article on advrider.com called "Squeaking Starter Repair". Reading it, it describe the noise that I'd been hearing exactly even though the title did not. Here's an excerpt:

When you start the motorcycle, after the starter has cranked the engine for a few seconds, and it the engine fires and starts, then your hear a squeaking noise (metal against metal, teeth grinding). It only lasts for a second. Maybe two.
The above description was exactly what I was experiencing! So I read the article and determined it was within my skill level of wrenching. I was not planning on taking the whole starter apart to do a thorough cleaning as the author wrote that just cleaning the accessible areas of the starter would probably do the job. My heartfelt thanks to the author: TaSK, whomever you are, great "how to" article on how to do this wrenching task. It helped me fix my noisy starter!

As you can see in the pictures below, the starter was quite filthy, both outside and inside.

My Valeo Starter, just off the engine block

Outboard Side, pre-cleaning, quite filthy eh?

Inboard side, just as filthy

Bottom view of the starter

I used some carburetor cleaner solution to clean off most of the remaining gunk after wiping the bigger stuff off with some shop towels. The task of cleaning it is easy, just be careful where you spray the cleaner and keep an eye on the pin as noted in the repair guide, it could conceivably work itself out when you're moving the parts back and forth to clean them and re-grease the shaft sections.

Inboard Side

Outboard Side

Bottom side

The starter disassembled and assembled pretty easily since I'd only taken the top cover off. Mounting it back onto the engine block is not too much of a pain. The bottom mounting bolt gave me the most trouble. I did have to unbolt the left side footpeg mount/cover in order to access the mounting bolts by the way. The guide is premised on a 1150GS motorcycle, more stuff to remove on a 1150RT.

Above photo taken a while ago, shows location of starter on Maria

I tested the started before mounting back the cover and the tupperware, it worked beautifully! Got the motorcycle all buttoned up and she's ready for more riding. Yet another small step by me towards becoming a beemer wrencher....

Thick Rain on May Day

Temperatures from low 30s to low 40s.

Happy May Day! Back in the day, the Soviets would be parading their military might near the Kremlin and the world worried about such things as the Cold War. Nowadays, the biggest worry around here was the weather. We'd had beautiful sunny weather the last few days but the weather guessers had called for sporadic rain/snow showers today and they were proven mostly right.

It was just overcast as I rode to work in the morning. Roads were dry as I arrived at work and there was barely any rain drops coming down. This changed during the day and for a while it even snowed pretty good, nice fat snowflakes.

Still, it being Spring in Colorado and the temperatures comfortably above freezing, the snow only collected on the grassy areas. I did go out to my motorcycle during lunch to retrieve my overpants waterproof liner as I expected to be riding home in the rain.

I left close to 1530hrs and it was snowing lightly, the snow would melt immediately upon hitting the pavement so I was not worried. Heck, I even saw patches of "steam" coming off the warm roadways.

There was some ice accumulation on the windshield and on my helmet's visor but nothing untoward. There were a couple of times I used my gloved hand to wipe away some of the melting ice that would not flow freely off my visor, but that's about the extent of the problem.

You can see its just wet roads with snow only on the grassy areas

The photo above shows the wet road conditions, the snow flakes at this point were very tiny and the camera really did not capture them well. I had been in heavy traffic on Colfax Avenue when the flakes were at their biggest so no chance for pictures then.

Here's a couple of pictures of Maria, safe in the garage after riding home in the thick rain. You can make out the ice that built up on the windshield, already melting as the windshield itself is misty from the condensation caused by the rising heat from the engine.


All in all, not bad riding conditions, just like riding in the rain in fact. Take it easy on the corners, start your braking earlier and keep braking motions smooth and no problem. I do need to pick up one of those rubber squeegee things for my gloves so I can do a better job of wiping the visor while on the move though.

The waterproof liners for my jacket and overpants did their job and I got home completely dry. I did a quick wipe down of Maria and once again we'll be ready for the commute into work tomorrow morning. As I write this, snow remains on the grassy areas but the roads are already bone dry!

Note: One casualty for today, my cheapo thermometer from autozone, got wet in the snow/rain and died.