3 June 2016: Happy Birthday Chantelle
T - Woohoo. It was Channys birthday today!!
I was excited. Mabel's new clutch was here! Now just to ride her to the mechanics place where we could borrow his clutch tool! Yay!
But first we had to get lost trying to get out of the city. We ended up coming to several checkpoints at different entry points to the Air Force base! I’m sure we weren’t far off of being arrested for trying to continuously enter the base! My navigation skills are pretty bad at best!
Finally we found our way. And ended up on the freeway! Not what I wanted at all!
We turned up at Todd’s garage in Eagle River where he set me up inside with a work space and all the tools I would need.
In no time at all I had Mabel's old clutch ripped out and the new slid into place. There you go Mabel! A much deserved part!
We had a bit of a chat to Todd and his mate Mark before they both decided to give us a heap of meat to take with us. We ended up with moose bacon, black bear bacon, moose sausages, a big piece of halibut, and some moose salami! Thanks guys so much!!!!!
All this and Todd refused to accept any type of payment. Instead asking for a photo of our CT110’s alongside his shiny factory condition one! He wouldn’t swap machines with us though, and we did try…
Then I took Mabel for a test ride. Knowing her clutch would be smooth shifting and quiet.
I was wrong. She was hard to downshift. Requiring me to stomp on the shifter hard. No worries. That can be changed with a clutch adjustment. Which I did.
But the deep rumblings and moans still continued. Todd (the mechanic Todd) thought maybe she had a bearing on the way out somewhere deep inside her engine. Sigh. Mabel…
We decided to ride on towards Fairbanks, some 411 km’s away, and see how she went. She was no worse, but no better, than the other day. Except her clutch was silky smooth now and didn’t slip at all!
We got onto the highway north and rode for a 100 km’s before stopping at a campground for the night in Willow. We shared a bottle of red wine for Chantelles birthday dinner before retiring for the day.
Oh and Mabel sounded worse now. Absolutely awful. I decided that it was time to just replace her engine instead of stuffing around with her any more.
Happy Birthday Channy!
Tomorrow we head for Fairbanks!