My Cannonball adventure

My Cannonball adventure
Meet "Effie" our 1915 Harley-Davidson Twin 3 speed

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Road Test... kind of.






Today was the day! Bright, sunny and perfect for a nice test ride. We started the bike to make sure it was running okay first. After sitting for a few days it took a bit, but it started and sounded pretty good. We loaded the bike up in the truck and drove the mile or so to the spot we found yesterday. Pat made a test run first and actually got it into 3rd gear for a second or two, but it was too fast for the road we were on. It was easy on the downhill, but coming back uphill (not steep at all), the bike started running like crap. Probably fouling plugs in my opinion. The carb seemed to be running really rich too. We picked this road because it was off the beaten path, but we had people stopping to ask questions and even take pictures. It was a little distracting as I was nervous anyway. My turn came and I rode it about a mile down a slight incline. Not even what I would really call a huge hill. I shifted into second and she took off pretty well. I got to the bottom and turned around and headed up hill and it really lost power. Bummer… I really wanted to ride this today and practice shifting and downshifting. Oh well… at least I got to downshift once!
We loaded the bike back up and got it home. I was a little sad... and disappointed I didn’t get more time with it. I think it needs some major work before I can really feel safe riding it anyway. I imagine it needs some carb work. The jet in there seems to be wrong. Also, I imagine the rings are shot, as any uphill made them start to foul. Oh well… we did all we can here. The next step is to get it off to CA asap so Steve Huntzinger can go through the motor.
After we let the bike cool down a little, we played with the carb adjustment and got it running a little better, but it still seemed not as good as before.
We drained the gas and oil and are going to make some plans to ship it soon.

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