Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Mon, 12 Dec 2005

I shouldn't have been so harsh on myself about that rattle in the
Z. I discovered the next morning that it was rattling as much as ever, and my power socket was fine. I finally tracked down the rattle to a screw in the fairing which was loose, and causing two pieces of plastic to rattle against each other. I tightened the screw (with great difficulty, it was in a tight spot), and the problem is gone. It may come back, I'm not sure.

In other news, I spoke with one of the electric GPR folks today on the phone. He confirmed that they will be selling both the electric GPR, and an electrified Derbi supermotard (SM), similar to this. No committments on pricing, except that the SM would probably be a bit less, since the frames won't be factory-new, but will have a few miles on them. Iiiiinteresting!

I'm going to call back later today, and see if I can get a definite appointment to see these bikes around Christmas. With any luck, I'll be able to ride one or both around a bit, and can write up my experience here. I'm looking forward to it.

This raises the question, am I going down to bug these people pointlessly? Would I actually drop $7k on an electric motorcycle? That's a really good question. I've been leaning towards "yes" more and more since I first found out about them, although that then raises the "spectre" of what to do with the Z. Since I would certainly want to commute on the electric bike, the Z would see the same decline in usage that the Le Mans saw. Ultimately, that lead to the (hopeful) sale of the Le Mans. Would I have wasted the money on the Z? I don't know, and that's one of the big factors in whether it would make sense to go spend another Z750s-worth of money on an electric bike.

Seen on its own, if I had the cash available, I would buy a good electric bike without a question in my mind. Electric motors are much lower maintenance than gas, with a phenomenal reduction in moving parts (these bikes don't even have transmissions). There's no esoteric carburetion to worry about -- pulse-width modulators like the speed controls on these bikes are well-understood, and there are multiple examples out there which have seen hundreds of thousands of hours of use. Electricity is far cheaper than gasoline around the Pacific Northwest, and is arguably far better for the environment. It's certainly better for foreign policy and political reasons. If a reasonable electric vehicle is available which could replace its gas-driven counterpart, I'd have no hesitation.

But I'm not living in a vacuum. I just spent, not three months ago, $7500 on a new motorcycle. That's a lot of money! I have some issues with that new motorcycle, but they're not huge, and I'm still riding it every day. If I sold it right this minute, with the scratch in the crankcase, I could maybe get $6000 for it. That's a pretty enormous depreciation hit for 3 months' usage. If I stopped using it in favor of an electric bike, it wouldn't harm me too much financially, but I hate to see any bike sit unused. It wouldn't be long before I'd be thinking of selling the Z along with the Le Mans. Then that depreciation comes into play again. If I ended up disliking the electric bike, the depreciation would either be much more or practically null, depending on who I found to buy it.

So the real answer to the question is, "I don't know." I'll see what happens if I get a chance to actually ride one.

Later that night...

Bah!

Well, that sucked a lot.

I went down to a store well south of me to do some Xmas shopping, but was only marginally successful. What sucked was that, as I was passing under the 45th St overpass on northbound I-5, the Z died! It just went clonk! and lost power! AARGH!

So, I pulled over to the side of the road (fortunately the blinkers and taillight were still working), and came to a stop. I sat for a moment, reviewing what had happened, and tried all the switches (particularly the kill switch) to make sure I didn't just do something stupid. No, it was definitely non-functional.

A bit of investigation revealed that (as I had grown to suspect) the ignition fuse was blown. I replaced it with the one spare Kawasaki had helpfully supplied, and the bike started right up. I suspected that the failure was caused by vibration, so I revved the motor through its range a few times, just to see if I could cause it to fail before I pulled in front of traffic. It didn't die, so I turned on my blinker and waited for a big gap in the traffic.

Fortunately, it was late enough (probably 9:45 by this point) that traffic was fairly light, and I quickly found the large gap I was looking for. I took off, and made it to about 6000 RPM in 3rd gear (perhaps 50 MPH) before it conked out again. That was enough to put me walking-distance from the next offramp.

I deliberated putting the spare 15A fuse in that slot (it's supposed to be a 10A fuse) and decided it wasn't worth burning the bike down if I could walk it to safety. I gave it a hearty push and crossed the 50th St onramp, headed for the 65th St offramp. 5 minutes later, I was sitting on a side street at the bottom of the ramp (fortunately a downhill ramp!), dialing my friend Jesse on the phone. I had called him the first time the bike broke, so he was ready, and was quickly on the road headed for my location. I'm glad the bike died so close to home and the dealership, and not 30 minutes to the south, where it would have been a real trek for Jesse.

When he arrived, we got the bike shoved up the ramp into his truck (fortunately, he's well-prepared, with his motorcycle racing gear), and tied down marginally well. The Z is kind of hard to tie down, since the fairing gets in the way. It was fine for that short trip, but I wouldn't want to go any real distance with it tied down like that.

I had called my dealership while I was waiting for Jesse to show up, and left them a couple of messages to expect the bike in the morning, and what troubleshooting I'd been able to accomplish. We left the bike, as securely as could be hoped, at the dealership.

So, I guess I'll be in tomorrow morning to talk to them and see what my options are. I'm quite sure this is a warranty problem, and I hope they agree with me. If there's any trouble with that, this could be the last Kawasaki I own for a while, but it seems very unlikely they'd call this anything but a warranty claim. The bike's only 3 months old, as I established above.

Stay tuned. It could get interesting.

Posted at 23:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.