Damn, that sucked...

A friend got himself a new first bike: a new 2002 MZ Skorpion. He had
it shipped to SF Moto, prepped, and prepared.

And, not wanting a new rider to have to brave the Bay Bridge, I
naturally insisted on riding it back.

So we get the bike, fire it up, and I start to ride it back. I first
road it around the street for a while, warming up the engine and
scrubbing the tires. After about 10 minutes, it did seem to stall a
little easy, but I thought I was just being ham-handed, not having
ridden a bike with carburators in a while...

So I get onto the bay bridge. Traffic stops. Bike stalls. Crap.
Restart, badly. Restart, get 100 yards, third gear, moving along,
engine dies. GAH. Try again, GAAAAAHHHh

Fortunatly, I was right near the miracle button to call the cal-trans
tow crew. 10 minutes later, I was back at the shop.

And yeup, something wrong (probably with the valves) that only occurs
when hot. The mechanic took it on a long testdrive, and he too broke
down a few miles away...


A nice big THANKS to the Cal Trans tow trucks. They rock.

 

However, given the Free, Fast, and Friendly Cal Trans tow service,
compared with the American (Bikes are Not) Auto Association, I'd
prefer Cal Trans. However, it IS scary standing on that little strip
o metal just off the road bed.

 

Ok, you lost me here: sounds like you were headed for Oakland,
but got _back_ to SF in 10 minutes? What'd they do, reverse
the lower deck???

bob prohaska

 

OK, it may have taken 20...

 

And a nice big THANKS to Nick for doing this for me, and an
apology from me for getting him into this situation. What Nick
didn't mention is that he was willing to stick around at the shop
afterwards until we confirmed that the bike needed more work and
couldn't be ridden home that evening.

If it had been ready, he was willing to give it another shot, in
even heavier rush-hour traffic..

That's chutzpah.


Michael

 

No. Chutzpah was the dealer insisting that the bike was ready to go in
the first place.

Rich, Urban Biker

 

To be fair to the shop:

1. They didn't sell the bike to me. I had the bike shipped in from
out of the area and asked them to set it up. It'd been sitting for
two years. They did a full check-out of everything else.

2. The bike starts and runs fine until it's fully warmed up, and only
then does it have problems.

To catch this, they'd have had to take the bike out for a fairly
long ride. In my experience, none of the repair shops I've had do
work for me in the automotive realm, including dealers, do this as a
normal course of business. I wouldn't really expect a bike shop to
do this for me either, particularly since the bike was running fine.
I probably should have asked the shop to do this for me, but I was
eager to get the bike, and we all figured that if it started and ran
clean, it was probably OK.

Just one of those oddball things. I do IT stuff for a living, and
there's always a trade-off between 'get it done fast' and 'fully
test everything'.

Now, if you want to talk about the fine east german engineering
that went into those initial valve settings... (Yeah, Yamaha engine,
but somebody had to assemble it and check it at the factory.)

Michael

 

As did I.

Additionally, 95%+ percent of the problems would be noticed on a "Ride
around the block", so a ride around the block is actually a really
good test procedure. I don't fault the shop for not catching it.

Rather, I blame myself for ignoring my "this just isn't 100% kosher"
feeling before I got on the onramp.

 

I believe you were mentioned on an AM radio traffic report. As they say,
that's priceless.
Later!
Alex