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ECC Convoy Central 2009

scooter01922

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Damn man, that is an odd and truely scary failure, think i'll just keep the hood shut on the deuce whilst its running. Not like i didn't do that before anyway. Whats up with the dually?? the version i heard from cabell had it sounding pretty well cooked in the tranny dept.
 
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AMGeneral

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Connelly Springs, NC
Scoot,the G/Fs dually was the one cabell was reffering to,trans cooler line blew off,simple fix. I squashed mine between the M62A1 and a corner of my BRICK house on Sat. Hence my now wrecked dually.
 

scooter01922

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Newbury, MA
ouch man, sorry to hear about your now crumpled truck :-( you got a real run of bad luck going there. When cabell told me about your G/f 's truck i was thinking either cooked tranny or a big gusher of a leak that was squirting on the exhaust. He said that it waa on the side of the road witha big puddle under it and a bunch of smoke, glad it was just the cooler line.
 

CGarbee

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Raleigh, NC
I'll add my "intermediate" after action report... :)

I'm sitting at my folk's farm (site of the Labor Day trailrides and rally in Virginia) listening to the rain on the tin roof... Getting ready for the annual Bluegrass Festival that starts on ?Thursday (although we already have folks camping in the big field...).

My XM813 is running with the alternator off my M817. Chuck and I swapped it out last Thursday after is started squeeling on us while hauling Brandon's rig back home Wednesday. The one that had been it is sitting in the passenger floorboard and had obviously gotten hot enough to melt some of the insulation on one of the wires comming off it. It's a Prestolite unit, as is the one that came off the tipper.

The alternator that died two years ago was on my M35A2C and had actually died three days before the Convoy. I didn't have a spare and it wasn't making any noise, nor was it making any power. I just charged up the batteries and had slave started it and only had Chuck running with brake lights until it got dark, than just low beams and brakelights until Righmond. Slaved it off the next morning and ran it to Aberdeen where we snagged an alternator and did the parking lot swap... Still was working fine when I sold the truck a couple of months ago...

Meanwhile, Chuck and I got the M101 in Richmond with only a little confusion due to knowing the name of the road, but not the route number that we needed at one turn. Trailer looked good, towed great. Slowdown north of Richmond was due to a biker laying his BMW down, and breaking it into three large pieces... Not a bad delay for us, but looked rather bad for him... :(

Made it into Aberdeen at 10PM on Thursday and quickly found an adult beverage thanks to some of the good folks here on SS.

Drive from Aberdeen to the farm in Syria, VA, on Sunday morning towing the laundry trailer with the genset on it was uneventful except for a delay do to behing held at I495 for Rolling Thunder to pass by on their way to the Vietnam Memorial. I don't think that I have seen so many bikes before in my life... :) Lots of thumbs up for the XM813 on the ride.

Been getting a lot of complements on the truck, trailer, and genset. They are all parked next to the shower facility in the camping field so every that comes by gets to see them.

Hopefully, the drive home on Sunday will be smooth...
 

maddawg308

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Front Royal, VA
It was a little confusing on Thursday morning - but mechanical problems do that. I brought Cabell's and Brandon's numbers with me, but misplaced them, so finding out the story of what was going on that morning was a fun adventure in cellphone tag.

Wednesday evening, got to the Doswell hotel at 9pm, was the first one there, but I was first last year at the same time, so I turned in early. Thursday morning, I woke up and saw I was still the only one parked outside! Then I wondered what I did wrong, cuz it usually is me f**king things up, maybe I stayed at the wrong hotel, on the wrong weekend, etc.etc.etc. Just then a M109 shop van pulled in, spun around and left. ???? Called Cabell and got the story, said he'd be coming up late on Thursday, and told me to truck on up myself. SO - convoy of one. I could wear the CONVOY AHEAD and CONVOY FOLLOWS plates on one vehicle.

Had a little adventure in Baltimore, trying to find Jake, but took the wrong exit (Cabell said 1st exit past the tollbooths on I-895, but that took me somewhere else than he said). Sorry, Jake. :(

Found out later on the M109 belonged to Blake, who wanted to look and see what the story was on the convoy, without actually getting involved in the convoy. I asked him later, "Why didn't you stop?" "Well, I wasn't sure what was going on, if you got left behind, etc." To which I responded "WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP AND ASK?" Whatever, maybe next year he'll commit! ;)

No problems on the trip truckwise, until I got home. My left steering knuckle is puking black goo, so it looks like I will have to replace the steering knuckle boot before the trip to Haspin in two weeks.

Hope everyone got home safe, and look forward to Aberdeen 2010!
 
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