After not having updated on the progress that we've made with our GL1800 I think it is getting long overdue to provide an update again.
After
not having updated on the progress that we've made with our GL1800 I
think it is getting long overdue to provide an update again.
The odometer nows has reached over 117000 miles and the bike is performing like on its first day. All those miles where almost uneventfull but some minor things did happen that I think I should write about.
At the 93k mile mark on one of our tours I noticed that there was a small leak on the left front fork. It looked like the fork seal was blown. We noticed this up in Maine on our way back home. Needless to say that timing wasn't on our side since the incident happened towards the end of the week and I had to be back in the office on Monday. We needed to find a shop that would actually have parts (or be able to overnight them) and do the fix right away.
Our decision was to ride the bike down to our friends house in Maryland who had joined us to our quest for fresh Lobster and find a shop there. It turned out that none of the shops was willing to help a traveler in need. The responses we got where all like middle of next week at the earliest. So we had to make a quick decission. We decided to drive the bike back to the Bay Area with the blown fork seal.
All the way back home fork fluid was splashing over the dash and on the left side. I didn't know that there was so much fluid inside the forks. Some rain on the way back helped cleaning the bike during the long drive.
What surprised me was that the handling of the bike didn't get too bad. I still could have raced around corners and everything, but I didn't try. The only thing was that fork oil was running over the left caliper. Good thing about Honda with their unlimited miles 3 year warranty is that they fixed the problem without any questions even so the bike had over 95k miles on the odometer at that point.
However after this trip came a dissapointing time where we just didn't have the time to ride due to relocation into an area that won't permit all season riding that well as California. Plus more international tarvels didn't permit taking the bike for those trips.
This year proofed to be a point where we wouldn't rack up our usual miles but nevertheless we didn't do too bad for that. The only problem this year was that we detected that cooleant was starting to leak at the rear of the engine right before another weekend trip. Not much but removing the overflow tank and looking up the rear of the engine I could see a green streak running down right in the center of the casing as well as a puddle higher up.
Seemed like the waterpump was leaking from one of the seals. With 114k miles on the bike this seemed to be not too strange, since older Wings pretty much have the same problem. So I took out my service manual to see what was involved to change the waterpump. It stopped just short of taking the engine out. Everything mounted to the rear of the engine (plus the gas tank) will have to be removed to service the waterpump. Since the bike was already out of warranty I remembered that Honda had offered two years of additional warranty on the engine and cooling system for the early GL1800's. Time to talk to the local service department.
So I called the shop and they confirmed that the bike was covered and they would have to look at it first before ordering parts. No big deal, so I drove over to have them check it out.
When the person came out he told me it was going to be about $480 to fix the water pump (which didn't suprise me knowing the work involved). So I told him no way, since it was covered under warranty. Hi resply to me was that the warranty had expired on the bike. After asking for the Service Manager, who at least knew about this extension of the warranty but not any details, he called Honda and they quickly confirmed that this was going to be covered under warranty. However they wanted all the replaced parts back asap. As well they insisted on having the ECM upgrade done, which up to this point I had been resisting since the bike never had any problems.
So now I have a new waterpump in the bike and the upgraded ECM. With the little bit of miles we've done so far on the new ECM I didn't notice much performance/mileage difference. The only thing surprisingly enough was that shifting seems a little bit easier now. I'm not sure how this can be affected by the ECM, but it certainly feels like it.
I've been talking a lot about tires in the previous posts. I'm just going to touch on the subject a little bit again saying that I'm still running the Bridgestone tires and am perfectly satisfied with their performance wet or dry. We had one ride where we spent about 600 miles in rain, varying from light to extremly heavy and we we're running with the flow of trafic at 80+ mph without problems through Wyoming and Colorado. No slipping around in the turns or anything.
A bit more on maintenance. I've done the latest valve adjustment on the bike noting that for the second time the left head needed adjustments. So my recommendation for everyone is that don't stretch the check to far out. While it may seem on the first go that they are alright they will need adjustment regularly over time. The procedure isn't complicated but you will need two special tools from Honda to do it. Some shops are asking $500-$600 for the adjustement but after doing it myself I cannot understand that pricing. Also keep in mind that you will need some shims. I've checked my heads and calculated the size needed and bought them from the local shop at around $6 a piece. Shims can also be reused. This saved me buying 1 shim right now, but I expect that over time I will collect enough shims to do most adjustements.
Reiner