bad battery - why wouldn't it catch when the lights were on and

[Jim Tegler]

Howdy, I have a car battery laying around that I use to crank the starter on the KLR lots to start it if it is feeling cantankarous. I just hook up jumper cables and it seems to give the bike the necessary power to crank away while sparking strongly to fire-up when it needs to run and clear itself or run some inline fuel cleaner through the carb. Just a thought. Jim A5 _________________________________________________________________

[pdstreeter@mmm.com]

Copper Canyon Trip Report 2010 I just returned from my more-or-less annual motorcycle trip to the Copper Canyon, Mexico. Here are the highlights of the trip: Expired passport, 3 flat tires and bad gas (no, not that kind!) before we left the US Broken sub-frame on my bike, welded up in an open air workshop Bikes that won t start They warn you against the banditos, the drug cartels and drinking the water, but they never warned us about the mud! Mud packed around my rear tire so bad it couldn t turn I crashed 4 times in the mud; the bike trapped my boot twice We bivouacked one night outside in the rain Trailer light problems Icy highway in Iowa, dozens of cars in the ditch Despite the adventures it was a great trip, great (bad) roads, great scenery, great food; great riding buddies and I can t wait to go back! Two days before our scheduled departure, Dick discovers that his passport had just expired. He assumes that his trip is over before it even started, and starts to un-pack. The rest of us scramble to change our trailer and tow vehicle, since we had planned to take Dick s RV. The day before our scheduled departure, Dick finds out about a one-day passport renewal service in Minneapolis, and his trip is on again! We got a late start by about half a day, but we re on the road and Dick is with us. There are four of us taking turns driving the RV with a trailer for our bikes. Dick, Kevin, Dave and I with a XR650R Honda, and 3 Kawasaki s, a KLX 250, KLX 400 and my KLR 650. It is Dave s first trip to Mexico. In Sweet Water, Texas, we find a flat tire on one of the duals on the motorhome. The truck stop tells us that they don t work on RV s, go to the truck tire place. Being Saturday, the truck tire place was closed. The truck repair shop sent us back to the truck stop, they in turn told us to go to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart says that they can fix the tire, but can t jack up the RV and pull the wheel off. After buying a new lug wrench from Wal-Mart, and about an hour of messing around with the chrome wheelcovers, we finally pull the wheel. Another hour or so later we ve got it fixed and back on the road. Wal-Mart charged us $2 for a new valve stem. We arrive in Presidio, Texas just before dark Saturday night, and take a room at the Three Palms hotel. We unload the bikes and get ready for a morning departure into Mexico. For $3 per day the Three Palms will let us park the RV and trailer in their lot while we re in Mexico. Kevin discovers a flat front tire on his bike and we fix it in the parking lot. He had pinched the tube installing his new front tire the week before. Our original plan was to leave Presidio on Saturday morning, stay in Chihuahua Saturday night, Creel on Sunday night and Batopilas on Monday. Since we re running behind, we figure we can squeeze three days of riding into two, and stay in Cuauht moc Sunday night and ride to Batopilas on Monday. Next morning as we re loading the bikes, Dick discovers his front tire is flat, and we change that one out. So, we re getting a little bit of a late start. It s all pavement riding today, so we make pretty good time. Kevin with his GPS guided us through the city of Chihuahua without getting lost, a first for me! I gassed up my bike in Presidio, and it was running terrible. I stopped about every 10 miles to check the fuel filter, drain the carb bowl, open the gas cap, check the air filter, etc. Nothing helped until we stopped to fill up with gas again in Aldama. I still had a half tank, but with the fresh gas, it ran great! We finally got to the Victoria hotel in Cuaht moc just before dark at 6:30. We had a couple of beers, a nice meal and went to bed. We left Cuaht moc and just out of town headed south to Carichi. We had brunch there and finally hit some dirt roads. These are fairly easy, scenic roads. We did see a little bit of snow next to road at the higher elevations. When we got to Creel, one of the guys tried to exchange money at the bank, after waiting in line for almost an hour, they told him that they don t exchange money! So, running a little behind again, we take off for Batopilas. The first half of the way is extremely twisty paved roads that are lots of fun to ride. After the turn-off from the main road, we were disappointed to discover that the first 12 miles had been paved or the road is improved and about to be paved, all the way to the first little pueblo called Qu rare. But after that, the road is back to its old self, narrow, winding, rocky, with ruts and holes. A great road to ride dirt bikes on! Improved roads are a great thing for the local population, but we go to Mexico because it has bad roads! We pulled into Batopilas just before dark and got a room at the Hotel Juanita. We got the penthouse room with 4 beds again. They still haven t figured out how to vent the plumbing right, so the shower smells a little of sewer gas. Otherwise, it s a really nice hotel, they let us push our bikes right through the lobby into the courtyard. We had a home cooked meal in someone s dining room while they cooked in the attached kitchen. We had planned to meet up with a couple of amigos from Chihuahua in Batopilas, but they hadn t arrived yet. About 8:00 PM, we heard a couple of motorcycles pull into the hotel; Arturo and Omar had ridden down to Batopilas in the dark! The next morning, Tuesday, we had a nice breakfast in the Hotel Mary restaurant. After breakfast the six of us started to load the bikes, but Kevin discovered that his front tire went flat again! The tube he installed in Presidio had a slow leak at a previous patch. So, once again, a bit of a late start. We rode out of Batopilas toward Satevo, and continued on out of town. This was a new route for me; I ve always gone the other way toward Urique in the past. Our plan was to ride to Morelos today. The roads got progressively worse and steeper. Many switchbacks, climbs and descents. Very rough, very fun riding. We stopped at a small tienda for lunch, but no one dared eat the tacos there, Charlie had gotten deathly ill eating there last year. It was very nice to have Arturo and Omar along. Arturo says he s been riding the canyons since 1972, and he knows all the routes. He made a great tour guide, and he s very friendly and loves to talk to everyone we meet along the way. He is fluent in English, but puts up with me practicing my Spanish on him. By this time, Dave s off-road riding abilities have been getting better every day, and we ve been throwing greater challenges at him every day. Dick continues to have trouble kick starting the big XR, it only likes to start every 2nd or 3rd attempt. We learn to wait for Dick to get his bike started before we start ours. The only troubles Kevin has with his 250 is on the highway, especially uphill and against a headwind, sometimes his top speed drops into the 50 s. Arturo is riding a KLX 300 (that s 4 Kawasaki s out of 6 bikes), and Omar his Suzuki DR 350. My KLR 650 is big and heavy, but hasn t had any problems so far. Omar doesn t speak very much English, but understands some. He also puts up with my Spanish practice. We made it into Morelos without any trouble; one of Arturo s buddies runs the clinic there and got us rooms in the local hotel. This is a pretty basic hotel, made for Mexican truck drivers to stay in. No toilet seats or shower curtains here, with bare concrete floors. We ate in the hotel owner s dining room, with his wife doing the cooking. I must say we had excellent meals at every stop on this trip. I was able to call home in both Cuauht moc and Creel using a telephone card in the pay phones on the street, and in Batopilas they have a storefront where you can pay for your calls by the minute. Here in Morelos they had pay phones on the street, but they couldn t take cards and I couldn t quite figure out how to use them. Dumb gringo. Wednesday morning we got up and starting packing the bikes, and I noticed that my luggage rack was loose, upon further investigation found that the subframe on my motorcycle was broken just behind the luggage rack fasteners. Oh, this isn t good! Omar took off to find a soldadora or welder. When he found one, Dave and I took my KLR over to the other side of town to an open air auto/ truck mechanic workshop. They had an old arc welder. We stripped the bike down to the bare subframe in back, fashioned a couple of pieces of steel tubing to fit inside the frame tubes and the Mexican soldador (person who welds) welded up one side, and Dave welded up the other side. They both did a great job, when we put it all back together, everything fit perfectly. Back to the hotel to finish packing and we finally took off, again running late. Our destination for today is planned to be Baborigame. Once again, the roads are superbly bad, loose rock, steep, plenty of switchbacks. As we re riding along, it starts to lightly rain. This turns some of the clay dust on the roads to a coating of slippery mud. After not seeing Dick or Dave for over a half hour or so we pull over to wait for them to catch up. After a few more minutes of waiting, we decide to turn around to find out what has happened. It is getting late in the afternoon, and we re worried about getting to Baborigame before dark. We find Dick and Dave back a couple of miles trying to get Dick s bike to start. It just died in the road and won t restart. So far on this trip, I have been the designated alternate to kick start Dick s bike when it won t start for him. However, this time I had no luck either. (By the end of the trip, my right shin is sore and bruised from the kick starter ramming my shin right into the back of the footpeg.) It is raining pretty good now, and we manage to find the overhang of a barn to pull the bike under. Dick starts pulling it apart to check for spark. That XR is not the easiest bike to work on. It must have taken over a half hour just to pull the gas tank off. Lucky for us Dave is a professional mechanic (and welder!) He was able to trace down a bad electrical connection and fix it. Dick put it all back together and we were ready to hit the road again, although we lost another couple of hours, and it was getting late in the afternoon. The rain has not stopped, and it is now coming down pretty steadily. The mud has gotten treacherously slippery, and our speed drops down to about 10 mph. As it gets dark, we stop at a couple of farmhouses along the way to ask if we can spend the night, we are turned away each time! So, we ride on into the night, slipping and sliding along. It seems that I and Arturo are having more trouble in the mud than the others; I put the fault in my big, heavy motorcycle. The first time I wiped out was pretty spectacular. I was in a rut and the front end started to slide one way, I was able to catch it but I over-corrected and got thrown high side over my bike, landing squarely on the chin bar of my full face helmet on a rock and trapping my foot under the bike. It s a good thing I wear a full face helmet, it would have been a tragedy to mess up my handsome face! I also wear heavy boots, and my feet and ankles were not hurt at all. Dave pulled the bike up off me, and helped me get it upright again. After falling down a couple more times in ruts, it occurred to me that maybe my fork brace was packing up with mud and effectively putting the front brakes on. I pulled it off, and after that the steering was much easier. I also tried dropping my tire pressures a couple of times, eventually down to 12 psi, which helped as well. However, my joy was short-lived, as a couple of miles later my bike stopped making forward progress at all, the rear wheel had totally packed with mud and the engine couldn t even move the rear wheel. It had finally stopped raining or at least it was only sprinkling now, the mud was just starting to dry and it became very sticky (still very slippery to ride on, though). I was convinced that if I tried to keep riding in these conditions I d burn up my clutch. Both Kevin and Arturo have wiped out in the mud as well. On the other hand, Dave is having a grand old time in the mud, thoroughly enjoying himself. I guess that KLX 400 is the bike to have in the mud! Neither Dick or Omar seemed to have much trouble either. We decided to try to find a place off the road to bivouac for the night. We had been riding in the dark now for about 3 hours. I was pretty much exhausted from both picking up my bike over and over and the white-knuckle riding I d been doing. The guys scouted out a likely place just a mile up the road. I was able to dig out most of the mud from around my rear wheel with my hands and got the engine to be able to turn it again. By this time I m pretty well covered in mud on the outside, but my gear has kept me dry inside. I take off down a short hill and ford yet another small stream. Except I didn t make it all the way across this one, I wiped out right in the stream, with the bike trapping my foot again! Great, now I get wet on the inside, too. Arturo and Kevin pulled the bike up off me this time. So, we get into a grassy area next to the woods, looks like a pasture to me. A few of the guys gather wood for a fire; we drain a little gas out the KLR supertanker and with a fair amount of effort in the wet conditions we get a small fire going. I get out of my wet riding clothes, put on dry clothes from my saddlebags and climbed into my emergency bivvy sack. It s waterproof and made of a reflectorized fabric, if I would have had my regular riding clothes on I m sure I would have been fairly comfortable, as it was I shivered intermittently all night long. It rained on and off all night, I only got a little sleep. Some of the guys just slept in their riding clothes on the ground, others had bivvy sacks or even a tarp hung over a rope for an impromptu tent. We got up at first light, broke camp and loaded up the bikes. I put my riding clothes back on and fixed my electric vest power cord, ah, heat! Using a stick, I scraped off about 30 pounds of mud from my bike and got the rear wheel and chain guard fairly free. We started riding again. The really slippery parts only went on for a few more miles; it was easier in the light, too. As the day went on, the roads dried up, and after we crossed a high pass, the road on other side of the mountain was in better shape. We found a little caf open for breakfast. They looked at this group of muddy bikers a little weirdly, but they served us another good meal. We made it into Baborigame a little before noon, and we checked into the hotel. They had a hose in their courtyard; we took advantage of that to wash the mud off of and out of the bikes. After that, there was plenty of laundry to do and luckily it was sunny to dry it. This was a little fancier hotel than Morelos; it at least had shower curtains, but no toilet seats or heat in the rooms. It did have four heavy wool blankets on each bed, so we stayed warm that night. It had been a couple of days since I had called my wife, so I went looking for a phone. Apparently, there wasn t a phone line into town, I think they used some kind of microwave connection, but it wasn t working at that time, I think because of atmospheric interference. A couple of people in town had satellite phones, but there was no signal for that either. I m not sure why, but at 5:00 the satellite phone got a signal and I was able to use that to call home, although there was a fair amount of static on the line. Some of the guys really enjoyed the shrimp special at the local restaurant; it seems to be the specialty of the house, even though we re nowhere near the sea. Friday morning we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and packed up our fairly clean bikes. Our destination for today is Guachochi, riding through the Sinforosa canyon. It was especially beautiful, with the road curving and switch-backing it s way up and down the sides the canyon. Dick had a lot of trouble with his bike dying on and off, and trying to re-start it at the high altitudes that day. I started noticing a banging sound when I hit rocks. I suspected that my steering head bearings were loose, and tried checking them and tightening them a couple of times with no change to the noise. I finally figured out that I d lost one of the bolts holding my front brake caliper on, and it was banging up and down, swiveling on the one remaining bolt. Dave had some wire in his pack, we wired it into position, and kept riding. Sometime during the day, I hit a rock or pothole hard enough to dent my front rim; I guess that 12 psi was a little too low for the rocky conditions! As soon as we climbed out of the canyon, the roads flattened out on the altiplano, or high plains. There were still a few miles of curvy dirt roads, but eventually we hit the pavement and rode that into Guachochi. This was the fanciest hotel we d stayed in so far, only a little below what we d expect in the US. It was also the most expensive hotel so far, but at less than $40 per night for two guys, it was still very reasonable. I was able to buy a replacement bolt (and 3 washers to make it work) from an auto parts store in Guachochi to fix my front brake. We went to a fancy restaurant that night that Arturo knew about. We all had the trout special, with shrimp and vegetables wrapped in aluminum foil. It was fantastic! Delicious, me encanta! We were again running behind, and so made the decision to ride from Guachochi all the way to Chihuahua today. Arturo and Omar had left their truck and trailer near Creel, so we parted ways at Guachochi. We really enjoyed riding with them, and enjoyed their company, too. We gassed up and aired up our tires, and hit the pavement for a while. We found a dirt road part of the way between Guachochi and Nonoava. Again, the first 12 miles or so turned out to be paved or improved gravel road, but after that, it turned out to be a really fun road. It had a little of everything, loose rocks, steep climbs and descents, switchbacks, holes, bumps, and dust. A very entertaining section for the last dirt road we d see on our trip. We hit the pavement and just before getting into Nonoava, we had to make the first real river crossing of the trip. The bridge was out, and the water was about a foot deep, fairly wide, and complete with plenty of big, slippery underwater rocks. We d had plenty of stream crossings and big puddles, but this rounded out the experience for Dave. We made it into Chihuahua and checked into the Maria Dolores hotel. We had hoped to meet up with a group of our friends led by Charlie in Chihuahua, but they only made it as far as Presidio that day. We had also hoped to go out to dinner with Arturo, but he had to babysit his grandchildren that evening since his daughter got called in work at the hospital. We had a nice meal and a few beers and went to bed. Next morning we did have a chance to go out to breakfast with Arturo. It was nice to see him again before we left. Of course, we got a late start, and finally met Charlie s group just outside of Coyame. Boy, those guys and their bikes sure looked clean! They remarked how dirty our bikes were and we told them that we just washed them 3 or 4 days ago! By the time we got through customs in Presidio, loaded the bikes up in the trailer and fixed the trailer wiring, it was 7:00 PM before we left for home. We ran into icy roads in Iowa, reducing our speed in the RV to about 15 mph for a few hours. There were dozens of cars in the ditch, a few upside down. We finally got back to Dick s place near St. Paul at 11:00 PM Monday night. It was a great trip, I really enjoyed the roads, the Sinforosa canyon, the food, and my riding buddies. I could have done without the mud, but that was part of the adventure. I m looking forward to going back again. Paul Streeter