Sunday, April 16, 2006

GoldWing maintenance

I drive a Honda Goldwing motorcycle. The GL1500 from 1996.



Mine is pearl metallic green. It's a great bike. Lots of comfort, lots of style, and it'll take you anywhere you want to go. My wife and I love to spend a day astride the bike. We've taken small trips on it. We've explored places on it. She likes the openness and the freedom that the motorcyle gives us. She also likes the wardrobe.

Plus, with gasoline prices like they are, a 40 mpg motorcycle makes a lot of sense if you don't have to haul much stuff.

Honda did a great job with 90% of the engineering on the motorcycle. The bike is virtually bullet-proof mechanically. It has the legendary reliablility that Honda is famous for. Keep the oil changed and the tires in good shape, and it runs and runs and runs.

The aggravation comes when you start having little problems. My turn indicators have recently started being intermittent. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So, I got out the manual and started troubleshooting. It seems that the problem is the turn signal relay, which is located UNDER THE TRUNK. To remove the trunk of the motorcycle is almost as much trouble as removing the trunk of your car. It is certainly more trouble than removing the bed of a pickup truck.

I can live with the fact that to do basic maintenance, you have to remove the seat and the radio compartment. Basic maintenance can be accomplished with those two pieces off, and they really aren't that much trouble once you do it a time or two. But to pull the trunk to replace a turn indicator relay? It seems like they could have located those simple relays where they were easier to test.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My son bought a savage mod. 99 lever action nice shutter 243. They have went up quit a bit lately.
You are talking about a bolt action. I think.
Eat that good supper.
Good Reading

Anonymous said...

Tell you little hunt story on my brother in law.
We just got in to hunting deer.He bought a case of over ripe apples.Layed them out on a game trail in several good spots. Came back that evening some of the apple were gone. The next day he went dow to check them some more were gone. I told him it looks like some deer are hiting them. He i don"t know what ever it is they keep leveing the core.
Next moring it was raining heavy we got a late start. My other brother in law, brother in law drop by to have some coffee and was taling abot the hunting. He said some body through away some good apple dwn there.
That was pretty good one.
Have fun on that lease. We are going dove hunting Tuesday the 1st.
Enjoy your articles.