Mid-Day update from Route 66

Woke up this morning and had a bowl of Apple Jacks. Stephen had taken Sophie and Felix to the bus stop before I woke up so I had yet to have a chance to meet the kids since they were already in bed by the time I got to Stephen and Nat's house. We got going and swung by Route 66 Harley Davidson and filled out a service order request. I let them know what was going on and told them to give me a call when they had an estimate. Meanwhile we made our way to Armstrong Recording, Stephen's studio. He had work to do and I wasn't going to be doing a whole lot of anything until I knew what was up with the bike.

Matt from Route 66 called me about an hour and a half later to give me the run down. It turns out that the clutch isn't bad, but a clamp had broken off of the clutch adjuster and that is why it couldn't engage anymore. Labor at Route 66 is $79.50/hour. Parts and labor, I was looking at about $160 for that. They also were going to replace the rear wheel bearings. $50 for parts and an hour for labor. At this point I was going to get out of there for about $300. STOKED! I called Laela to confirm and she said to go with it. Meanwhile Matt had called me back and told me that they'd have to remove the exhaust from the bike in order to do the work so it'd be about another hour of labor. That's totally understandable and I was fine with it. I called Laela to update her and we agreed that it was still cheaper than renting a truck (which is about $500 plus gas). I was still feeling pretty good about my fortunes at this point. Then Matt called again and the other shoe finally dropped. As they were working on the bike, they found that the front motor mounts had sheared off and that the engine had moved 2 inches in the frame. Matt said there was no way that anyone should be riding the bike in that condition because the engine could drop out onto the ground at any time. I guess we've found the source of the vibrations. They said it'd be two to four hours of additional labor because they'd have to tap out the bolts from the engin head before they could re-mount it. I'm now looking at an $800 bill and that's not even having the speedometer sensor replaced. He said that they could do the work today and after a consultation with Laela we decided that fixing it was the best course of action because even if I rented a truck I'd still have to get the bike fixed before I could ride it again. So with great trepidation, I called back and told them to take care of it.

More to come....