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Red’s Dead, Baby, Red’s Dead

IMG_1058 Actually, Red is fine – I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pay homage to Pulp Fiction (“Whose chopper is this?  Zed’s.  Who’s Zed?”).

Two days ago as I left Edmonton through the small farm roads of Alberta, I was e-mailing back and forth with Ryan Jeffries at Scooterworks USA about my issues.  After a lot of back and forth including me sending him mp3’s of my engine sounds he agreed that it sounded fine and came to the conclusion that the impacted plugs may have been due to carbon buildup in the exhaust with bits breaking off and impacting the plug.  At this point it was just wait-and-see and pay careful attention to Red’s every whim looking out for any signs of engine damage.

I just got Red back from the mechanics at Scooterville Montana and Ryan was right – there was a lot of gunk in the carb and tons of buildup in the exhaust.  They cleaned it all out, gave him a bit of a tune-up and now Red is rocking just like the good old days.  He sounds great, moves fast, and cruises smooth.  Next time I start having troubles I’m going to make sure to stick to a small-town mechanic outside a holiday weekend instead of trying to find some big city hot-shot whose first assumption is that my engine is five seconds away from becoming a grenade!

Mad thanks to Ryan at Scooterworks and Ryan at Scooterville (yes two Ryan scooter mechanics) both for helping me out with this issue – I went a thousand plus miles out of my way all because of some bad gas most likely!  It was totally worth it though, as I met some really cool people along the way, especially in Edmonton, Calgary, and down south (plus got a ton of signatures on the scoot)…  and that night in the storm in Glacier National Park was for the ages.

Tonight I relax again in Missoula then it’s back on the road to Deadhorse.  By the time I get there I’ll have likely traveled almost 8000 miles, and I’ll still need to get back home!  Here we go again…

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