I am willing to bet that no one on the list has had to address this type of repair problem…
This tale takes a few minutes, but its worth it. Ill begin Saturday when I walked out to my car and noticed a strong gas smell coming from the vx. Pulled up the cover and saw a puddle. As someone who has dealt with the petcock problem a few times, I wasn’t overwhelmed with this situation, but I hadn’t had this problem since I added an extra valve in the fuel line. I checked, the valve was closed, but we were running late so we got in the car and headed off.
While going around town I was thinking of how the vx was leaking gas with that valve closed. Tank leak? Bad valve? Loose fitting somewhere? And why hadn’t I smelled gas when riding lately? I had been getting poor mileage of late, so I figured this was a good explanation of that.
I got home mid afternoon and tore into it, figuring this might be a complex problem.
First thing I did was move the bike from the fence to the middle of the parking lot (and from the center stand to the side stand), at which point it started pouring gas due to the extra lean angle. I got the seat and panels off as fast as I could and realized that the gas leak was simple, a broken fuel line right by the battery. Clamped it with a vise grip and went to the store for a new line. Replacement was easy and I was back on the road by Sunday. The only bad part was that the panel was missing a nickel sized piece of plastic right by the leak. I cursed Suzuki for making body panels out of a plastic that wasn’t resistant to gas, but this was hidden by the seat so it was really no big deal.
Emailed scott b about this since I had mentioned the poor mileage to him before. He had never heard of a fuel line going bad like that, but was happy that nothing caught fire while I was riding! Again, this raised the question of why I hadn’t noticed this before since I routinely take my seat off to use my helmet lock.
Now a note about my neighborhood. I live in Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati (http://www.otrchamber.com/). This is the largest historical neighborhood in the country at 110 square blocks. Beautiful buildings, some “urban pioneers” with great apartments and condos, and a lot of stuff that needs to be rehabbed. It’s a good place and I have some great neighbors, however there is a drug problem that has been slow in going away. ½ a block from where I park (my car and my bike are in a surface lot) is an intermittently active drug corner.
Fast forward to last night. I went out to put my cover on my bike about 10 and ran into one of our “shelter-ally and sobriety-ally challenged over-the-rhine residents”
(crackheads). She had stopped to talk on Saturday when I was fixing my fuel line and she wanted to know if it worked out. I said yes, and she replied with “yeah, hopefully next time they do shooting around here you will have better luck”. Rewind to Friday night, about midnight we heard 4 shots from somewhere over in the direction of the previously mentioned drug corner. This is not common, and one of my neighbors was outside at the time and said he felt the shots were farther away (no one was injured in this episode, and it has given the neighborhood association leverage on some bad landlords at that
corner.)
Now back to last night… I asked our crackhead about the shots, and where was this shooting? “right here!” she said. Hmm… is it possible that my fuel line was shot? It was dark out so I put the cover on and went back inside. This morning I did my best CSI impersonation, found a mangled piece of copper on the ground (which my gun loving co-worker says is likely part of a bullet casing), found a nick on the bottom of my seat, and a track across the body panel heading right for where the panel piece was missing, and right into where the old fuel line was broken! SOME DAMN DRUG DEALER SHOT MY BIKE! I can’t believe it. Cant find the bullet, and I cant figure out where it went after it hit the fuel line (no exit hole), but the evidence is there. Im sending brian some pics if this sort of odd occurrence is worthy of the vx website.
Its true what they say, the real cost of the drug war will never be known!
