In the first few weeks of living in Montrose, we took a few nice long excursions on the CT-90, which we agree that we both really enjoy and are going to try to make it a more regular thing. Here are a few of the adventures we have been on with the small-motorcycle-that-could. The first adventure was to the nearby mountain town of Ouray, Colorado, which I posted about previously. The second adventure was toward the town of Gunnison, due east of where we live. This trek landed us at a local state park where we ran into a ranger that talked our ear off about how crazy we were for riding such a small motorcycle together on such mountainous roads. He mentioned that I must have enormous balls to do such a thing, and that he had been drawn over to our motorcycle because it was like the Model T of motorcycles and that everyone remembers these bikes from their childhood and has fond memories. Here he is shooting the wind with us—it was too funny.

Here we are. And now, Adrienne is going to sing you a Britney Spears song.

The last trek we took the CT-90 on was up to the town of Grand Junction, a 60 mile trip, 120 mile round trip. It took us most of the day, including some stops, and wandering around, as well as a close call with running out of fuel on the way home. The day was long, our buts were sore but boy was it fun. We had to go up to Grand Junction to pick up a new starter motor for Adrienne’s truck. The day before we went to start it and it tried to crank and the engine turned ever so slightly and then just stopped. I performed a voltage drop test on the battery and terminals and determined that the battery way beyond dead and noticed that it was low on acid as well as the fact that the terminals were dirty. We cleaned the terminals, top up the acid with water and charged the battery, and still, not a normal crank out of the starter.

I then located a blemish battery from the local Interstate dealer, a $110 battery for $50. After installing the new battery, I crawled under the truck to notice that when trying to crank the engine, the starter was smoking and there was lots of oil on the starter motor but not anywhere else, how convenient. Since I have heard of this sort of thing happening before, I sprayed parts cleaner into the end-bell of the starter to clean out some of the oil from the brush area and sure enough it cranked like normal and started. We removed the starter from the truck and took it apart to realize that the brushes were totally shot from being contaminated with oil for so long. Adrienne was pretty pissed off due to the fact that she had dropped off the truck to have a no start issue diagnosed, but not fixed earlier this year and the guy “fixed it” with out contacting her and then tried to charge her a huge mark up on the starter motor. What he failed to do though was truly fix the problem, which was the oil leak. Anyway, grand junction was the closest place that had a starter with a lifetime warranty. We got the starter and replaced it as well as the leaking valve cover gasket and now the truck starts like it was brand new again.

On our way back from Grand Junction with the starter motor, we stopped at this place in the town of Delta that sells only antique cars that are ready for people to restore or turn into hot rods. It was the first time I had seen someone covering this odd niche in the used car market. There were dozens of timeless classics here for sale. We both enjoyed poking around and checking out all of the neat cars they had for sale on their lot.