NEWS
Hatcher’s bike took the most work
to get ready, but not because it’s a 12-year-old K 1200 LT. During the overnight hours of the MD 20/20 rally on Memorial Day weekend, Allen hit and killed a deer with his LT. The entire front end was mangled, but the bike still ran and all his LD farkles were on it, so we repaired it and got it ready for the Iron Butt Rally. To support our customers, our
friends, and anybody else riding in the rally that might need some mechanical assistance, we decided to travel to the second checkpoint in Kingsport, Tennessee. The first leg of the rally began and ended in Albuquerque, but as you can gather from looking at a map of the United States, there are only so many states of the 50 you can gather out that way. The second leg ended in Kingsport, which has access to a lot more states, includ- ing all those tiny, close-together ones up New England way. Leg three ended back in Albuquerque. Riders coming into Kingsport
would have between eight and twelve hours to eat, hydrate, shower, get scored, get their bikes prepped for the run to the finish, and sleep. We were there with flu- ids, filters, tires and all of George’s expertise, ready to help whomever rolled up to our workshop on wheels (aka “the trailer”). First to arrive were Good and
Working as a team like this, we were able to turn the GTL around in less than an hour— just enough time for Jon and Ande to go through their tub of supplies I’d brought with me in the back of my van. Beef jerky, protein bars and some fresh clothes went into their bike’s luggage; trash and unbe- lievably smelly clothes went back into the tub. Your clothes and gear would smell bad, too, if you’d been through seven straight
With Hatcher on a Yamaha and R 1200
GSA rider Chris Sakala dropping out before we could change his tires at the checkpoint, we were done with all the BMWs we’d planned on working on. We loaned some tools to Tonie Cowan’s boyfriend so he could swap out the rear wheel on her Yamaha Super Ténéré with one that had a fresh tire on it. Yamaha FJR1300 rider Perry Karsten heard we had tires and stopped by to see if we could swap out his front tire, as his bike wasn’t handling cor- rectly in right turns. After spinning his front wheel a few times and checking out the front tire, I determined that there probably wasn’t anything wrong with his tire, but his front wheel was definitely mangled. It wasn’t just the wheel, though – even the brake disc was warped. Karsten borrowed a replacement wheel from a local FJR rider, but even that didn’t solve his han- dling issues completely. It must have been one hell of a pothole he hit. Once it got dark, we helped out two
George Mangicaro breaks the bead on a tire.
Bergman on their K 1600 GTL. While George changed the engine oil, oil filter and final drive oil, I got started on one of their wheels. George brought a trailer hitch-mounted No Mar tire changer with us, and we’d spent an hour or two in the afternoon practicing using it. My job was to break the bead; George took over from there, as getting a tire off a wheel with an air pressure monitor on it is a surprising delicate operation. Once George got the new tire on, I aired it up and he put it back on the bike.
46 BMW OWNERS NEWS September 2015
days of torrential rain and blazing sun like they had. Next up were Kirsten Talken-Spaulding
and her R 1200 RT. Same routine as the GTL, but we had our rhythm now, and we got her turned around in about 45 minutes. Kirsten had already been scored by the time we worked on her bike—and as a matter of fact, we couldn’t work on her bike until she returned. The rules of the rally are such that no work can be done on a bike without the rider present.
more riders. Will Barclay rolled up on his 2014 Harley-Davidson Ultra Classic and said, “I heard you guys are chang- ing oil.” Indeed we were, and after a questioning glance at each other, George and I rolled that big Harley up into the trailer. Barclay had everything we needed to change the oil except some bits of crucial information. While George crawled around on the ground under the Harley, I used my iPhone to scour the internet for a photo of exactly where the oil drain plug was. Once we
got the oil out, I looked up the torque for the drain plug and how much oil needed
to go back in the engine, and we got Barclay headed off to get some sleep with fresh oil in his bike. The last rider of the night we’d expected
to see sooner, but Erik Lipps had been held up in scoring and then fell asleep. He was a little anxious that we were packing up by the time he arrived, but we brought along a Pilot Road 4 120/70ZR17 for Lipps’ 2012 FJR1300, so we knew he’d come along sooner or later. After getting his fresh tire mounted, balanced and back on the bike,
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