Sergey's ballet.


At the Ural fest last night, Chris showed Ilya and Sergey the crack in the left cylinder head, and valve cover. They told Chris to bring it by the factory to fix it the next day. Which was, today, and what a story this was.

It's starts at 10:00 this morning, when Chris and Mum checked out of the hotel, which is another story altogether.

They started out on the journey, and were enjoying the ride so much that they sort of ignored the relevent route, and wound up a little off course. Undaunted, our interpid explorers paused for directions at Classic Ironworks in Redmond to ask directions. Despite being a shop dedicated not only to Harleys but custom built ones at that. The folks there were very helpful

With fresh directions, they continued on, only to find themselves back at Classic Ironworks a short period later, having managed to totally forget the directions. New directions were issued, and they continued on their way, eventually to reach the factory as originally planned.

Chris and Mum (who's name, for those that are unaware of it, is actually Sandy.) went into the factory, and were met by Jason, who asked Chris where the head was, Chris, somewhat perplexed, said it was still on the bike, in the parking lot. Jason went to look at the suspect part,

and then wandered off, returning with a new head, and a new valvecover, which also had a crack. They moved the bike into the factory building, and Chris went to work replacing the head.

For the curious, the smoke in the pic above, is not from the bike, but a cigarette.
During the head surgery, Mum, (who took the pictures you see here) was helping Amigo out with some shelving units. Mum likes to keep busy.
After the reassembly of the bike, Chris mentioned that the rear wheel was rubbing a bit, and Sergey, who wandered out to check it, agreed that something was a bit wonky. So ...

During the dismantling of the rear end. Chris asked if Sergey had a jack to lift the rear up, Sergey said "you jack", and so, Chris was. When they reassembled everything, Chris asked about a compressor to reinflate the tyre, Sergey said, "you compressor". Fortunately, Chris has the factory pump. Unfortunately, it disassembled itself in the middle of the job, fortunately, Sergey was there to fix it. Timing is everything.


Now, Sergey is apparantly a bit of a tool afficionado. When Chris was pumping up the tyre, Sergey checked the pressure by whacking it with a hammer and listening to the sound. Chris showed Sergey his nice digital tyre pressure gauge, and Sergey agreed that it was a nice bit of kit, when they connected the gauge to the valve stem, it read the same pressure Sergey had announced after he whacked the tyre with his digital hammer.

Kudos

In today's world of phone tree customer support, outsourced call centers, and generally plastic feeling support, it's very nice to deal with a company that stands behind it's products because it's the right thing to do. IMZ not only provided the head and the valve cover gratis, but the factory mechanic worked on correcting a problem with the swing arm, working late, and while Chris did the work on the head himself, that was his choice. Sergey stayed late to help Chris, and when all was done, Chris and Mum rode back to the marina where our boat is docked, in the company of Al Mayhan, the engineering and warranty manager. Now that's service.
Thanks to the whole crowd at IMZ-Ural.

On a totally unrelated note, our industry spy (that would be Mum) wandered around taking the pics you see here. Including this one, of a really nice retro, at the factory. Thanks Mum, now I have to start saving my pennies. Maybe I could store it on the fordeck?