So Colton who is now a 22 year old senior in the A&M Corps of Cadets had an interesting summer. The airport here in town he has worked at for years is getting the runway repaved. No planes in or out means no need for a helper doing maintenance. He stayed in College Station and did meal delivery during the shut downs. Which let him find a years broken and sitting 1977 Goldwing GL1000. He redid it and loves it. So did his girlfriend who is now his fiancé. He actually used the Honda as part of his proposal.
Anyway, it seems I did something right raising him. Because he is looking for a parts bike to keep his running. He thought he found two a few weeks ago 230 miles away. He took the Cowdog with a trailer to go look at them. It was a drive for nothing since the bikes were just rusted away junk. He wisely drove away empty.
The next day I was driving the Cowdog and while driving in a construction zone heard a thunk. Seeing something black bouncing in the mirror I didn’t think about it any. Until I went to pass a slow car and noticed I had no boost on the gauge. How did he break my mechanical boost gauge?
Once home I traced the boost hose and found a slight kink. I replaced it with oil psi hose and still no boost reading. Plus, no EGT now. I had a very difficult time during the build getting my oil temp, EGT and boost psi gauges and their wiring into the A pillar mount I got from 73-87.com. I figured the EGT gauge fault was caused by me while messing with the boost gauge. I let everything alone until the weekend.
I started by pulling the Banks intake plenum to verify there were no obstructions to the psi attachment. It looked good. But there was an open 1” NPT hole in the back of the plenum! I didn’t remember the hole, much less putting a plug there. But the Banks parts list has a 1” NPT plug listed. It isn’t shown or mentioned in the installation manual though. That must have been the black thing in the mirror the other day. A quick trip to the hardware store had another in the plenum with teflon paste and tightened down hard with a wrench. Because I don’t have a memory of ever installing or tightening the original one.
I put everything back together and went for a test drive. WOW! That plug must have been leaking boost the last 13,000 miles and 3-1/2 years. Sure, I had boost before. I also had annoyingly high EGT reading to go with it. Basically, the truck ran great but never as good as my expectations while building it. Now it was a totally different dynamic. Performance was markedly improved in every way. But, since I didn’t have a working EGT gauge. I didn’t really get on it or push the boost up.
I did shock myself in the rain pulling into traffic across a road though. With traffic coming in both directions I got into the throttle pretty hard. Once sure I wasn’t going to be a wreck, I was watching the mirror for any block smoke. Which used to happen when in it hard from a stop. No smoke. I looked forward just in time to see the tach at 3400 rpm just when the transmission slammed into 2nd gear and the rear end jumped! That never happened before. Neither that high an rpm for the throttle I gave or the tires breaking loose.
To fix the EGT gauge meant pulling the A pillar mount off. I decided to get rid of it and move the three gauges to my center stack. That was done the next weekend. Thankfully, the EGT problem was a wire pulled from the plug at the gauge. It pushed right back in. Time for some real driving now!
Flat ground cruising wasn’t much changed. taking it up to 80 mph in a 75 zone still only had 2 psi of boost. But getting there sure was faster. Then with the cruise set. EGT settled down to 650°. I didn’t have that low an EGT at 70 before. Yesterday Jennifer and I went to the store together. Driving home we got behind a fool going 40 in a 65 talking on their phone. When I passed I just pushed down and we went. When Jennifer who could now see the gauges and spent the trip listening to me talk about what they should read announced 10 psi of boost I was amazed since I had never gotten over 8 psi momentarily before. Then she announced 11 psi and I was just smiling like a looney. Steady throttle, steady double digit boost, 80 plus mph and EGT never over 950°. Much, much improved. I am going to try driving a tank full without hot rodding to see if mpg’s are going to increase as well. It will be tough not using my new found power though.
So, out of the hundreds of fasteners I installed on that truck, all the detail things I did correctly and all the tolerances I measured to make everything just so. I didn’t get the full potential because of a simple pipe plug that I must have saved until later and never got back to.
Now to dig out my eBay bought MT480 timing unit to see if there is more hidden performance waiting for me.