DRTSB
New member
I did a trip to the East coast in Canada from Ottawa, started the trip in Ottawa June 26th and rode to Bangor Maine, that turned into a 12.5 hour ride mostly in the rain, I had good BRP rainwear and I did not get that wet except for my hands, the others that I was with were riding Harleys, an Ultra and Street Glides, and a Yamaha Stratoliner, they were not so lucky and really got wet, from Bangor we rode to Summerside PEI for Atlanticade, again mostly in the rain, our plan was to spend 2 days in Summerside which is what happened, from there we rode to Sydney, Nova Scotia and spent a wonderful night with some friends who had arranged some local entertainment for us, from Sydney we rode the Cabot trail around Cape Bretain, I got to tell you this is a ride to remember if you get the chance, just ride the trail anti clockwise, this will give you the most spectacular views, after riding the Cabot we stayed in Port Hawkesbury, this is at the end of the Cabot which is about 300 miles long, this is where the trouble happened, I parked the Spyder to check into the hotel, got the room keys, the other guys went to the rooms and I was last, the Spyder would not go into gear, it was making a sort of clunking noise, it would go into reverse and I backed up around the motel where the other guys were waiting, I figured that it got hot because I was riding it pretty hard on the Cabot so we went to have dinner, started the Spyder after and it kind of went into gear, I had to stomp on the Seal floorboard to make it go in, once it was going it shifted OK, the nearest Spyder dealer according to my GPS was in Moncton, New Brunswick which was 300 miles away, we were going to ride there the next day, well the next day came and we were just about to set out, the Spyder would not go into gear at all, no noise, now what do I do, the other guys went to the front desk to check out so I started to go to tell them the bad news, I looked back at the Spyder and saw something hanging below the floorboard, after farther investigation I discovered the the shift linkage had completely come off the splined shaft going into the transmission, it was still attached to the shifter rod. we borrowed a jack from a nearby van and jacked the Spyder up from the trailer hitch, I looked under and managed to get the linkage back on, I tested it while the rear wheel was off the ground, I figured the Spyder shifts into neutral after the parking bark is applied and the engine is turned off, it did not come out of 2nd, so I moved the shifter a little on the splines and tried again, this time it went into neutral, I buttoned everything back up I went for a test ride, shifted great all the way up to 5th, in fact I find now that it seems to shift better, big relief as I thought I would have to spend a couple more days in Port Hawkesbury while BRP figured out how to get this fixed, I continued my trip without any farther incident, one of the Harley developed a noise in the primary chain but it was close to Saint John, New Brunswick and there was a Harley dealer there, their policy is to give traveling riders priority, so the problem was fixed within 2 hours, **** Happens!!
Dave
Dave
