You Won't Believe This, EV Key Issue.

[Tom H]

It was one of those days.

Leave work on my EV Touring with it's large HB bags and stop at the grocery store. Grabbed a few things and frozen food. Even some fresh cooked hot chicken. I'm ready for dinner!

On the way home I remembered I needed to stop at a 7-11 mini mart.

I pull into the parking space, reach for my key to turn it off and pocket the key. FUMBLE!!!!! I drop the key, no big deal right. It's on the ground. So I'm looking for the key with a fairly large Guzzi key fob, Can't find it.

I decided to grab my trusty crusty HF LED blue cigarette pack size light from my trunk. No workie! A car next to me actually offered their cell phone with the flash lit. I declined and went for my mini Streamlight in the pocket of my trusty crusty lunch cooler. After a bit of digging I find it.

Now I'm looking at where it should have fallen to the ground again with a light. Where the heck did it go, it's got to be here under the bike. Wrong.

Now my mind flashes back. The key went under the handle bar risers. Aw crud, did it really go there...... Yes it did.

It bounced over the chrome side panels and under the tank. Took a while to find it. Ever try looking between the risers, bars and the tank to see down in there??? It's a one eye looking just the right way thing. The key was sitting just about on the front rubber tank mount. How the heck am I gonna reach in there. I'm trying to get my fingers in from all directions. No go.

Well maybe I can pull the chrome cover off and reach the key. Back to the HB trunk and see if I have an allen wrench of the right size in the pouch, no luck. BUT WAIT, maybe the Guzzi tool kit has one (yes my bike did come with the tool kit when I bought it used), then I remember I stuck a dirt cheap set of allens in the tool kit. Cool!!! Let's just pop off the seat.........

Crud, it takes the key to do that.... AAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHH

So I find a way to pop the seat without wrecking anything, if I couldn't have pulled the seat it was about a 2 mile hike home to get the spare key and then 2 miles back. Find the correct size wrench, pop the chrome cover. Yes!!!! I can just touch the key, don't push it back any more or your pulling back the tank in the parking lot. Find the right combination of fingers and out the key comes!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!

I put the bike all back together and get the things I stopped for in the first place, namely some cold beer. I was ready for one in the parking lot . But I waited until I got home 

When I made it home, before I put the chrome cover on I made sure that I didn't knock anything loose. Found my spot lights didn't work. Musta knocked a connector loose. All fine. Out with the DMM and check for power. That was good. Must be the ground, yep. Spend some quality time with just a work light in the yard tracking the issue to the ground that I used under the LH side cover. Once found, it was a quick fix!!

I could have just pulled the bike into the garage where there is plenty of light. BUT.....my Ambo is in there all torn apart to pull the trans. I had planned on doing that tonight. Oh well, such is life.

Just one of those days.
Tom

[Chuck in Indiana]

  I did that with the Centauro one day. Not quite *that* bad an experience though.

[Ncdan]

I thought I was the only one could experience an issue so weird. A couple months ago while
On a motorcycle trip we stopped to fuel up and take a break. When taking off my helmet I got my earphone tangled up and pulled off the rubber ear bud cup. Without moving I started searching around the bike. Couldn’t find it and 4 other guys joined in. We searched the ground, the bike and my cloths finding nothing. I wrote it off as “ if it can happen it will happen “ now here’s the mind blower. 150 miles later and arriving at our destination I parked the Calvin and took my things to my room. A few minutes later one of the guys approached me and hand d me the ear bud rubber cover. He was parked beside me and said he just so happened to look at the rear wheel of my bike and there it laid near the rear wheel and no he didn’t hide it from me prior as a joke as I don’t have those kind of friends to do something that inappropriate. It simply must have fallen somewhere in the frame are and when in out the bike on the center Stan fell out. Freak incident!

[Sasquatch Jim]

 A dropped key will alway gravitate to the most inaccessible place.
 If I drop a key in my garage, I go to the most inaccessible place with a flashlight.  Behold, there it is!
I've done this a lot.  I have noticed that when you drop it , even though you are looking at it as it falls,
before your eyes it will vanish as if it evaporated.  This is your clue to look in the most inaccessible place first.
 But no matter, it will always be in the last place you look.  Unless it truly did evaporate.

[ejs]

 
The key will always be in the last place you look.  Unless you keep looking for it after you found it.
 

[guzzimatic]

It's a Guzzi,leave the key in it. Nobody steals an old Guzzi...

[Howard R]

It's a Guzzi,leave the key in it. Nobody steals an old Guzzi...

But sometimes the key wanders off on its own.

Some years back, I pulled into the Ohio rally (at Whispering Hills campground) only to find that I couldn't turn off the engine, because the key wasn't there.  Looking closer, neither was the ignition switch, just an empty hole in the top triple clamp.  It was there at the last gas stop, I swear!  Hit the kill switch, put bike on side stand, dismount, remove helmet, and start poking around under the fairing.  Found the switch & key, whew!  There are two mounting ears on the switch, both screws had worked loose over time.  The way the switch had fallen one of the screws was still trapped in the ear, so I put the switch back where it belonged and rode over to Joe Eish's the next day to get another screw.  Many years later I had the fairing off and found the other, original screw resting comfortably in a corner of the front subframe.  I still have the spare screw somewhere in my shop.

Howard

[JACoH]

I was sure that this story was going to end with you forgetting the frozen food in the bags, or the cooked chicken thawed it out or something like that, and you discovered it in the middle of the night.

[Tom H]

That would have made it more interesting, but no. I was hungry when I made it home. Grabbed the food, had a few pieces of chicken and put the frozen away. Then I worked on the bike.

The store was using a new bag, it did leave the trunk kinda steamy. Their old bag was fine in the trunk. Oh well.

Tom

[pete mcgee]

You're  not related to the roomba poop guy are you?

[Tom]