I'm always happy to have reasonable, brief communication with past, current and prospective future customers (customer is defined as someone who is interested in spending money here). If you are in this category, the best way to contact me is via email at: randakk@hotmail.com.

Otherwise, advice seekers should please read the following...

Most questions I receive have been answered many times in the past by me or others.

Here's the best way to get good free advice regarding your classic motorcycle:

Search the Archives in one or all of these great vintage motorcycle Forums focused on early GoldWings like the GL1000, GL1100 and GL1200. You will probably find many posts directly addressing your concern. If not, you are free to post a new question to these Forums. Lots of very smart, experienced people are happy to share their collective wisdom for free!

These forums are great places to pose technical questions to a large group of enthusiastic and knowledgeable owners. Most problems are not unique and have been solved before. Give these forums a try.

Forums:

Naked GoldWings Forum: http://www.nakedgoldwings.com/forum/?&MMN_position=88:88 My favorite GoldWing site. Full disclosure: I'm a sponsor. So what...it's a terrific site!

 

Back Yard Built Goldwing's Bar & Grille: http://groups.msn.com/BackYardBuiltGoldwingsBarGrille

A great forum for those inclined to depart from stock engineering!

Classic GoldWings Forum: http://forum.classicgoldwings.com/index.php

Honda Goldwing GL1100 Specific Discussion Forum

Classic Wings Forum: http://classicwings.org/

Ed Swearingen's SOHC-4 Honda Tech Forums: http://www.salocal.com/saforum/index.php?action=forum

Goldwingworld.com: http://goldwingworld.com/forum/index.php

GWRRA Classic Wing Special Interest Group (SIG): http://communities.msn.com/ClassicWingSIG

GWRRA Message Board: Classic Wings SIG: http://bbs.gwrra.org/board/messages/46/46.html?1146749156

Honda GL-1000 Message Board: http://www.gl1000.info/

at Bill Shryock's GL1000 information page.

OldWing Forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/oldwing/start

Steve Saunders GoldWing Forums: http://www.goldwingfacts.com/forums/category1/

Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club Forum: http://www.gamehound.net/~vjmc/forum/index.php

GL1200 Gold Wings http://www.gl1200goldwings.com/

Excellent GL1200 GoldWing forum...run by my friend Vic Belanger.

If you still feel you would like my personal assistance, please understand that I have moved to a "fee" model to accommodate individual advice seekers (who are not customers).

Please Note - I get an overwhelming and constant flow of requests for "free" advice. It is very difficult to diagnose and fix antique motorcycles without a physical examination, but I have tried to be helpful as possible as I think it's important to keep these landmark bikes on the road. My experience in offering free advice for the last several years via this web site has been a "mixed" experience. With a few exceptions, most requests for help do not contain sufficient detail for me to provide meaningful advice. Often, the recipients of my advice aren't completely capable of implementing my suggestions. This leads to a very inefficient iterative process of question, answer, additional question, clarification, etc., etc. Worse, the flow of requests has become unmanageably large.

In general, I believe the internet should be a place for the free exchange of information. Hence, I have a fairly significant "Tech Tips" section on this web site. This may not be enough to help those who need individual advice. Sadly, many dealer service departments will not work on motorcycles older than 10 years old or so.

If you have a problem regarding a GL1000 that you (and your local mechanic) can't solve after careful review of available workshop manuals, "free" information readily available on the Internet (such as message boards) and information documented elsewhere on this and other web sites, then I'm willing to help "non-customers" on the following basis only:

My fee is $35 per individual GL1000 technical question.

Here's the process I use for this service. Deposit $35 into my PAYPAL account (randakk@hotmail.com). In the comment field, specify - Technical Support Assistance Request. Once I receive notice of your payment, I will email to you a special "technical support" email address along with a password, a questionnaire and instructions on how to document your question to me (don't send your question via PAYPAL's "special instructions" text box!). Also, the coded password applies to a single paid question, so don't attempt to "share" with others or re-use later.

Once I review your question, I will provide:

• A detailed response based upon my best personal knowledge.
• If the answer to your question is not certain, I will provide an "educated guess." I will provide a list of systems or items to check in the most logical sequence...just as if I were diagnosing your bike if it were physically in my shop.
• If the answer requires research, I'll invest up to 1/2 hour researching your question, then let you know my findings. It's possible that 1/2 hour of effort will yield no meaningful answer, but 1/2 hour of my concentrated effort might be valuable to you nonetheless.
• My advice is not a "silver bullet." It's merely an expert opinion based upon incomplete data provided by you. It's quite possible that I could be dead wrong or you might provide incomplete, misleading or an erroneous description of your question or problem which might cause me to give bad advice. There is no guarantee whatsoever associated with this service. Implement my advice at your own risk.

In case I initially decide that I can't provide a meaningful answer, I will promptly refund your $35 payment via your PAYPAL account less whatever small fee PAYPal nicks me for handling your payment. To be clear, if you pay me $35, I would refund whatever "net" payment I received from PAYPAL. If I do 1/2 hour of research which yields no meaningful answer, I will provide no refund.

My SLA for providing an answer is within 72 hours from receipt of your question. Please bear in mind that I travel on most weekends. I will respond as soon as I am able.

Thank goodness I don't get hordes of people taking me up on this service, but it beats the alternative of not offering any help at all to those who can't get good local assistance.

With regret, I will no longer answer requests for free advice sent to my main email address: randakk@hotmail.com. The only way for non-customers to get my expert advice is via the unpublished "Technical Support" email address. I provide this special email address ONLY to those who make the $35 payment to my PAYPAL account per above.

^top^

For more information on the use of material from this website, click here.