Unnatural Touring or Riding Fears

[Spurber]

One of my 2 oil drainage plugs shooting out and rolling into the bushes or blowing the head gasket big time (read: small nuclear explosion) along with the subsequent loss of rear wheel traction due to all the oil is among one of my unnatuaral sport-touring fears.

It really only crosses my mind when I am in the middle of nowhere but then again with sport touring that's the whole point! :p

[SilverBird]

Actually I have real trouble with unreliable bikes for that very reason. Also that's why you'd have trouble faulting me with the maintenance intervals as well.

Still as everyone is entitled to his screw up I lost my saddlebags at untold speeds.

Hugo

[Max Smiley]

I hope we all try to insure our bikes are prepped and ready to roll before embarking on any trip.

my fears, maybe not quite unusual but no make difference:

crashing. this I can control against to a certain degree.
being made to crash. see above.
hitting something at speed. again, ibid.

theft along the way. very paranoid about this maybe more so than most?

forgetting something key or losing it along the way. heck I just had a disc lock go bouncing off into never never land just last week. usually carry two locks.

meeting the wrong person along the way and ending up face down dead in some hick town or wooded area.

(if you think this is just being paranoid have you noticed some of the new warning signs being posted in the rest stop bathrooms against "unlawful acts" and theft? what is this world coming to when you can't even take a piss w/o some freak in the booth next jacking off peeping through a crack at your weiner?)


otherwise good to go. :)

[rocketbunny]

hehe. this one's true.

I organized a group highway one ride to lunch at big sur for the Cal Poly SLO mc club. Just before Cambria, my CB350 holed a piston! I was sweeping, so it took 45 minutes before someone came looking for me. Once I had notified them that I was ok, I limped back to SLO on one cylinder while everyone else went on ahead.

Another, out on Highway 25 after a major accident involving a member of the group, we were leaving our regroup point. I was last cause it took me a sec longer to put my gloves and helmet back on. I couldn't start my bike, dead battery. And let me tell you, the Silverwing is heavy enough that I can't move it unless under power, so bump starting was not an option. About 5 min later, a sole rider drove by, saw I was having problems, and bumpstarted me just in time for the rest of my group to arrive since they had missed me.

[NoGall]

Mine has always involved with losing the oil filler cap (not drain plug) while riding. Ever since reading Yoda's account, I have some how acquired that unnatural fear. Can't explain it.

OH, and not to forget the "pulling away with the sidestand down." It is somewhat unreasonalbe considering the Viffer wouldn't start with it extended while in gear...

So, to those who ride behind me from time to time... Now you know why I occasionally look down the sides of my bike while riding:toothless

[SilverBird]

Originally posted by NoGall

OH, and not to forget the "pulling away with the sidestand down." It is somewhat unreasonalbe considering the Viffer wouldn't start with it extended while in gear...

So, to those who ride behind me from time to time... Now you know why I occasionally look down the sides of my bike while riding:toothless

Life's irony...

In the 70s, a former colleague got thrown of the bike onto the side of a truck because of the sidestand (no safety at the time). 3 months in a hospital and he was - almost - as good as new. He later quit riding because he had more serious crashes than Frong has had minor drops.

He died a couple of years ago as he fell when he was trying to get out of a train doing 5mph (he had fallen asleep and let his stop go by, when he woke up, the train was just leaving).

Who said riding was dangerous? Still, sad because he was a good guy but that puts a few thing in perspective.

Hugo

[MrCrash]

Safety wiring (or at least a dab of silicone over all critical fluid retaining bolts) is fantastic for peace of mind.

Yeah, I'm a paranoid freak myself about that sort of shit. But when you have actually had some of those freakish events happen to you, I think it's almost understandable.

[deaconblues]

Occasionally I have visions of the chain snapping, causing the bike to highside me into the trees or over a 40' cliff.

Don't know why. I'm pretty good at cleaning and lubing the chain, checking brake wear, tire wear, oil level etc... I'm not a stickler for keeping the fairings on however (go naked!)

[Spurber]

bad idea.

... you guys are freaking me out.

[Bronto]

Dumping it on a rarely traveled road. Some place that take good part of a day before somebody comes along. Gets boring waiting that long :D
Mechnically cause riding salvaged bikes. They need a track record of reliability. Then they can do no wrong :D
General phobia about flat tires. Can fix them on the road so it's not that. It's there isn't much warning tire is going flat. Just a general squishy feel. The thought of turning at speed on flat tubless tires. Allways looking at the tires.

[FASTCONK]

Read my post "Ride Report Xmas 2002", taking a 1300+ mile ride with faulty charging system. Oh, by the way my Avatar was my Sport Touring mount for three years or 60K miles which ever came first. And those miles were done by an old man riding only on wednesday nights (will explain in future post) and saturdays. big mileage day was 1080, on my Avatar, with 580 on two lane roads like Hwy 36, 299 and 96.

My Avatar has now been put out to track for retirement. Still good enough for 130+ over turn 1 at Laguna.

[KiLeR650]

Someone already said it, but I worry about my tires going flat and not noticing untill I lean over into a corner at a 'spirited' pace. I usualy make at least one extra unnessary stop on any given trip to double check.

[Leonard]

Geez, I try not to worry so much, now you guys have got me rememering.

Quite a few years back I was riding near the Grand Canyon by myself and I stopped to take a picture and then continued down the road and leaned in to the first left turn and hit the side stand down and I had to lift up and brake as I veered towards the guardrail, but luckily I got it slowed down enough and got the stand up.

It does pay to have a bike in good repair. One time my stator went out and I had to limp home with barely any charge and another time the starter clutch went out and I could hardly start the bike and other things happened like on my old BMW that droped a valve seat and broke the alternator shaft and fried the ignition circuit board and other stuff.

But then what about the time my buddies poured a puddle of oil under my parked bike just to freak me out?

[morthrane]

Originally posted by kiltwearinfool
Has this happened to you before? It's happened to me. It does not automatically mean a low side - the bike will just be really hard to turn, and the tire will feel square. You'll notice it over the course of a few turns, getting progressively worse. (this is actually how I met Budman years ago...)


I've had two flat front tires. The first was a very slow leak that got noticeably worse over a span of a half hour or so. The other front flat I got no warning on (long straight) until I came to the right hander ahead.

Bikes do not turn with fully flat front tires unless you wheelie out of a corner :laughing No matter how much countersteer effort is put into the bars, it doesn't feel like the damned bike will turn. Scared that any more effort would result in a crash and still no turn, I chose to run off straight into a field... thankfully I could see down the road that there was no oncoming traffic.

Could I have made that turn, flat tire and all? I don't know. By the time I realized the tire was flat, say, half a second late into the corner entry; on normal tires, it would've been unsettling. With a flat front...


By comparison flat rear tires aren't nearly as scary. Most of the time for me it just felt as though the rear end was squirmy, like it was tracking through hot greasy tar. (Seven of those, woohoo)

[morthrane]

Speaking of riding fears, here's one that was mentioned to me and makes me wonder:

Friend has an R6, and I have and R1. Both have a lot of miles on them, with that accursed second gear stripping problem.

So with the second gear engagement dogs (I believe that's the part of the transmission responsible) slipping on hard acceleration in 2nd gear... is it possible that the tranmissions can eventually catastrophically fail and lock up? Now after he mentioned this, my first reaction was to think that it would be unlikely that a single gear in the transmission could grind away and cause both shafts to lockup. My second reaction was that I know about as much about tranmissions as I do jetting carbs (hey, its true. zero equals zero! ;))

What do you guys think?

[FASTCONK]

Most definitely!! The gear/dog splits and jams the output shaft locking up the whole dam thing. Not saying it will, but reasonably certain it will as it happened on my racing 600 suzuki, in line 4, bent the shafts and cracked the case locking up between 8 and 8a at Sears (very lucky lot's of hill to climb back then).

Bike was a GS 550 with a Crowther (Engine Dynamics, Inc.) built 620 kit, ported, pipe and cams for a pretty strong motor. The first transmission just blew and lost drive, the second took the output shaft and case. So, not necessarily but definitely possible.

I have an R6, see Avatar, with 60K miles and 18 track days. No problem but the R1 is a different beast..

[morthrane]

In the case of the friend, its a beat up R6 with some 50k miles on it. And whle they're different, both bikes pre-02/03 seem quite suceptible to the same 2nd gear stripping.

[Ezekiel]

Originally posted by morthrane
slipping on hard acceleration in 2nd gear... is it possible that the tranmissions can eventually catastrophically fail and lock up?

No idea if it's possible or not, but I can tell you my last R1 had the same problem and it didn't blow up on me, instead it got progressively worse, finally it wasn't hard acceleration, but ANY acceleration that would cause it to slip. Got too annoying to ignore and I had it fixed. It's a DAMN EXPENSIVE fix, you might want to think about just buying a new or used motor instead.


As for the fears...I've had a chain snap on me at speed, but I don't worry about it. Same with oil suddenly dumping all over my rear tire (pushrod for clutch broke), don't worry about that either though. I DO worry about crashing and more so being made to crash, mostly thoughts of deer jumping in front of me or someone coming into my lane...I'd say those are my two biggest worries if my thoughts drift that way while riding.

[Spurber]

Originally posted by Ezekiel
As for the fears...I've had a chain snap on me at speed, but I don't worry about it.

How did that go down? Was there any bike damage? Were you working through the gears or just cruising. C'mon spill the deets!

[deaconblues]

If the R1/R6 second gear problem is similar to the problems with earlier Yamahas (say, 1976-81 vintage) then it's possible that the circlips holding the gears onto the spline have gone south... at that point there's not enough tension on the gears to hold the dogs together. If it goes on too long, the dogs can get worn, and then you have to do two things: fix the circlip problem, and have new dogs tig-welded onto the gears and machined back to spec! At that point it's usually easier (and cheaper) to just have a new motor/tranny put in.... with the older bikes, that sometimes poses a problem, because it ain't easy finding a three-cylinder Yamaha engine these days.

Again, i'm not sure if it's applicable to newer Yamaha transmissions... but at first glance it sounds like it.

http://www.yamaha-triples.org

[Inkman]

Easy one for me. Hitting any animals. After a low speed collision with a dog (my buds are sick of hearing about it still) and seeing what happened to another rider during a trip thru Oregon last year, when i waved some sport bike riders past me, only to come upon them a short while later after the lead rider speared a prego bambi at what they said was probably 70 to 80 mph. I now have an innate fear of any animals i see on or near the road. Squirrels run out and i get that drooping sensation in my gut. Not fun and it has made an impression on the way i ride now in forested areas as opposed to the way i used to. (Maybe not alot, but the thought is always there with me).
Just this past sunday on Marshall-Petaluma road coming over a crest, two big turkeys trotting down the center of the road. Later on i think it was Chileno rd, 3 vultures are dining on the side of the road and decide to scatter when we surprise em.
Then there are all the deer everywhere.................

Al

[Ezekiel]

Originally posted by Spurber
How did that go down? Was there any bike damage? Were you working through the gears or just cruising. C'mon spill the deets!

Mines road, headed south just beyond the Junction, under acceleration on a straight. I'm VERY thankful it happened on a straight. Felt it go, immediately pulled to the side to survery the damage. On first look at my bike I thought I had blown the motor because oil was gushing out. The chain whipped up and took off my rear-left turn signal and then went back down and cracked a nice hole in my engine case and water pump. End of the riding day obviously, and end of that bike for me seeing as I didn't want to go through the hassle of a new motor or engine casings, but at least I didn't go down.

Side story, when it happened I pushed the bike well off the road, maybe 10 feet back from the road and parked it while waiting for someone to get a truck for me. I return to my obviously broken bike, which is well off the road and sitting with a fat puddle of oil underneath it, in about 2 hours to be greeted to the sight of a fix-it ticket for a colored windscreen! The cop out there must have been BORED. My day was already going bad, but I thank him for doing what he could to make it just a little bit worse for me! :teeth