[TW_in_BC]

Out riding the other day (on a close trail) when a stump came out of nowhere and sucker-punched me in the right foot. I was going fairly slow, but it still hurt my toe since I wasn't wearing riding boots (or any kind of boots)!

Anyway, I shook off the pain and carried on...but as I was riding, all the stuff in my Civi-case was making a strange sound...really rattling around badly. When I got back to camp, the reason for this noise became obvious; my rear "fender" was drooping and the plastics were all flared out.

I looked to see what the cause of this was and it appears as though the nut on the LEFT side of the subframe was missing completely, and when I hit the stump, the RIGHT side took all the force and sheared its mount clean off!

Now, I have to strip the bike down to nothing...take it in to the shop and get it re-welded (after disconnecting a bunch of electrical parts).



I guess the moral of the story, is to check ALL your frame nuts and bolts more often than I do. Odd that I would miss these when I'm usually quite anal about my chain, oil, etc...

I'll go the extra step next time and use some BLUE Loc-tite on them so they don't go "missing".

 

[operose]

Good call on checking the bike over frequently.



I went into a bad tank slapper after hitting a bump one day, got home and found that my motormount was completely broken... The motor is part of the "frame" in these bikes so the only thing that got me home was the top tube of the frame. Scary stuff.

 

[TW_in_BC]

Well, I took it into the shop today...stripped it down to (almost) bare, disconnected every connector I could find, bared some metal for the ground and zapped away.

I need some practice with the TIG, but it turned out OK.

Loc-tited all the body screws into place, sprayed on some Primer to protect the bared metal, then brought her back home and re-assembled.



Total time, about 3 hours.



Funny thing...while doing all of this, I left the battery on a trickle charger in the garage. When I put her back together, I barely needed to touch the starter button and she fired up immediately. Might be good practice to put the battery on a charger every now and then.









...all these things I'm learning!