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Parts Fall Off Speed Wobbles
Rear Tire Blowout (Yikes!!) #2.
Parts fall off. #3.
Speed wobbles at highway speed. After logging only 155 km on my new bike, I was filled with terror when the rear end of my bike started weaving wildly. I was doing about 80 km/h, (or 50 mph), on a straight stretch of country road. At first, I thought it was merely a front fender-induced "wobble" but after about 2 seconds, I realized I wasn't going fast enough so something else was causing it. The shoulder was nice and wide so I instinctively pulled in the clutch and pulled off into the gravel. My best friend/brother, (it can happen!), was behind me on his vintage '76 Yammy RD200 twin and saw the whole thing. He saw the rear tire drop within 3 seconds and then start weaving. The whole deal was rather uneventful but it shook me up nonetheless. My bro' made a funny remark about his trusty Yammy, patted his gas tank and then "pinged" away on a rescue mission while I sat on the side of the road reflecting on what had just happened. I had been riding bikes since 1979, including a winter trip across Canada on a CB900F SuperSport, but had never experienced a blowout before. It was scary. I then thought "what if this had happened when I was on that 6-lane highway mere hours earlier?". Yikes! I began to question the whole idea of getting back into motorcycles. Was I merely spending thousands of dollars just for another opportunity to kill myself?!!! Was this a sign or a warning? I took it as a sign to be VERY careful and always leave myself an escape route. To this day, I always spend the majority of time in the right lane with an escape plan. I keep an eye on my rearview mirror too. Wiping out around town is one thing but laying it down on a multiple-lane highway with traffic behind you is a recipe for disaster. It struck me that life is very fragile when you trust your life to a thin skin of rubber pumped up with air. I questioned the progress of man when such a primitive method was still used for motorcycles. Man... why don't they use wheels filled with foam or something?!!! My brother returned sometime later with my rescue vehicle... a pickup truck that he had borrowed from a friend. The local cycle shop was just about ready to close but he had managed to convince them to hang on just a few more minutes to fix my wounded KLR. We tried to push the bike to the truck but soon realized that 350-pound bikes simply don't roll with a flat tire. We repositioned the truck closer to the bike and were able to manhandle it onto the back. We didn't have any tie-downs so I sat in the back and held onto the bike while it was on the side-stand. About 15 minutes later, the bike was back in business. I had caught a fairly large flat-headed nail in the tire in such a manner that it went through the thin part of the tire, between the treads. The mechanic said that this was very unusual and would probably never happen to me again... a fluke. I thanked the mechanic profusely for staying late and helping me out of a bind. I offered to buy him a 6-pack but he declined. The damage came to $50 plus tax to instal a new tube. The ironic part about the whole thing was that my brother had been having problems with his electrical system on the Yammy and had warned me ahead of time that HE might not be able to ride for too long due to this. After the Kawi tire was repaired, we returned the truck to his friend and then headed back to my brother's place. When we were about 2 miles away from his house, the Yammy started losing power and limped home on one cylinder... |
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