Cycle World Up Front

CYCLE WORLD UP FRONT

Looking Good

My role around the office is somewhere between kindly uncle and hall monitor. Much of my working day is spent saying “Tsk, tsk”, or “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it somehow” and patting people on the back.

So it was a welcome change to be, for once, on the receiving end of sympathy, to hear the fiery Mr. Ulrich say “Naw, you didn’t have a failure. A failure is when you’re in the lead, flat out down the straight and a rod comes through the cases. What you had was a malfunction.”

What I had was a red face.

Earlier in the day Ed ridden the XR750 to lunch. On the way back Steve Kimball said my engine’s exhaust was black as a production racer’s heart. I figured it was time to do some jetting. We work in a tolerant neighborhood, full of restoration and repair shops. The inhabitants are used to the occasional TT bike being tuned, the restored Indians and Excelsiors, the racing Corvettes and Ferraris running around minus bodies. I had no problem blasting back and forth in front of the office trying out different needles.

On my last (as it happened) run I came into the parking lot with all my attention paid to the sound of the engine. There was a crowd so I bent into the turn, cranked on the power . . . and coasted to a stop accompanied by a clanging sound.

The rear sprocket had fallen off.

As John said, a malfunction. The sprocket and the retaining (hah!) nut had eased off the hub and onto the axle, where they flopped as I pushed the bike back to the shop, a distance of maybe 100 feet. No damage, other than to pride. The sprocket went back onto the hub and the nut was doused with red Loc-Tite and banged tight. I now know I need a special wrench and I know where such wrenches are for sale, so I won’t have that malfunction again.

My first reaction was relief. I’d planned on riding the bike home, so if the sprocket hadn’t come adrift in front of the office it would have done so in traffic or out on the highway with potentially worse results.

Then I began thinking. As Mr. KnowIt-All would say, I really should have known.

I really should have looked.

On the bike’s first trial run, in the desert, I rode around wondering why the vibration had increased. Then I looked. The head stay—a custom fabrication of great complexity and expense—had come loose. The bolts had fallen out.

The stay was dangling from the spark plug wires only because I had artfully routed the wires through it.

Again, serious consequence averted by dumb luck.

(I must say here that the bolts had lock washers. Obviously not sufficient. The new bolts have lock washers, LocTite and safety wire. By golly, nothing is going to fall off twice.)

Well, you may be thinking, it’s a Ej****y. Things coming loose come natural to it.

That’s not the full answer. There was the time I was eating lunch in the woods and idly glanced at my XL250’s rear tire. A giant nail had gone in through the tread and out the sidewall. I had sealer in the tube and yanked the nail before it wreaked its havoc.

Or the time I stopped for a drink in the wilds of Mexico and noticed my axle clamp nuts about to fall off. A friend had helped me install a new tire the day before. We each thought the other had given the nuts their final wrenching, but obviously neither of us had. If I hadn’t looked ...

My youngest son and I rode in the woods for six years and never had one mechanical failure. (Crash damage doesn’t count, of course.) On the way home we always stopped at the coin wash and hosed the bikes down, then before supper we lubed and adjusted and checked everything over. I don’t remember any lucky saves.

On the other hand, the worst day we ever had was when we took one of his friends along. The pal had only ridden around the family farm, in his spare time, so the bike was a couple of years old but had never been run more than a few miles at a time, thus it had never been run long enough to need service so it had never been washed, or lubed, or tightened or looked at.

Now. We’re talking Honda XR75, otherwise known as the Baby Anvil. But as soon as we were well off the unbeaten track, so to speak, it came apart. Literally. The pegs, the engine mounts, the tank, the seat, the wheels. We’d be there still except for a 4x4 that happened by. (It happened by because the previous week my son and I had discovered and helped a scout troop stranded by flat tires. But that’s another moral and another story.)

The secondary lesson then was that I got to look at the XR75’s peg mounting system. Poorly done, so I safety-wired ours before it gave trouble.

Old bikes only? No. Last week we returned a flagship, pride of the line.

The factory reps asked if it needed service. Oh, I said, nothing major. You’ll find the fork brace in the saddlebags, though. Kimball happened to notice that the alien-head bolts holding brace to sliders were at different heights. A turn of the fingers showed they were at different heights because they were in the process of walking themselves out.

I was riding home on another new bike and the tach signed off. Hm, I said to myself as I kept on going. Twenty miles later, I discovered the drive cable had come loose from the fitting on the head. While the drive was exposed, some inner tidbit had worked its way out and gone. That was weeks ago and the missing part isn’t here yet. I don’t need the tach, but I wish I had stopped and looked and repaired in time.

This is beginning to sound like a horror story, so here’s a happy note. For months I’ve been pretending not to notice that my XL’s clutch has been getting harder and harder to pull. I didn’t admit it because I was afraid my enthusiasm for the coin wash had caused me to overdouse certain delicate parts, which rust and require lots of work to replace.

But no. I was looking at the engine and noticed the clutch cable. There was a blistered spot where the sheath had touched the exhaust pipe. There was a break in the sheath where it had rubbed against the downtube.

Not good. A call to Terrycable, a payment to UPS, 10 min. of easy manual labor ... a miracle.

I could hardly believe it. Not only was the clutch lever easy to pull, the clutch itself was predictable, lacking in grab and slop at the same time. I was so tickled that I rode around the block for 10 min., shifting, shifting, shifting.

Some time back you could get bumper stickers and shirts bearing the slogan “Have you hugged your motorcycle today?” An admirable sentiment, I thought and still think.

But. In light of the above:

Have you looked at your motorcycle today?

A good, long look?

You might be glad you did.