My chain needs some lube - a nice, easy job...

[vin_petrol]

On Sunday I decided I needed to lube my chain. So, full of optimism I set off for my garage.

I stood next to my VFR750, and pulled it backwards to swing it onto the centre stand.

*CRACK*

The piece of metal that sticks out from the centre stand that you stand on broke off the stand. The stand wasn't engaged, so suddenly I was wrestling with a VFR750 that was heading backwards and away from me. It tipped over slightly before I recovered it.

*CRACK*

My offside mirror caught the garage wall. Something nasty had happened to it. I was now stood in a bizarre equilibrium position. The VFR was attempting to fall away from me, and I was balancing it by hanging onto it and leaning backwards. Fortunately, the garage wall was near enough to take the weight, but it would clearly do something extremely terminal to the offside mirror. Hmmm. What to do? Wait for my wife to wonder where I was and come out to find me? Call out and hope some passerby took pity on me? I decided to pull the bike towards me and hope I could flip the side stand down before it fell on me - which I managed.

OK, so the offside mirror support has cracked, and the mirror now flaps around somewhat uselessly. *sigh* OK, well, I seem to have a knack for knackering mirrors. After a few years in my possession my CBR600 had no mirrors at all. I'm not riding my bike much at the moment (just commuting to the station, generally), so I can live without this mirror for a while. I'm no stranger to looking over my shoulder anyway.

However, I now can't, no matter how hard I try, get the bike onto the broken centre stand. With nothing to hold it down with, it becomes curiously difficult. I try holding it down with bits of wood, but that doesn't work. I slacken off the bolt on the rear wheel, but it won't adjust backwards when resting on the floor. It's a single sided swing arm, and I've never adjusted one of these without a centre stand, so I just assume this is normal behaviour.

Hmmmm. What to do now? I don't have a paddock stand, or similar. Hmmm. I come up with the idea of resting the bike against the wall, and then jacking it up with a car jack. I know what you're thinking: it will roll forwards. I thought this to, so I put a brick in front of the front wheel. This actually works, and soon the rear wheel is off the ground.

At which point I discover the reason it won't adjust is because it's already as far back as it will go. This chain is knackered, and needs replacing.

*SIGH*

So, "spray some lube on my chain" has turned into "buy a new offside mirror, chain and sprockets, and see if my centre stand can be repaired or I'll need to buy a new one of those too". Bah!

Comments

[captainblue.livejournal.com]

Bugger! That's a blow - all the maintenance items as well as repairs at the same time. ~:0(

[road-runner.livejournal.com]

750cc motorbikes are heavy when they are trying to fall away from you arn't they? My first ZXR750 did this and I failed to save it. I was stupidly wheeling it into the garage, with my body on the RHS of the bike (ie the other side to the side stand). As I leant the bike over the side stand folded up! Argh! I wrestled with it for a while, but it was going down, nothing I could do about it. Fortunately I had a few big old bin bags of soft rubbish in there that I managed to lower it onto fairly gently, so there was no hard done except for some slight scratching of the mirror.

Grant did a very similar thing to this with his YZF750, but he ended up dropping his on his toolbox. Ouch! Left a nasty big hole in his fairing.

[vin_petrol]

750cc motorbikes are heavy when they are trying to fall away from you arn't they?

Very! Especially VFRs, with their 'V' engines, which make them just a little bit more top heavy. I found there was a quantifiable difference in weight between all my previous bikes (400, 550, 600) and the 750, in that it was just a bit too heavy for me to actually manage on my own. I've had to pick it up from the floor twice now, and required help both times. I'm not quite sure if I could pick it up from the ground without help (or "doing myself a mischief").

I'm glad I'm not the only person to have done this!

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

You are the steer of the motorcycle maintenance world ;)

[vin_petrol]

You are the steer of the motorcycle maintenance world ;)

This is 100% correct. I long ago gave up on trying to do any real maintenance work on my bike. I'll loosen and tighten things, and spray stuff on it, with only the occasional disaster like the above. Anything that requires reference to a Haynes manual is too much for me. It always goes horribly wrong at step one. It'll say in the manual "remove nut A", but "nut A" is rusted in place, and I round it off attempting to remove it, and end up cursing and swearing and throwing spanners around. It's far safer in my universe to pay Stuart Rafferty (01904 423339) to do things to my bike.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

...on the bright side, Boro won. ;)

[vin_petrol]

...on the bright side, Boro won. ;)

They did indeed. I got to see Boro score a goal in the league. It seemed ages since I last saw this, so I've just looked at the Boro web site. The last time Boro scored a goal at home in the league was 1st November!

And on the bright side for you, ManU won and Arsenal and Chelsea dropped points...

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

It was a bloody cracking night for Utd. :)

We still haven't stepped into top gear yet, we are winning but not playing amazingly well. Yet we not have 49 pts after 20 games. The main factor is only the single draw. Far better to win and lose than to draw, yet we have only lost 3.

Apparently this is better than last year at this stage and also better than the Treble winning year. 7 straight wins now. And we have some very young players being introduced.

I think the main plus point is that Tim Howard has been in outstanding form and an absolutely inspired purchase. He is possibly the best keeper in the Premiership this year.

[resyk.livejournal.com]

I have dropped the odd bike too. Both times it was a complete surprise and neither time did I do any damage, somehow.

Bike drops tend to be slow don't they, you get plenty of time for a futile attempt at saving the situation. It's all horribly slow motion.

When I had my ickle unfaired vfr400, i took it to work in Leeds one day. The road up to the office was very steep and cobbled. Coming home, I pulled up as I came to the main road, went to put my feet down.. nothing. Neither foot could reach the road surface, front wheel was on the main road, back wheel on the cobbled hill. It was surreal. I balanced in the air for an age, before the bike decided to go over to the left. At some point the angle was such that my left boot smashed down onto a surface, but it was too far gone. I did hold it for a good few seconds - all of the bikes weight on my one left knee. But eventually I had to let it go.

Amazingly, almost no damage to it. I virtually layed it down really - it being a small bike. Still felt like a complete arse though.

The second time I was out for a ride, and we ended up at the Stone Trough just off the A64. I was on a GPX600 at the time. The car park is virtually a one in three gradient of loose white pebbles. I slipped and skidded my way up the carpark to what appeared a suitable place to park it. Lent over to drop it onto the side stand, but the side stand just kept going. It sank and sank into the pebbles for a good few inches, and sure enough I was going over again.

I think I more or less saved it, hardly touched the ground really - but it all happened very slowly. Once the petrol starts to slosh over the bike gets heavy very quickly and I had a full tank.

Such fun.

[vin_petrol]

Bike drops tend to be slow don't they, you get plenty of time for a futile attempt at saving the situation. It's all horribly slow motion.

I remember another one now. I went to the TT Races in 1991 on my then shiny CBR 600. The morning I was due to leave I decided to give the fairing a quick polish. I was sitting on it, I kicked the side stand down and started to get off. ONLY THE STAND WASN'T DOWN PROPERLY! The bike started to topple to the left, and everything went slow motion. I decided I couldn't save it, so I had a great idea: put my left leg under the toppling bike to save the fairing. As the weight on my leg increased, warning messages were sent to my brain like "you could break your leg doing this: that's not very clever!" I seemed to have to make a decision between cracked leg bones or cracked fairing. I made a Herculean effort and slowed the descent down, got my leg out and laid the bike gently on its side. I did (very slightly) scuff the fairing. Phew!

[ytaya.livejournal.com]

Saw this in UK Bikers, thought I'd come share my tale of woe.

I'm nine stone nothing, so trying to get a 600 Bandit onto the centre stand was challenging, but nothing compared to trying to control it when rolling it off the stand. No matter what I did, it would always fall away from me, leaving me trying to lean backwards and tug it back my way.

More than once, I was, erm, rather too successful in swinging the bike back towards me. The most notable occasion, the bike leaned so far my way it tipped me over, too. Thankfully, the garage wall broke my fall, and I saved the bike from any damage (the important bit, right?), but this did still leave me at 45 degrees, trapped between the bike and the wall... Typically, there was nobody home. In a Herculean effort, I managed to get out from under and right the bike without further damage to it, but I did strain my back in the process :P

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

slightly off topic, but there seem to be a fair few leeds/west yorks bikers here, maybe we should all arrange some sort of ride out together some time...

[vin_petrol]

maybe we should all arrange some sort of ride out together some time...

Definitely! In the Spring... :-)