A thread on roadside repairs could be good this time of year. Trot out your best roadside heroics. What worked or didn't. One of the best I've heard was a guy in an IronButt rally that burned out his clutch in a mudhole, pulled the clutch and shimmed it with the bottoms of coffee cans, made it to the next checkpoint, and came in second on a 15,000mi rally. Cool.

bpatton wrote:A thread on roadside repairs could be good this time of year. Trot out your best roadside heroics. What worked or didn't. One of the best I've heard was a guy in an IronButt rally that burned out his clutch in a mudhole, pulled the clutch and shimmed it with the bottoms of coffee cans, made it to the next checkpoint, and came in second on a 15,000mi rally. Cool.

Wow, haven't thought of that story in a long time...I know that rider and the mechanic that talked him though it over the phone.

Cut out a chunk of barbed wire fence to hold exhaust on my triumph

cut strips of wet weather bag to wrap around the cracked and split rubber intake boots on my Honda cb750

weed whacker string to work the throttle on my ironhead sporty

Andy Molnar - owner and maker of current Molnar Manx race bikes in England, was at an NCNOC rally in '82 or '83. On the Saturday ride he bent a pushrod on his Domi 88 in the high Sierra (Ebbitts Pass). Pulled the head with this tool kit and straighten the pushrod with a rock. Then rode back to the rally site.

Here's Andy's quarters back then.

I had the wires on my commando alternator break & the battery went flat & left me stranded.
My wife used one of her hair pins to push in where the wire goes & twisted the other end around the broken wires.
It lasted a few months untill I got it repaired by an auto electrician. I'm still using the same alternator 20 years later.
Good thing I had my wife on the back.

Distributor on C15, retaining clamp sheared allowing Distributor to spin, feed wire wrapped around it and broke.

It was daylight so opened headlamp and removed wire and used it to extend feed wire back to normal length, took bungy cord and wrapped it arround Distributor with the 2 ends on frame. Roughly timed bike and set off, had to stop every 2/3 miles to reset timing but it got me home via spares shop for new retaining clamp which was fitted later that day.

Nothing very dramatic for me. The worst I can think of is when I was on a camping trip on my '73 850 years ago. The exhaust nuts came loose and I didn't have anything with me to tighten them. I had those tab washers fitted though and that those would do. Of course the nuts rattled around and stripped out the threads in the head. I got it to a gas station, borrowed a pipe wrench, and was able to cross-thread the nuts into place good enough to make it home. The head went out for repair when I got back.

A couple of years ago at the Torrey rally someone was selling an "Amal drain plug kit". It seems his drain plugs fell out somewhere out on the road so he whittled a couple of plugs from a stick and held the plugs in place with bailing wire. I thought that was pretty clever. Apparently it got him back to camp, too.

Debby

I was on a bridge when the center stand spring broke on my Fastback, I slowed down and held the stand up with my left foot until I got off the bridge, stopped on the side of the road looking for a solution, I found an old auto alternator belt which I hooked on the stand's tang. This held the stand high enough to get me to a store where I purchased a bungee cord to hold the stand more securely until I replaced it with the proper part.

In another thread I told about getting a flat and riding on the rim for a few Km to a garage where I could get a tube, but the worse decision I ever made was getting a flat about 2 Km after leaving work. I had already rode about 10 Km with a flat on the front with my Yamaha RD400 by sitting way back on the seat and not using the brakes if at all possible. On my Fastback, the flat was on the back so I positionned myself as far forwards as I could and continued on my way home, for the first two Km, everything was fine, the bike tracked correctly and the tire stayed on the rim, then the tire started to flop from side to side, I was then past the point of no return so I continued sometimes sideways and finally made it home. The tire had ripped the speedo cable off and broken the speedo drive gearbox which was probably more expensive in the end than calling for someone to bail me out

Jean

One I mentioned on an earlier thread but it's simple and saved me a 2 mile push. The retaining clip came out of my master link and the chain was spit out onto the pavement on a hi-way. I walked back and found the chain and the master link but no end plate or circlip to hold it together. After stewing on the side of the road a bit I started refitting what I had. I adjusted the tension so tight on the chain the tension held the 1/2 master link in place while I rode at about 50mph about 2 miles to a metric bike shop where I purchased a new master link. It was seeming to hold so well I almost tried to go all the way home but thankfully common sense prevailed.

In the 60's I was riding home alone from the East of Scotland and in the middle of nowhere when the bike developed an intermittent electrical short . After blowing the spare fuse and not being a smoker (no silver paper) I just settled down by the road side in hope, but with little chance of passing help. After God knows how many hours, well it seemed like that, I spotted a pencil over grown in the road side. It's got a graphite core I thinks, it's got to pass current ( must have taken some notice at school). I quickly fitted a piece of the pencil into the fuse holder and the bike started first kick. Great, now for civilisation before the short burns out the wiring. After quite a few miles and stopping at a junction, clouds of smoke started to pour out of the side panel, and then stopped just as quickly, importantly the bike kept running.The pencil wood had suddenly got rather hot using the leaking smoke technic I quickly found the short to be on the rear brake light and did the final 120 miles without the brake light and with a pencil fuse.

There's others, a split tank and chewing gum, a holed piston and a self tapper.

Man! the innocents of youth.

All the best for the New Year and may all your problems be solved.
Safe Riding .
Cash

I had a T140 float bowl fall off whilst overtaking a Jag on the Heads of the Valleys road in South Wales about 25 years ago...

I pulled over to find the float and needle had gone, but the bowl was held by the fuel pipe, so that was a start.
I blocked off the cross-feed pipe between the carbs with some rag and refitted the empty bowl using a screw from each carb top.
It was then a matter of turning the tap on until the carb was full. It was suprising how far the bike would go on a bowlful of fuel - maybe a couple of miles or more.
Riding through Cardiff City centre was OK provided I remembered to keep turning that tap!

Much less technically demanding was my '89 900SS going onto one cylinder on the motorway...I pulled onto the hard shoulder to limp to the next junction, which was only a mile away.
Whilst 'chugging' along the hard shoulder I looked at the speedo...I was still doing 80
A coil wire had come off - which was easy, but I couldn't help wondering how fast I'd been going originally, because that ride on the hard shoulder felt like walking pace

New Year's greetings to all. My one lighthearted roadside repair occurred very shortly after purchasing the bike in 1978. Without knowing much about the bike's mechanical workings, I took off from my hometown in NW Pennsylvania for a 500 mi. roundtrip to central PA (ahhh, the ignorance of youth!!) About 100 miles from home in Cook's Forest I was heading down a long grade when the bike just died. Searching everywhere for the problem, I noticed my rear brake wires had been dangling and rubbing against the rear tire. I splinted them back together and.....still nothing. Somewhat by mistake I found the fuse holder next to the battery...looked inside an discovered the burned out fuse. It took me about 15 minutes to find a discarded aluminum gum wrapper on the side of the road (when littering was prevalent)....twisted it into a fuse shape and diameter....inserted and she fired right up.

I broke a clutch cable about 30 miles from home but luckily not to far from a friend who was a plumber. We made a mold by drilling a hole in a piece of wood, cut a slot for the cable to lay in and filled it with silver solder. Cleaned it up with a file & it worked fine until I got a new cable.

Not on a motorcycle..... But....

When i was younger i jumped a frieght train from Minneapolis, MN to St. Cloud, MN. It was supposed to be a 1 1/2 hour ride but when the train didn't stop and kept heading north i found myself getting near the canadian border (8 hour train ride, no food, water or rest). I made the decision to jump off the train at full speed to avoid going accross the border into canada. When i landed i broke my ankle on impact.

The closest city was two miles away. They didnt have a greyhound buss station or anyway for me to get back to minneapolis so i ended up walking 13 miles (on the broken ankle) to Moorehead MN. In order for me to get my leg and foot in a cast and get back home i had to flag down a cop, tell him my story and explain that i would hop another train unless i could find a way home. He arrested me, but me in a cell for a couple hours (finally got some water and sleep) then had the salvation army buy me a bus ticket back to the hospital near my house (10 hour bus ride).

Sorry it's not about my commando, as i read the post's i just laughed about this memory and had to share.

Happy New Year!

jsouthard wrote:Not on a motorcycle..... But....

When i was younger i jumped a frieght train from Minneapolis, MN to St. Cloud, MN. It was supposed to be a 1 1/2 hour ride but when the train didn't stop and kept heading north i found myself getting near the canadian border (8 hour train ride, no food, water or rest). I made the decision to jump off the train at full speed to avoid going accross the border into canada. When i landed i broke my ankle on impact.

The closest city was two miles away. They didnt have a greyhound buss station or anyway for me to get back to minneapolis so i ended up walking 13 miles (on the broken ankle) to Moorehead MN. In order for me to get my leg and foot in a cast and get back home i had to flag down a cop, tell him my story and explain that i would hop another train unless i could find a way home. He arrested me, but me in a cell for a couple hours (finally got some water and sleep) then had the salvation army buy me a bus ticket back to the hospital near my house (10 hour bus ride).

Sorry it's not about my commando, as i read the post's i just laughed about this memory and had to share.

Happy New Year!

Joe, your story reminds me about several repairs I've made on freight trains enroute. More than once I pulled barbed wire or used zip ties to tie up air hoses. Once, we were stopped with air trouble and it had to be 10 below wind chill. The vent valve had stuck open and the trainmaster was nearby in his nice, warm truck. I shivered as as I asked if he had anything that would repair it. He handed me a brand new snap-on socket wrench. I hammered the hell out of the valve which fixed it and return the now battered wrench to him, after which he proceeded to cuss me out. I told him they were guaranteed against mechanical defects, if not cosmetic damage, and should be good for a lifetime. Good times. Glad to have an indoor job now.