Stupidest thing you've ever done to your bike?

I would like to thank c.cito and gpaul for good laughs this morning. It was better than the cup of coffee. I'm not sure I fully believe either story, but they both made me laugh like a lunatic (which is normal I might add).

Russ

My story is 100% true. My wyfe will vouch for the veracity of the story, and may even still have the skirt. My Dad would also vouch for me, but he passed on 3 years ago this month.

Come to think of it, I'm suprised my Dad din't just sit back and watch, he HATED bikes (well, mainly Japanese bikes; he was a WWII vet).

grandpaul said:

My story is 100% true. My wyfe will vouch for the veracity of the story, and may even still have the skirt. My Dad would also vouch for me, but he passed on 3 years ago this month.

Come to think of it, I'm suprised my Dad din't just sit back and watch, he HATED bikes (well, mainly Japanese bikes; he was a WWII vet).

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Your wife is a good sport and if she is the kind of gal that will go riding on motorcycles in a skirt, she is my kind of woman! Glad nobody got hurt and no Commandos were destroyed.

Russ

grandpaul said:

Come to think of it, I'm suprised my Dad din't just sit back and watch, he HATED bikes (well, mainly Japanese bikes; he was a WWII vet).

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Why do you think he grabbed TWO bum extinguishers? :mrgreen:

Having a browse at this post over a afternoon cuppa,and a smirk a two,
Remind's me of a friend who sold a 350 velo viper to a guy, he [the new owner] was showed how it worked...this was in the early sixties,no CBT or basic training then.
So after a basic lesson the guy paid is £20 and rode into the sun set, two days latter he bought the bike back...saying it was to slow,infact the 45 mile trip to the seaside took him all morning . just to get there!
Pete [ my mate] who had sold the bike had showed the new owner only first gear...yes the plonker had rode it 90 miles [round trip ]in bottom cog!

In the Nineties, a mate on his newly aquired Laverda Jota was returning home from the midnight I.O.M steamer , 10 miles from home on a pitch black rainly night the bike coughed. spluttered to a halt,
Deciding it had ran out of petrol thumbed a lift to the local fuel station, paid for a can and fuel, walked 5 miles [ almost a hour]in pouring rain back to the bike. to notice it had a reserve tap on the other side...turned OFF!

Hope you didnt mind me dragging up a old post...reading the others made me smile,

A friend I ride with told me this. He said about 15 years ago he had a Harley Sportster that would only start if the choke was on. One day he got into a horrid fight with his wife so he ( still drinking at that point in life ) had a few beers while getting ready to leave for a ride. So he getts on the bike and angerly blasts off to a long mountain ride, pissed that the bike is not running well, he stops for more drinks at a pub, then again at a mountain stopping point. The bike he says is running worse all the time. It's not until the last gas stop that he realizes he had left the choke on when he first started in the drunken haze of the mornings fight!!!

After finishing a tune-up on a customer's AJS 410 Stormer, I take it outside the shop for a test ride. I started it up and although the piston slap sounded a little funny, I was too inexperienced to know that a two-smoke could run backwards! Sooo...I put it in gear, rev it and dump the clutch. I have a scar on my chin from the faceplant I did on the cross-bar (motocross bars). A customer who happened to be standing around actually said "I didn't know they made dirtbikes with a reverse gear! For those who don't know, those old drone motors would run backwards if the timing was a little too far advanced. Because of piston pin offset the piston noise is very obvious but I knew not!

One of my favorite quotes: "We are all stupid. It just depends on what and how much!"

Mike

Pulling in behind a closed gas station on a very cold late night to put on my long johns that were in my back pack for just such an emergency. While my pants were down a cop pulls into the station, parks and starts doing paperwork in his car - an unbelievable situation. I'm stuck there shivering in the dark for half an hour before I can sneak out.

I did a compression test on my new E-Bay 850 non-runner with my year-old Sears thread-in unit, which replaced one from the Seventies. I got 31 psi on one side, 32 psi on the other with the throttle wide open, half a dozen kicks each side. Valve gear had plausible slack at TDC all around.

I then spent an hour pulling the head, finding fasteners torqued to spec, a tightly sealed head gasket, valves in superb condition and 40-over pistons sucking smoothly through bores with practically brand-new cross-hatching, piston crowns and milled head dusted with the carbon patina of a perfectly adjusted four-stroke.

A test on my strong-running 50 mpg '72 Combat produced 31 psi on each side, proving yet again there is no fool like an old fool.



Tim Kraakevik
kraakevik@voyager.net

DogT said:

Painting fireflake blue black.

Dave
69S

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You have my sympathies, Dave. I very nearly did the same thing.

Puttin on a Sissy Bar in 1973
Putting on highway pegs to fron frame downtubes, 1973
Tossing out all the original parts I took off back then (Luggage Rack, headlamp, handlebars, signal lights, etc)
Hitting a Big Racoon when scraping pegs at around 110mph........ Not I don't care who you are, that freakin hurt
Painting Royal Fireflake Blue Black
Putting in Storage when in the Army, 1973-1979.
Not taking it out of storage until 2008.

Modifing it. My mind wanders and ideas come to mind, and float around until an attempt is made. It's a sickness.

How about handing off an Arias piston that I had waited 6 months for to a buddy in the machine shop. I had marked a couple spots on the bottom of the wrist pin boss with a magic marker and asked him to drill a couple 1/8 inch holes for pin oiling. He brought them back 10 minutes later with holes....all the way through the top. :roll:

comnoz said:

How about handing off an Arias piston that I had waited 6 months for to a buddy in the machine shop. I had marked a couple spots on the bottom of the wrist pin boss with a magic marker and asked him to drill a couple 1/8 inch holes for pin oiling. He brought them back 10 minutes later with holes....all the way through the top. :roll:

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Hobot would just JB weld those.

Actually I used a couple 10-32 setscrews and a bit of JB weld. It was working fine a year later when I got tired of getting thrown on the ground by an ill handling SR500 and sold it. Jim

Olephart said:

After finishing a tune-up on a customer's AJS 410 Stormer, I take it outside the shop for a test ride. I started it up and although the piston slap sounded a little funny, I was too inexperienced to know that a two-smoke could run backwards! Sooo...I put it in gear, rev it and dump the clutch. I have a scar on my chin from the faceplant I did on the cross-bar (motocross bars). A customer who happened to be standing around actually said "I didn't know they made dirtbikes with a reverse gear! For those who don't know, those old drone motors would run backwards if the timing was a little too far advanced. Because of piston pin offset the piston noise is very obvious but I knew not!

One of my favorite quotes: "We are all stupid. It just depends on what and how much!"

Mike

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Yes the backward running stroker, happened to my mates James Captain, stalled it up a bank, them rolled back he must have let the clutch out and presto....reverse :!:

...also to a friend on his Bultaco dirt bike in front other (then) high-school dirt-bikers, including me - launched him over the bars as well! We still laugh about that.....It took us the whole drive home to figure out an engine could run backwards
Mello

Talking a guy a knew into letting me ride his brand new RM250. So i got off my Yamaha 100 and thought I'll show off and ride a wheelie outta there in front of everybody. Having just a tad bit more power than my crapped out 100, i grabbed a handful of throttle and popped the clutch, only to have it throw me on my back so hard i couldn't breathe. It wasn't until i finally caught my breath that i noticed everyone busting a gut laughing----except the owner of the RM, he was ready to kill me! (Geeze i haven't thought about that in years you guys) Cj

Working on bike while on the sidestand, intending to change both the shocks, because the top eye of the left side shock had cracked off. SO, Mr. Genius here loosens and removes the top bolt from the RIGHT side shock, and shrieks like a little girl when the whole rear end of the bike suddenly drops and bottoms out. Well, that bike weighs a lot more than I thought, and darned if I could absolutely NOT lift the rear end up enough to get the top mounting bolt through the eye of the new shock. Dragged the bike across the garage, threw a ratchet pulley and rope over the rafter, and managed to hoist and heave until I got the rear end high enough to quickly slip the top bolt through the eye with one hand while pulling on the rope with the other. What should have been a 20 minute job took two hours, a beer, and a whole lot of advil for the muscle strain. Live and learn.

Funniest dumb thing I ever WITNESSED was a boyhood friend popping wheelies on his little Honda CT-90 in the backyard. Loads of fun. Then another of our friends wanted to try it. He got the front end up, but couldn't stop the bike. There was a swimming pool involved...


Ah, and I will tell a story about my ex-wife. She was actually quite beautiful and a nice shapely lass. She's on the back of the bike one beautiful summer day as we ride down the Coast Highway. We're getting LOTS of honking and thumbs up, I figure it's because well, it's a really nice bike and she's pretty cute. This went on for about 8 miles or so. As we came to a stoplight, she suddenly realizes that her little cropped t-shirt has blown up above her bosoms, and they are giving everyone quite the nice show! (and I do mean NICE). Gave new meaning to the idea of riding a "British Twin"....

About 10 years ago I rode my full dress Harley to Millwakee. Parked in front of the engine plant and locked the bike including one of those disc locks on the front fork rotor. Sure enough I came out fired it up dropped it in gear and went about 6 inches forward when the front wheel stopped turning and down I went. Still have the bike but I don't use disc locks any more.