Stupid things you have done to your bike

[Kootenanny]

So I'm nearly 600 miles from home on a Sunday morning and I have to be at work Monday morning. My BIL and I went to Iron Skillet for breakfast and talked things over. We finally decided we'd go into the truck stop store and get a tube of Alumiweld™, a roll of duct tape, a small (1/4") hose clamp, a box of toothpicks and a fingernail file. We filed the cup down to bare metal all around the leak. Applied a bit of Alumiweld and let it set for about 30 minutes. Filed it down smooth and applied another layer. Let that set for another 30 minutes. Applied a third layer, wrapped a bit of duct tape around it and applied the clamp. Let that set for another 30 minutes. Globbed some more Alumiweld around the clamp.

I rode that sucker back to Austin with no problems. In fact, it was another 8 months before I finally replaced the fuel rail. I'm guessing I put another 5-6K miles on it.

That is NOT "stupid."  Indeed, sounds like pretty good repair work to me...

[ConPilot1]

That is NOT "stupid."  Indeed, sounds like pretty good repair work to me...

Agreed.   You do what you gotta do to get home or keep going. Tape, wire, glue, who cares, as long as you get a good temp fix.  

[Papa Lazarou]

Nice plug, don't let Papa see it.

It is indeed a very nice plug. Is it for sale?

This seems to be about temporary fixes.

The spline on the gear change of a Yamaha I had lost its ridges, so I fitted a pair of Mole Grips (don't klnow what they called in the US, but they look like this:
)

They worked well.  

I broke the crank shaft on a Cossack/ Ural once. Rode it home around 25 miles. Got back okay.

The head gasket on a Norton blew. I happened to have a spare one on me and a few sockets-I couldn't torque the head down properly, but using a combination of a sandwich of two head gaskets and sockets to help space out the head bolts I got home.

Quite a few other get you home bodges over the years.  

[ConPilot1]

Sh*t WTF is that thing called..........a 'lok' of some sort or the other, "grips" or something??

Visegrips maybe???? I don't know why that comes to mind.  

[Papa Lazarou]

Sh*t WTF is that thing called..........a 'lok' of some sort or the other, "grips" or something??

Visegrips maybe???? I don't know why that comes to mind.  

Visegrips. That's what you call them. We call them Mole Grips. Why? Dunno.

Ah: Wikipedia has the answer: Locking pliers, Mole grips (Mole wrench) or Vise-Grips are pliers that can be locked into position, using an over-center action. One side of the handle includes a bolt that is used to adjust the spacing of the jaws, the other side of the handle (especially in larger models) often includes a lever to push the two sides of the handles apart to unlock the pliers. "Mole" and "Vise-Grip" are trade names of different brands of locking pliers.

[ConPilot1]

Moles are something the cat dumps happily in the middle of the carpet, all quivering and half-alive.
Here.

 

[squeezer]

I've done exactly what the OP did -- forgot to put the oil plug back in after an oil change. I  packed up the bike and headed to a conference about 450 miles away. Luckily, I was only a couple of miles from home when I started wondering, "Why is there oil on my windshield?" Stopped and looked and, as a matter of fact, oil was everywhere.

I had set the plug on top of the pannier and it was nowhere to be found. Luckily, the local Kaw dealer (at that time, Kissell's) pulled one off a Connie sitting on floor for me. So, a bit of a refill, a bit of cleanup, and a change of pants and I was back on the road in a few hours.


Stupider: On the same Connie, I apparently forgot to tighten a lock nut on an intake valve after a valve adjustment. Couldn't figure  out why I had lost so much power while coming home from a day ride. That one got the mechanic to point and laugh at me.  


Favorite temporary fix: I was a couple of thousand miles from home in the middle of summer when the fan switch gave out on the Connie. Bought a toggle switch and some hook-up wire in hardware section of the local discount store, stuck the toggle switch in the hole of a broken fairing tab (it was a bit of rat bike), kept an eye on the temp gauge and ran the fan manually for the rest of the trip. The toggle switch looked pretty badass.  I left there after I did repairs in case I ever needed it for some other quick fix.    

[caasland]

I once was bungeeing a dry bag to the back of my /6. I pulled hard to get the bungee to stretch to the anchor point. I pulled hard enough to topple the bike off of the center stand.    

This happened to a friend of mine on Hwy 2 in NW ND. He was standing on the side of the road doing just that, when a semi passed him and added the wind ... the end result was toppling his ST1100 off the road and into the ditch, upside down.

After we muscled it back on the road it wouldn't start, so we bump-started it. Then, without thinking, my buddy said "glad it started" and hit the kill switch. Doh! This time I made him push.

[caasland]

Allow me to add two more, this time "Stupid thing my dad did" followed by a "Stupid thing I did".

A couple years ago my aging father (70 at the time) wanted to get back into riding so we bought him a KZ1100 and fixed it up and the four of us (me, my wife, my brother and my dad) rode to the black hills in South Dakota. On the way we stopped for the night in Sioux Falls. The KZ1100 burned  lots of oil (turned out to be a scored cylinder wall) so every morning we checked and added oil as appropriate.

After leaving Sioux Falls we got on I-90 and went west, my wife and I leading. Lo and behold, a couple miles down the road and no sight of my dad or brother. Hm. Backtracking we found them on the highway entrance ramp walking up and down in the grass, looking for something. Crap. By now they had been doing this for 10-15 minutes.

I asked my brother (closest to me) what happened. He said they were pulling onto the highway when my bro, behind my dad, saw something shiny fall off his KZ and bounce to the grass. He quickly stopped and looked in the grass. Meanwhile my dad did a U-Turn on I90 and came back on the shoulder (did I ever mention we're all Norwegian? ). Apparently he was covered in oil - he, too, had forgotten to replace the oil filler cap and left it laying on top of the engine transmission until it bounced away.

After my bro had explained this, I looked down and saw the oil cap a few inches from my front tire. "Is that it?" ... yep! When I got home I fastened the oil filler cap to the bike frame with a chain   In the end we had a great family vacation together!

So now my stupid thing. One of many, but I'll just highlight this one.

Two friends and I were riding near Augusta, MT on the way to Glacier NP. I was leading. Resuming after a stop to put on warm gloves, my friend behind me notices a plastic bag fly off my bike. He ignores it. Then something else flies off and bounces off the road into the weeds. Being smart, he mentally marks the place, chases me down so that we can close my bag and prevent something else from falling out. That's when I realize ..   ... that open zipper is where I keep my $5000 hearing aids! arghhhhhh!!!!!!!  Sure enough the box I keep them is gone. We backtrack and before I can unplug myself from my bike, by buddy had found the little white box about ten feet into the weeds... Lesson learned, zip things up!

[Meemuh]

So I'm nearly 600 miles from home on a Sunday morning and I have to be at work Monday morning. My BIL and I went to Iron Skillet for breakfast and talked things over. We finally decided we'd go into the truck stop store and get a tube of Alumiweld™, a roll of duct tape, a small (1/4") hose clamp, a box of toothpicks and a fingernail file. We filed the cup down to bare metal all around the leak. Applied a bit of Alumiweld and let it set for about 30 minutes. Filed it down smooth and applied another layer. Let that set for another 30 minutes. Applied a third layer, wrapped a bit of duct tape around it and applied the clamp. Let that set for another 30 minutes. Globbed some more Alumiweld around the clamp.

My new all-time favorite MacGyver shopping list

[bomber]

Lesson learned, zip things up!

Wise words indeed. ;-}

I'll play --

10 PM, I-70, middle of no where, raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock -- bike starts to miss a little, continues forward progress, although haltingly . . . .

The miss continues to get worse, finally to the point that, when you (well, me) pull in the clutch the engine dies altogether . . . .

I pull under an overpass, and pull one of the carbs -- it's clearly a fueling issue . . . .trucks passing by at 75 leaving bow waves over me and the hapless Yamaha . . . .I get the carb apart, helped by the light of a tiny AAA flashlight, only to find the float bowl completely dry.

I reassemble the carb, install it, place the petcock into the reserve position, light up the Yamaha, and ride to the next exit equipped with a gas station.

[ChrisZRX]

Back when I was 17-years-old (this was 1981) I was servicing a brand new Yamaha XJ750 Seca for a customer at my Dad's dealership.

I seriously overfilled the oil and after the new owner got a little ways down the road we recieved a phone call from said new owner/customer that the bike was blowing a lot of smoke and running rough.

It was assumed that I had underfilled it and cost the dealership thousands of dollars.  For the first time in my life I thought my Dad was actually going to beat the crap out of me.

It was discovered that the oil was overfilled and after bringing it to the correct level the bike ran fine and all was well.  

To this day my Dad will occasionally start chewing me out about it.        

[Meemuh]

Wise words indeed. ;-}

I'll play --

10 PM, I-70, middle of no where, raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock -- bike starts to miss a little, continues forward progress, although haltingly . . . .

The miss continues to get worse, finally to the point that, when you (well, me) pull in the clutch the engine dies altogether . . . .

I pull under an overpass, and pull one of the carbs -- it's clearly a fueling issue . . . .trucks passing by at 75 leaving bow waves over me and the hapless Yamaha . . . .I get the carb apart, helped by the light of a tiny AAA flashlight, only to find the float bowl completely dry.

I reassemble the carb, install it, place the petcock into the reserve position, light up the Yamaha, and ride to the next exit equipped with a gas station.

Very thorough.

[Krellian]

Back when I was 17-years-old (this was 1981) I was servicing a brand new Yamaha XJ750 Seca for a customer at my Dad's dealership.

To this day my Dad will occasionally start chewing me out about it.        

Smile, Be glad that he still can

[wibornz]

I put a sticker on my bike.  

I had skull grips on the bike.  

I rode it in the rain and snow  

[blueridgerider]

Rebuilt a K1200LT that I bought wrecked.  I completely disassembled/repaired/replaced all damaged parts.  Anyway, just to move it around after I got alot done I put on the rear wheel hand tight. A few weeks later when I got it all finished/roadworthy I forgot the rear wheel was only hand tight.  After a few miles the bike got wobbly - loose as a goose.  Thankfully no damage or wreck ensued.

[Scratch33]

Ah, almost forgot:  group ride in Virginia.  We pull over on some mountain road for a rest stop; I decide to change out some riding gear since it's warmed up.  

I open the rear trunk of my GL1800, take out my light gloves, pull off my heavy gloves and absent-mindedly toss both them AND the bike keys into the trunk and close the lid.  GL1800 waits a second then does the 'click' of the trunk automatically locking.  

Learned a lot that day about how to unlock a GL1800 trunk.

 

[Kootenanny]

I've done a few stupid things.  One was parking the bike (an older one) on a slope with the kickstand uphill...bike stood fine, until I went to mount, when if fell over (away from me, of course...).  I also parked my Buell once on a slight downhill, with the engine running--learned a valuable lesson that day.

On a road trip--coincidentally, to the city where the dealership I'd bought my Buell is located--I was leaving for home when I found that I could no longer shift down into first gear.  I pulled over, and called the dealer...of course, it was a weekend, and although the store was open their repair shop was not.  I was getting frustrated--the bike was not that old at the time, and I was annoyed that the transmission would fail just then.  But, after cooling down a bit, I thought it out...I'd adjusted the shift linkage before leaving for the trip...and, of course, I'd not tightened the locknut on the linkage enough, so it had loosened off and allowed the shift linkage to adjust itself.

[Coastie3202]

Had a KTM 950 Super Enduro that I put an auxiliary fuel tank on.  The fueling drill when running an aux tank requires you to close the petcock to the aux tank before fueling.  Did I know that the first time I fueled it?  NO.  So I fuel the aux tank, put the cap on, then fueledl the main tank and noticed that the aux tank is spewing fuel out the overflow hose.  I figured I had just overfilled the aux tank so kept fueling the main tank thinking that once the excess fuel in the aux tank bled off it would be okay.  Well you can imagine what an idiot I looked like as I kept fueling on one end of the bike and spewing on the other.  Man what a mess.  Was the gas station attendant happy with me.  Uh, NO.

[Frankienuckles]

Not too bad, but plenty dumb...When cleaning my brake caliper / pads on the ktm I grabbed the wrong can and sprayed it liberally with penetrating oil instead of brake cleaner.