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Touch everything: a life-saving routine
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It’s never fun to cancel plans for a ride, but it’s a whole lot better to find a problem in your driveway than 40 miles from home. This weekend, we had occasion to appreciate this again.
Long ago it became obvious to me that a motorcycle is a lot like a helicopter in one regard. Like a whirlybird, your motorcycle is subject to constant vibration from normal operation as you ride along the road. Bumps, grooves and dips in the pavement exacerbate the problem, but if you put enough miles on your bike without checking and tightening everything up now and then -- Things Drop Off.
If you lose an important Thing – like part of your controls --you won’t fall out of the sky, but if you fall three feet to the ground at speed, it still hurts.
One rule that we try to keep (and usually either Jim Davis or I will remember it) is to Touch Everything on your bike periodically, before you ride. This goes along with your pre-ride inspection, using T-CLOCK (Tires and wheels, Controls, Lights, Oil, Chassis, and Kickstand) or whatever method you prefer. As we do our regular walk-around, we also touch every part of the bike that has a screw, bolt or connection that can be touched.
It’s amazing how often there’s a loosened accessory just waiting to fall off, or a sidecover that wasn’t properly seated last time you checked the battery. On a tour, one of us does this every morning, to be sure all our cargo is secured.
This weekend, the Thing was an important nut and bolt unit on my '97 Magna: the one that holds the clutch lever on.
Clutch lever and wind deflector on Magna. Photo courtesy MSG.
Before we mounted up to ride, Jim pointed out that the clutch lever was loose and could be lost, were it not being held by the clutch cable; and a hole existed where the bolt was before.
We searched the pavement around the bike, but when Jim noticed that the lever had actually been rubbing against my wind deflector on the left side, it was clear that the bolt had been gone for at least a few miles.
Our tool boxes didn’t supply the right kind of bolt, and it was clearly dangerous to ride the Magna to a bike shop in that condition. (The nearest one is about eight miles away.) After experimenting with several chromed bolts from an extra windscreen we have sitting around, we determined that they were all too short in the shaft.
In addition, the missing bolt was not simply a bolt; it had two distinctly different shaft widths. It was wider and smooth at the top, but narrower and threaded at the bottom. It was clearly a special part that not only holds the lever in place, but also acts as the pivot shaft around which the clutch lever rotates.
What to do?
We finally found a bolt that was long enough, but its head was smaller than the top of the hole. Jim solved this with a washer.
The temporary bolt is in place now. With a nut tightened on the end of it, it will hold the clutch lever in place well enough to ride that eight miles, at least.
By the time we’d done the wrenching to solve this problem, the day was getting hot and a pleasure ride no longer in store. But having a little imagination and patience turned this into a manageable problem instead of a $100+ tow.
On other occasions, Jim has solved mechanical problems temporarily when we were many miles from home: using a piece of stranded wire to replace a blown master fuse; tightening a chain when it loosened unexpectedly early and three states away; reconnecting a throttle cable that came undone.
Any of these problems could have been dangerous or at least a real PITA, and I’m always tickled when a biker turns all MacGyver and comes up with a temporary fix that works just great and keeps you from being left stranded far from help.
But even if you're good at resolving such issues 'from scratch,' finding a potential problem before it causes you grief is always the best timing you can have. We’ll be taking the bike in on Tuesday (most service departments at dealerships in Houston are closed Mondays), trying to find the right graduated bolt. But we're confident that if we have to go to another shop to get the right part, this will work in the meantime.
For more tips on road-side emergencies, visit Motorcycle Tips and Techniques. Send email to Cash@msgroup.org.
More About:
Motorcycle maintenance; Safety routines
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