Sunday 6 December 2009

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Of course those of you who have read Robert Pirsig's tome will realise that it didn't have much to do with motorcycle maintenance at all and funnily enough todays blog has more to do with motorcycle wrecking than maintenance.
Out on the Guzzi today (the Mk3 Lemon to be precise) and I noticed a little more vibration than normal in the footrests, at first I put it down to not enough of a Sunday morning hangover but no it was really there and seemed to be getting worse the more over the speed limit I was going. All of a sudden the vibration got worse and then a terrible crunching rattling sound as if you were using a cement mixer to mix engine casings, looking behind there was an increasing plume of smoke eminating from under the bike, not from the exhausts, I looked around for an enemy fighter to see if Jerry had managed to sneak up on me and let a few rounds off into the fuselage without me noticing, then I remembered I was on my Guzzi not a spitfire and the war ended a long time ago.
I crunched to a halt with Fiona looking a trifle concerned at the smoke display, stupidly I rode another five miles or so rattling and crunching before dumping it at Fi's parents place. I say stupidly because I suspected a gearbox problem and you should never drive a bike with gearbox problems or death can often follow (Don't try this at home children, I am a certified lunatic with several certificates in riding unsafe motorcycles)
Anyway my diagnosis is a Broken cardan joint with perhaps some gearbox issues arising from that. I'll let you know when I summon up the enthusiasm to go and collect it and strip the damn thing. Nice day anyway and I enjoyed the rest of the day piloting the ER6!

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