Fell on the bike, feeling like an idiot

[2wheelcager]

If you come from dirt bikes, dropping a bike is a daily event. I race motocross and a dropped bike doesn't even faze me become I'm desensitized to it. Try riding a dirt bike and then you won't feel too bad dropping a road bike because it will seem like status quo. I work part time at a Honda auto dealership and the powersports/motorcycle dealership is next door and I can't tell you how many people have dropped their bikes in the lot. That's one reason the dealership doesn't allow demo rides. Don't feel bad if it happens to you at all.

 

[Mike Cash]

While on the subject, when starting from a stop, how many RPMs do you all take it up before letting the clutch start grabbing?

Try this little experiment: At idle, very gently and slowly let the clutch out. Notice what the bike does.

 

[RJ_CB450]

Only drop for me was ignition coil issue died my CB while riding neutraled to stop and dropped while pushing

 

[bonnielover]

3,000 RPM sounds reasonable. Of course, I'm rolling the throttle on and letting clutch out at the same time. It seems though for quite awhile I was not much over 2,000 RPM to get moving, but now find it necessary to make it a point to give it a bit more RPM when starting off - 2,500 or more.
Thanks for the info LBS.
Paul

 

[Beemerphile]

With practice letting the clutch out as you add throttle, you will not even hear the RPM's rise as you take off. Start with Mike Cash's suggestion, then as you let the clutch out, add throttle smoothly to keep the RPM from changing and finally you are moving along at idle speed. It is not a matter of setting an engine RPM and then releasing the clutch (unless you are drag-racing).

 

[ShipofFools]

Wow, didn't expect this many replies! Since I have a habit of getting into second gear in that particular parking lot, I suspect the culprit was not shifting down to first. That was my only major blunder in 7 years of riding and I consider myself lucky. I may have to invest in frame sliders some time in the near future.

 

[Mike Cash]

On Sunday I joined the club and laid a bike down for the first time in about 33 years (last time was my TS185 when I was about fourteen).

I was riding a mountain road, going up a very steep and sharp left hand turn over a surface of extraordinarily broken and worn concrete paving that has degenerated into nothing more than rubble. I was tooling along slowly and gently at barely above idle, thinking to myself I should have gone down to first instead of staying in second, which is about the time the engine stalled out (totally my fault).

Being on such steep ground, in somewhat of a lean, and with the front wheel cut over to the left, when the engine died the fall was pretty much instantaneous. With an, "Oh, crap...here we go" flitting through my mind the bike and I just started toward the ground. I remember looking at my left leg and wondering if it was going to get trapped or not. The combination of reflexively pulling it away and the bulk of my oversized self rolling back on the steep slope managed to save me the trouble of finding out if I could extricate myself if I got stuck.

Thanks to helmet, Komine riding jacket with all the protectors installed, some Taichi gloves with carbon armor, and the well-known tendency of Providence to protect children and fools, I had not a scratch on me, nor really even any soreness the next day.

Thanks to the low CoG of the bike I was able to pick it up quite easily, using the don't-do-it-this-way method of standing next to the bike and lifting it by the handlebars. Damned good thing, too, as the fall had knocked the transmission into neutral and if my fingers hadn't been right there where I could grab the front brake there is no doubt I would have lost the bike as it rolled down the steep slope had I instead used the recommended method of sitting next to it with your back to the bike then lifting with your legs.

Damage assessment revealed a shift lever bent inward over the linkage, a curled clutch lever, and minor scratches on the bar end. I pulled out the supplied Honda toolkit and used a box-end wrench to bend the shift lever back out. I also used the wrench to bend the clutch lever back a bit and put further repairs on hold until I could reach some level ground farther up the mountain.

I noticed two things about bending the clutch lever back:

1: At a certain point, the handlebar becomes an obstacle to proper bending
2: The leverage you can get with a single wrench is not quite enough

Solution to #1 was to find something to wedge between the lever and grip, near the mirror mount. A fallen tree branch of the right thickness was handy so I used that. Worked like a charm and gave far better results than I was getting without it.

Solution to #2 was to use two wrenches. One went on the clutch lever and the second one went on the handle of the first wrench. That came close to doubling the length of my lever and made bending the lever back into shape a breeze.

The above also taught me the advantage of the single-ended wrenches with broad flat handles. I think it would have been difficult or impossible to double up like that with standard double-ended wrenches and far more likely to slip out of position with handles of the width you find on standard workshop wrenches.

A note of caution to anyone doing bending in the field like that: bend only as much as necessary to make the bike safely rideable back to civilization. You don't want to overdo it and end up snapping a lever off. Further adjustments for comfort and appearance can be left until later.

 

[draco_1967]

I dropped my Serenity today during parking lot practice. I was trying to do some slow, TIGHT turns and figure 8's. During one particularly tight left-hand turn, I let the engine RPM drop too low and it stalled. Luckily, I was barely moving, so it was a "controlled decent."

The only damage was to my pride. No plastic touched the ground. The Cycra hand guards did their job, and between the guards and the left peg/shifter, nothing else touched the ground. My pride didn't take too big of a hit, as there was no one around to see it happen

And that's why I do parking lot practice and push myself, so that it is less likely to happen when I need to maneuver in a real parking lot...

 

[Rocker66]

Glad that your Ok. As they say practise makes perfect

 

[kevicon]

I dropped my Serenity today during parking lot practice. I was trying to do some slow, TIGHT turns and figure 8's. During one particularly tight left-hand turn, I let the engine RPM drop too low and it stalled. Luckily, I was barely moving, so it was a "controlled decent."

The only damage was to my pride. No plastic touched the ground. The Cycra hand guards did their job, and between the guards and the left peg/shifter, nothing else touched the ground. My pride didn't take too big of a hit, as there was no one around to see it happen

And that's why I do parking lot practice and push myself, so that it is less likely to happen when I need to maneuver in a real parking lot...

I have the opposite problem; when I turn to the right I have the tendency to not give it any throttle cause my arm is so close to my body. I think its cause my arms are stiff and im not using my wrist to actually give the bike gas :|

 

[Chestnut]

I dropped my old bike turning into a campground late at night - hit some gravel and down she went. The clutch lever was bent pretty bad, but I could still reach it. The next morning my husband decided that he would bend it back. SNAP! So there I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains with half a clutch lever. JB weld to the rescue. I almost didn't want to replace the lever once we got a new one, since the frankenstein lever seemed to fit the bike so well.

 

[Old Can Ride]

Everyone on this forum has been though what you are now going though. The adventure of learning to ride a motorcycle. A few years from now you will laugh about your learning experience. Wait until you pull up to a red light or stop sign and you forget to put your feet down. Remember act cool. Get up like you did it on purpose, pick the bike up, look confident, get back on, and ride way.

 

[Porkie]

Always keep your hand on the clutch lever (If you have one) just in case the engine starts to stall. Turning right or left from a stop is probably the number one reason for a tip over due to lack of forward speed.

Sam

 

[Chris]

My first fall like this was back in 1974, I'd done a couple of years on British bikes (BSA then Triumph) and was tempted to a nearly new Suzuki GT550J - the one with the big 4 Leading Shoe front brake. First time out in the rain I gently touched the front brake lever at about 5mph, oops, smack - and I was lying on top of the bike feeling embarrassed.

That's when I learned that the leading edges of the brake linings needed chamfering to prevent excessive bite - and that the original Japanese tyres were made of a hard, slippery sort of rubber that gave no grip in the wet.

I kept the Suzuki for about 10 years, it finally gave up the ghost on the highway, I overtook a family of four in a smallish car at about 90 mph. As I pulled in just in front of them after the manoeuvre the engine seized and locked the back wheel up solid. I always used to ride with my hand resting on the clutch - and it worked well enough that day, I pulled the clutch lever in and moved over to the hard shoulder. The family group passed looking at me ashen faced.

The X is a more reliable proposition - but I keep wondering what I'd do on the DCT if something similar ever happened. Hopefully jabbing the N button will work.

Thankfully things have improved a lot since those days.

 

[NMontante]

I dropped my Serenity today during parking lot practice. I was trying to do some slow, TIGHT turns and figure 8's. During one particularly tight left-hand turn, I let the engine RPM drop too low and it stalled. Luckily, I was barely moving, so it was a "controlled decent."

The only damage was to my pride. No plastic touched the ground. The Cycra hand guards did their job, and between the guards and the left peg/shifter, nothing else touched the ground. My pride didn't take too big of a hit, as there was no one around to see it happen

And that's why I do parking lot practice and push myself, so that it is less likely to happen when I need to maneuver in a real parking lot...

I was doing the exact same thing about 2 weeks ago the day after I got my bike... didn't actually lay it down all the way but nearly touched the ground. Those figure 8's will get ya!