Got Something Stuck Inside Your Handlebars?

[kpinvt]

This happened last night while I was working at putting a new set of hand guards on my son's CB500X. I took the damaged SW-Motech hand guards off of my son's bike and lost the expansion nut inside of the handlebar. I wanted that nut so I could re-use the expansion bolts. The handlebars on that bike aren't as flat as the one on the NC having four tight bends in it's length. I tried everything I could think of to get it back out. We even laid his bike down on the ground to see if we could get the nut out using gravity and tapping on the handle bar with a dead blow hammer with no luck. I tried different gauges of steel wire, a length of Nomex cable and thought maybe a blast of compressed air could work if I owned an air compressor. I thought maybe if I had an electricians fish tape I could run that through the handlebars, tie a wad of cloth to it and pull the nut out with the tape. Instead I grabbed an eight foot long, half inch wide tape measure and pushed that into the end of the handlebar and through all four bends with no trouble. The nut popped right out into the tall grass next to the driveway. I found it after a minute using an LED head lamp.

 

[Nofear2trek]

I took the damaged SW-Motech hand guards off of my son's bike and lost the expansion nut inside of the handlebar.

The nut popped right out into the tall grass next to the driveway.

Murphy's Law!

Ray

 

[SleepyC]

I was mounting my RAM phone mount and dropped the nut into the area under the handle bars.. It bounced once and disappeared behind the wire loom and "Stuff".
I shook the bike and wiggled it and ... made the bolt more lost. It took me an hour of getting frustrated and making sure all my loud curse words were still known and usable and as I was about to give up and just find a new nut, the clouds parted, I heard an angle play a saxophone and the nut was sitting on a little gusset right on the frame yolk where the forks attach. If it was a snake I would have been dead....

Murphy sucks.