Ride With Tank

Yesterday on my way to Virginia I suffered a catastrophic motorcycle failure.

The master link on my chain broke and the chain came off and did quite a bit of damage in the process. It broke off the two bolts holding my clutch slave cylinder. One bolt attached to the stator cover and it broke the whole bottom corner off of the stator cover. The other attached to the crankcase cover and it broke off at the cover. The push rod for the clutch was broken in half. The bike was spewing oil and I sure was lucky it did not get tangled with the wheel and lock it up because I was going around 80mph in a turn when it broke.

We had a great turn out for the ride.  I really felt bad to be delaying everyone’s trip and tried to get them to go ahead and leave me but they would not leave until I was on the tow truck.  I sure to appreciate everyone’s support and I am so sorry that because of my problem you guys were riding until well after dark and missed the most scenic part of the whole trip, but hopefully today on the trip home you will get to see the sights you missed last night.

I pay $7.00 a year for road service coverage with Geico and this was the first time I have used it. Geico was very excellent. They only cover for 75 miles, but they put in a lot of time to find a Suzuki dealer that was in the direction of home and open and could look at the bike. They got a towing service right out to me and got me to Morgantown Honda in Morgantown, WV. I could not find anybody back home with a trailer that was at home, so I left the bike there and my wife came down and picked me up. They are going to give me a quote on Monday, but I fear it may be quite high. If the crankcase cover has to be replaced the price will be astronomical. I checked Ron Ayers and the crankcase cover is $1,100. I figure if it needs replaced and I do it myself I am probably looking at over $2,000 in parts. If a shop does it I can easily see it running $4,000 to $5,000 total.

Most likely the trip next week to Deals Gap will not happen.  I suppose there is a chance that the damage is not as bad as I fear and it will be on the road by next weekend, but it seems unlikely.  I’ll post more information as I get it.