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7 months, 5 drops.

D

dinplug

Tricycle
Purchased 94 -1000 in July 2013.

1. First weekend hurt my knee while skidding in some gravel, did not drop it, but was backing out of garage later that day, weight went on bad knee, over she went. Broken RH foot peg mount, broken pannier mount. Small scratches on pannier.

2. Third weekend. Parked sensibly on side stand 700 miles from home, retrieved hat from LH pannier, as I pushed it closed bike tipped over and broke RH foot peg mount again, managed to affect repair by swapping bolts around, enough to get home.

3. Month 3, parked on side stand, decided to re-park  to allow other bikes to park in cramped bike parking area, stepped off without pitting stand down at all, no damage this time. Embarrassing !

4. Month 6. Pulled off highway to answer phone, almost stopped, tiny skid in gravel, too much front brake, went down LHS broken clutch lever, still rideable.

5, Month 7. Just finished 1600 miles in 4 days two up in wind, rain, fully loaded. Got home unloaded, decided to get a pizza, looking forward to a quick ride with no luggage. Tried to pull up on a sloped parking space, too much front brake again, dropped RHS, broke foot peg mount yet again ! I gotta stop doing this, it's costing a fortune.


 
Welcome to COG!  Sorry to see that your first post is here in this area.  Wow... sometimes there's no way to learn but the hard way.  Sorry that it's come to that, Dinplug.  But if she's going over on the right hand side, I've got an actual tip for you!  Take off the middle piece of Tupperware on the right hand side.  Underneath you'll find a schraeder valve - just like you find on the tires.  It's the way you add air to the rear shock - doing this will raise the back of the bike up a bit (quite a lot if it's dead empty) and give your bike a bit more lean angle so it settles better onto that kickstand.  It gives you a better ride too.  Do NOT use a high-pressure hose for this job; the shock holds only a tiny bit of air and you can easily blow the seals right out.  But a little air will make a huge improvement!

And your incidents do qualify you for the CDA Award except for one thing.

You need to be a full COG member.  Don't worry, we don't make you drop her again after you've joined in order to qualify!  Most folks join if they hang around a while and like what we do here, so just drop me a line after that happens and we'll add you to the roster.

Just to avoid confusion, here are the instructions: How to Convert from Forum Subscriber to Full COG Membership
 
DINplug, I feel your pain.  I went through a period where it seemed like I was staying up nights planning drops.  Those pegs, brackets, and mirrors are too expensive to have to buy all the time.  I'm thinking plastic bolts.  LOL
 
Yeah, those are ABS training wheels aren't they?  I need some pretty bad.  DINplug might need some too.  :-[
 
Nah... he doesn't need a lighter bike, like me, he just needs less gravity :)
OK Dinplug, I think you may have surpassed even me. Now if you can arrange a drop right in front of a big picture window of a restaurant with a bunch of COGgers for an RTE, then you can take my ribbon from me. :-[
In seriousness, if you don't have tipover bars, you should look into them. I think they have paid for themselves at least 5 timss over.
 
Hi Guys,
Thanks for all the advice, encouragement, tips and a tiny bit of sympathy.

Jorge : I agree tip over bars would pay for themselves, but I think they look ugly. I'm going to research the less gravity concept, I'm amazed how quickly I can lift the bike back up .... adrenaline and swearing loudly helps greatly. I hope I never take that ribbon of yours ... the only thing that would have made that more amusing would be a Youtube video of same.

Pistole : I'm with you  ...... Never !

Ev Sr : I've never sustained any injury at all  ..... always left standing beside the prone bike.

bajakirch : No offense taken (it's a tale of woe) They have all been rookie errors .... I'll get smarter as times goes on.

gPink : If I had a shiny new 1400 I'd get those training wheels, that's the reason I purchased a 20 year old bike, I've not cried once, I knew I'd bang it about a bit, but as time goes on I'm falling in love with the 1000 so will probably buy a newer one at some stage.

Rev Ryder : I now stay up nights thinking of ways to make more money to buy parts. Am seriously thinking about fabricating the RH foot peg bracket in STEEL !

ChipDoc : Thanks for the welcome and the tip, makes sense. Cheers.

 
I agree... they break up the lines of the bodywork. I mounted driving lights on them, so it takes some of the "edge" off them. Still, I'm sooooo glad I have them!
There is a very good method of picking up a dropped bike (which by the way, impressed all those COGgers). Look up this link:
http://www.ibmwr.org/otech/pickup.html
 
Dinplug said:
Rev Ryder : I now stay up nights thinking of ways to make more money to buy parts. Am seriously thinking about fabricating the RH foot peg bracket in STEEL !
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, I was actually working on that last year for a bit, but haven't been willing to invest the next $100 in the project.  I spoke with a foundry here where I live that specializes in casting stainless parts and if the owner told me that if I ever got a suitable mold made for them, just bring it out and he'd slop some steel in it for me.  Long story short, I haven't finished the project (what's new?).  I was wanting to do a greensand mold, but the parts are NOT conducive to that ancient technology in the stock shape.  I asked his opinion of lost wax casting and he felt it would be the best way to go considering the shape.  What that requires is making a wax footpeg, coating it in some form of refractory slurry, curing that (which will also melt out the wax) and then burying that mold in sand, cast the part, then break off the mold.  The result would be one indestructible footpeg. 

So, I made a high temp silicone mold of a footpeg, cast a wax model (lots of failures here), and never came up with a suitable refractory material (though some folks have used plaster or drywall compound or similar) and so everything just stagnated.  I wound up damaging my high temp mold and so have sort of backslid to ground zero again. 

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Sorry to read this ???

Admin,  guess you can give the guy the golden medal in this subforum...:)
 
It's now been a whole year since my fifth and last drop.

Touch wood !

I knew I'd master it.

I even rode her through a very sandy camp ground alongside the beach recently, fully loaded with camping gear.

Used my legs as outriggers LOL

Looks like my dropoholicism is cured.

JB
 
Dinplug, I'm with you. The same question was asked of me (lighter bike?) after my series of drops. The crass comments and mounting repairs only steeled my resolve to master my top-heavy monster. Now I ride better, safer and know what do do when potential drop situations rear up. It's a matter of figuring it out, learning from mistakes and getting better. A relative, used to owning Cads and Jags, once said of them "at the end of the day, they are just machines, to be used, maintained and cared for."

Nobody's perfect and the law of averages says that there will be owners with no drops and owners with insufficient appendages to count them all. It's been a leaning experience for me! There is no fear of grabbing wrenches, soldering gun, etc., to fix or improve my baby. Even with the drops she's now a better machine than when acquired and I'm a better rider/owner, so what more can one ask for? Give 'er!
 
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