Bonehead award! HAHA Submit your nominations.

I nominate myself for the bonehead award, on two accounts:

1:The other day I had the tank off while I was fiddling with this and that... Well.. I forgot to hook up the fuel line and vaccum hose. I don't currently have a starter on mine...So I push start the thing and it runs for a minute then dies... So here I am sweating, out of breath, and my muscles just ached after a while of trying to push start the damned thing... I put it away, only to realize later what I had done wrong...lol

2: Ever since I've taken my bike anything over 50, I've noticed lots of wind resistance... It just didn't seem right. It damn near wanted to throw me off, sometimes with the change of wind it would move the bike. I thought about it and looked it up on the forums and asked friends and just accepted it as normal. I came to the realisation today that my jacket that I have been wearing has a giant hood on it.... Parachute. lol

 

I'm too ashamed to add my own... So here is one about my bike's PO. When I went to see the bike it wouldn't run for more than a minute. I left saying "no thanks, I'll pass". The next day I got a phone call from him. He said he had stayed up all night to clean the carbs (rush job alert!); but the bike still wouldn't run. Then he realized that he had only put a couple litres in the tank but left the petcock on "ON" rather than "RESERVE". When he switched it to "RESERVE", it fired up and ran right away. I returned for another look and bought the bike.

 

LOL...Nice...

 

I was out riding once last fall when my tach stopped working. Well, oh crap, I thought, now I'm going to have to find a new tach for this old dinosaur. Later I stopped to get a drink of juice, and looked around the front of the bike, and discovered that the tach cable had come loose from the motor and was just dangling under the trees. I stuck it back in, tightened the screw cap with pliers, and it worked fine.

 

I recently spent the better part of a day soldering every single wire, resistor and connection there is to install a DYNA Rev Limiter on my 750 Max.

Once I made the last connection and painted it with some Liquid Electrical Tape ... on went the tank and testing commenced to set the Limit at seventy-nine hundred fifty revolutions per minute.

With everything hooked-up and ready to go I switched on the Ignition and hit the Start Button.

The Bike wouldn't start!
And ... won't ... ever ... if the Rev Limiter is seeing 12 Volts.

There's NO fine print.
I called the folks at DYNA.
The DYNA 300 don't work on CDI fired bikes.

I took a pair of diagonals and clipped the Hot wire after talking to the Tech at DYNA.

Varooom!

 

Well that sounds like a whole lot of fun. Thats not quite anything you did, but, good story nonetheless!

 

I was synching the carbs on my wife’s bike. I unbolted the tank and turned it 90 degrees so I could gain access to the adjusting screws. I hooked the manometer up, started the bike, and began my adjusting procedure.

While I was bent over messing with one of the adjusting screws, I heard a loud thud. I stood upright and discovered the fuel tank missing. I peered over the other side of the bike, and there it was. I picked it up, turned it over and discovered several dents were it landed in the gravel. A perfect tank damaged because I didn't secure it properly.

And now I'm working on fixing it. Hopefully, it will turn out nice for the Missus.

 

I was on a trip and stoped at a reststop to get some gas an food when a young couple came up and asked me about me bike so we talked for a bit . The young lady was nice to look at ind I gess thats why i for got to put the side stand down. Yup you gessed it over she went I bent the bars the shiffter and broke half the clutch leaver and mirror. The werst thing was as thay walked away she was laughing at me. Iv never left it up again.

 

Well when it comes to gas tank stories I also have a one. I had just finished putting on the second coat of clear the other night and had laid it out to dry. I waddled ( broke my leg 2 weeks ago, another story) up stairs to get a POP, and told the wife how nice the tank looked. We came down stairs to see, and didn't I slip with my crutch, knock over the table and BANG! 3 weeks of sanding, painting, sanding and some more painting down the tubes. A couple of chips, and some nice big scratches. I tell ya, it sucks having to do it all over again, thank God we have long winters up here!
Mac

 

Well heres one I just now did.

I figured its been a long time since my bikes been waxed, so I grab my roomates wax he uses on his bike....


Black wax, White bike= Gunmetal grey bike.

 

Ill, that is too funny. Black wax??? Let me guess, color coordinated bumper trim wax?
You taken it out to White Rock Road yet?

 

I am fixing some rotted wood and upholstery on the boat. After the engine cover I had just enough plywood to do the jump seat and base.

I did a measure once on the seat back and cut it 1" too short. Now I need to by a sheet of plywood to get a 8x14" strip.

 

Last week I mounted (with great pride) a pair of Dyna coils into a cover plate between the frame rails from side to side where the air box used to be. Once the coils were mounted into position, and bolted into place, I siliconed around them to seal it up and gave it a thick coat of rubberized undercoating. After a couple hours it was dry to the touch so I started working with it again. Unfortunately, undercoating has a long cure time, and I now have a pair of thumbprints in my cover plate.

Yesterday, when I was again working on electrical, I decided to power up my relays for more direct headlight power. I was sourcing a switched power "hot" wire and realized that all the red w/ white stripe wires were no longer powered up with the key on. I retraced every single step for the last month, and after about an hour, and almost a mental breakdown, I turned the master power switch on the right handlebar back on and power was restored.

 

Robert,

No, I havn't taken it on White Rock road yet. Is that a good one?

 

Too bad you didn't notice that when you were lookin at her. Could've gotten a few dollars off!

 

Last year I unscrewed th dipstick on my 1100 Shadow to check the oil level. Then the phone rang out in the shop so I go answer it. After the call ended, I took off on the bike, forgetting about the dipstick just sitting in the engine. I got about 1/4 mile down the road to notice oil spewing out all over the exhaust pipes on the right side of the bike. Then, I remembered the dipstick was unscrewed!! So I screw it back in and head for home. It took a little oil to bring it back to full and some cleaning up with some degreaser and I was soon on my way. PD

 

Ill, its the hangout for the drag crowd (at least til the cops show up). If you really want a great ride for the sake of pleasure, hit HWY 49 up from Auburn down to Placerville. I'll be up in your neck of the woods this coming weekend (Folsom/Eldorado), do you need anything?

 

Actually I was just on White rock road today....In Rancho Cordova there's a motorcycle shop just off that road...lol

 

There are three that I recall in Rancho. Rancho Recyclers, Sac Psycho Cycle (I forget the spelling really so forgive me but they did hook me up with the forks for my brother's Venture), and I forget the name of the third. Lots of parts, none of it cheap. You could also look up A&S out off of Old Auburn and Charmical. Best of luck with the starter. Check out Z1 Enterprises (they're in Sac) for your starter brushes, they have the best price going.

 

A couple years ago a friend from highschool brought his car over because it was acting up. From what he told me I suspected a headgasket so we got out the compression tester, he had a bigger spark plug hole so I screwed the adapter on the end of the tester, took out the spark plug and put the adapter in. Then I unplugged the coil for obvious reasons. We cranked her over cyl #1 checked out okay. I unscrewed the compression tester only to find that the adapter had stayed in the spark plug hole, it wouldn't have been too bad except that the car was a OHC and there was about 6 or 7 inches of head before the spark plug hole....needle nose...ratchet extentions and socket........45 minutes later......still not coming out. We finally just took the valve cover off and managed to get that out. Put the valve cover back on and the rest of the cyl tested out just fin.
Went to start the car again.....turned over....doesn't start, check plug connections, fuses,......It took me about 20 minutes of pulling my hair out to realize that I had not plugged the coil back in...

 

I just thought of another. I was riding the Maxim during the first week I got it and she kept loosing power... I didn't know what to do I limped her home and had her stall at almost every stop sign. Got back and checked the almost brand new plugs out. Everything seemed to be burning not too hot or too rich or nothing. I checked spark, coils, oil level, carbs were squeeky clean, even checked compression, everything that came to mind. I was stumped...
Got back on to check out the symptoms again and realized that I was running out of gas. I didn't realize that the oil light is pretty dim in broad daylight. :lol:

 

neonjoe,
same thing happened to me last friday with the coil only it was my mechanic who forgot to plug the coil back in on my truck.
my bonehead award to myself wouldve been a few weeks ago when i almost dumped my bike in the garage. went to stand it up from the sidestand but mustve pulled up too hard cause it kept going past straight up over to the right side. i basically jumped over it holding onto the bars, landed in a full squat and stood it back up.

 

I just remembered one from my college days. A friend was pulling the valve train apart in his 65 Mustang with a 289 (Problem turned out to be a rod knocking).

We had pulled off the carburetor, intake manifold, valve covers, rocker arms etc. We had a lifter down in it's hole where we couldn't quite grab it. Decided to crank the engine over and let the camshaft push the lifter up.

What we forgot was that we had an open fuel line and the ignition was still connected. We got quite a fire.

My friend responded by dumping the bucket of coolant over the fire which spread it over a good sized chunk of the parking lot at his apartment. I grabbed the fire extinguisher (dry chemical) from my trunk and put the fire out.

As we stood in the burnt asphalt mixed with antifreeze and soda from the extinguisher the owner pulled up. He was not really too pleased with us.

 

wow....

I'm thinking MIcarl takes home the cake so far...

That really sucks!

 

I might wanna wanna do that. Sounds like fun. I want to get a bit better at throwing the bike around first though.

 

Actually, the more I think about it I think my buddy deserves most of the credit.

 

Twit with a short fuse.
One Saturday in summer 63’ I had been working on my Velocette with a friend, cant remember what we had been doing but we had had the head off. The Velo had an oilway came up the outside of the block then tee’d off to feed the tappets, where it tee’d there was an aluminium bolt which was hollow and with a hole right through L TO R which allowed oil to flow.

Of on holiday with my parents that evening. With my girl on the pillion after about 30 miles I noticed oil spatters on my leg and found one of the oilway bolts loose, my mate Mole had supposedly finished of the job while I got cleaned up.

Not thinking I got a spanner on the hot ally bolt which of course sheered right off, prat that I was I threw the head of the bolt some twenty yards into the long grass by the side of the road. I knew I was buggered the minute I threw the thing.

Every time a bloke on a bike came by they would stop I’d explain what had happened and I soon had a crowd of bikers helping to find the bloody head. Found it eventually and used some plastic metal to fit it back, did’nt work too well but we got to our destination just had to fill up with oil at every garage on the way. A one and a half hour ride took 7 hours and when we arrived my old mum was frantic

No way of getting a new bolt until we got back home Velo dealers were thin on the ground and the ride home a week later was a nightmare.

Faighaigh

 

I did a mechanics course at school when I was 16 as no one in my family could fix a thing. A mate agreed to join me and picked me up in the car he'd got a week earlier. As we head to the course I noticed a huge amount of smoke pouring from the back of the car. "Is there an oil problem" I asked. "there was" he said, "I had to put about 8 and a half litres in before she was full". "full to to the brim?" I asked. "Yep, she's full now" he said. I left it to the course instructor to tell him what a dipstick was and how to use it!

 

hahah speaking of autoshop classes i've had a couple instances.

we once had a customer come in and as a joke we told her she needed blinker fluid... she was either lying to feel smarter or had a jokester of a husband when she replied "oh yea... my husband is picking some up he's been on my back about that for a while now... i was wondering why it was going so fast!"

if you've ever done any kind of brake work where you have to compress the caliper you should know that the first thing you do upon reentering your car after the work is done is pump your brakes back up so that you can have fully functioning brakes again.... an idiot in my class took 3 hours to do 3 brakes and then decided to call it a day and reassemble it. sure enough after the class was over he made his mad dash for the gate to go to lunch...he was always kind of a jackass and as he was rounding the corner to go out the gate he tapped on his brakes just enough to swerve his truck right into the pole holding the gate since he only had pressure in one brake caliper... we all laughed at him for all the days he spent trying to repair all those lights and grill!

 

i got an auto shop story...... last year we were preping a small block 350 for the teacher and one ofthe kids in our groups job was to torque down the rods and heads .........well eight pistons, rods sets of valves, a block and two heads later we remembered the kid was absent.......have you ever seen a small block piston go through a roof before? pretty good stuff but a little scary...