Get-you-going repairs & hacks...

[MaxPete]

Dear all:
I am big fan of Ryan F9 who is the video guy for Canadian parts and accessories retailer FortNine. They are a good outfit with decent prices and good service. Ryan is a well-known YouTuber and his materials are invariably well-produced, technically correct and quite funny. He is not an engineer (sadly) but he does know his bikes and his science and he can do the math.

He does a lot of how-to’s as well as bike and product tests and he always does real tests and not just fluffy supplier-stroking like most reviewers. A couple of weeks ago he did an excellent review of the CARDO PackTalk Bold and the top-line offering from SENA - and I'll bet SENA's ears were burning after that one. I'll bet their sales took an immediate hit too.

His latest video posted this morning is on ways of getting your flat tire inflated without an air compressor and I found it to be pretty darned good so I am posting it here.

Does anyone else have any good hacks and repairs for getting going while on the road?
Cheers and stay safe and healthy!
Pete

 

[willis]

When I was in my 20's I worked in my family's trucking company garage. I used the ether trick many a time to seat the bead like he shows. We had the tool to use properly, but sometimes a bead just wouldn't seat and the fire trick was just enough expansion to do the job. I also did this trick on a tandem trailer tire that came off the bead too and was able to run the inner tire on a board and seat the bead with fire without removing the whole wheel from the trailer.

 

[Mailman]

Does anyone else have any good hacks and repairs for getting going while on the road?

My tried and true method.....throw money at it! Sorry Pete, I couldn’t resist.

 

[5twins]

Yes, M-M, M-M, M-M, Mo-Money, lol. That could become your new nickname - Mail(Mo-Money)Man, lol.

 

[fredintoon]

- - - Does anyone else have any good hacks and repairs for getting going while on the road?
Cheers and stay safe and healthy!
Pete

Hi Pete,
how to get your girlfriend home when your Velocette's clutch cable quits in mid ride.
No problem when riding solo. Kickstart, Run with bike to mebbe 3 MPH. Jump on, boot into gear, Carefully shift sans clutch.
When carrying passenger it's a touch dodgy. My one experience had the clutch cable fail while rolling.
Shifting sans clutch worked OK until a cop pulled us over to ask why I'd rolled through a stop sign.
On explaining our predicament the cop asked how we planned to get moving again.
"You could give us a push?" And he did. But that was in rural England 60 years ago.

 

[nj1639]

The old glass fuses.
The specifics of the event have somewhat fogged with the years but the end result is what we're shooting for.
I was out in the country on a bike I was working the bugs out of. Having stopped for a wee bit, I got her going to head home and she died. No rhyme or reason. Did the checks of fuel and fire. Had fuel, no fire. Checked the fuses and one had blown. Swapped some around and turned her on, good to go. Kicked and started, put her in gear and died. Checked fuse and its blown. Swapped fuses around again. Key on....got power. Electric start....blows fuse. Now I'm looking for a cigarette pack among any debris in the ditches for the aluminum foil. None to be found. No spare fuses, no wrap for a rig. In the interim I felt that I had found the short or the offending circuit was no longer fused.
Looking at the fuse holder I saw that the clips could be popped out of the plastic housing. I popped one side of the main out of the holder and worked enough wire through as to be able to clip that clip into the other clip.
Key on, got power. Kicked her over, started, put her in gear and away we went. Twenty miles of back road to home, waiting for something to burn up......lol. Made it with no damage.

 

[Norton7d]

The one trick of using the kick starter to fill a tire was clever, knowing we own twins, could we start on one cylinder and fill a tire with the other dead cylinder?

 

[wrenchjohns]

The foil on fuse works but if you don't fix the problem in the left rear door, the windows of the '64 Lincoln go down in the rain while you're not there, it will send smoke signals. Result = wiring harness fried completely to the left front. I never did that a second time.
john

 

[xjwmx]

you can get a lightweight bicycle tire pump at wally's for $10. it's about a foot long by an inch. i've picked up two nails in my rear tire over the years

 

[xjwmx]

one hack that's kept me from being stranded is carrying extras of critical parts. I've put on a spare pickup sensor, igntion coil, and tci box. was able to borrow spare float needles once when something in gas reacted to the rubber on one. have also turned a gushing vacuum petcock into a working manual petcock in the field by having gasket paper and seals-all with me

 

[fredintoon]

Another half-century old memory just surfaced.
2AM pushing my bike home as it'd run out of gas. Met a guy pushing his bike home with a broken chain.
My chain spares got his bike mobile and 3 bulb horns of his gas got my bike running.
These days my rig has tubeless tires on cast wheels.
No more kerbside tire repairs under a bridge in a rainstorm when you are running on tubeless tires because a can of FixAflat will get you home to do a proper repair in the comfort of your own garage.

 

[MaxPete]

Another half-century old memory just surfaced.
2AM pushing my bike home as it'd run out of gas. Met a guy pushing his bike home with a broken chain.
My chain spares got his bike mobile and 3 bulb horns of his gas got my bike running.
These days my rig has tubeless tires on cast wheels.
No more kerbside tire repairs under a bridge in a rainstorm when you are running on tubeless tires because a can of FixAflat will get you home to do a proper repair in the comfort of your own garage.

...and what is the chance of two guys with broken down bikes bumping into each other at night...in the rain?

 

[xjwmx]

...and what is the chance ...

i was riding along in the middle of nowhere in north dakota and there was a bike out of gas on the side of the road. we got to talking and he was from my home state, home city, and lived on a street just a couple blocks from where i did

 

[RonXS]

Yamaha Alternate Headlight
Early 80's, was riding a borrowed XS650 to Orcas Island. As it's an island, a ferry is involved. Left after work, headlight was working when I started. Got to the ferry... ferry ride takes about an hour and now its past sunset... I ride off into the darkness. It takes me a second to realize that I have no headlight. Nothing to see by, no street lights only the occasional mercury vapor light up on the barn... Far from home, what to do...

The fix
I removed the headlight, accesses the turn signal wires in the bucket and plugged them both into a hot circuit. Now the're on and after removing the amber lenses the big Yamaha turn signals are putting out enough light that I can see the ditches. Not great illumination, but they cast enough light that I could reach my destination.

 

[MaxPete]

Yamaha Alternate Headlight
Early 80's, was riding a borrowed XS650 to Orcas Island. As it's an island, a ferry is involved. Left after work, headlight was working when I started. Got to the ferry... ferry ride takes about an hour and now its past sunset... I ride off into the darkness. It takes me a second to realize that I have no headlight. Nothing to see by, no street lights only the occasional mercury vapor light up on the barn... Far from home, what to do...

The fix
I removed the headlight, accesses the turn signal wires in the bucket and plugged them both into a hot circuit. Now the're on and after removing the amber lenses the big Yamaha turn signals are putting out enough light that I can see the ditches. Not great illumination, but they cast enough light that I could reach my destination.

Now THAT is a great idea!

 

[gggGary]

Not earth shaking, but MC camping on a busy holiday weekend had me tenting at a very remote boat landing (twenty miles of gravel road away from my route in light rain, sigh) in the boundary waters area of Northern Minnesota. Bike, a V4 had been acting "off". found a cracked vacuum line was the issue. cutting a bit of line from another, some whittling on a stick and a bit of wire in the tool kit devised a plug that saw me through the rest of the trip around Lake Superior.
Drying out in camp the next morning.

 

[MaxPete]

Not earth shaking, but MC camping on a busy holiday weekend had me tenting at a very remote boat landing (twenty miles of gravel road away from my route in light rain, sigh) in the boundary waters area of Northern Minnesota. Bike, a V4 had been acting "off". found a cracked vacuum line was the issue. cutting a bit of line from another, some whittling on a stick and a bit of wire in the tool kit devised a plug that saw me through the rest of the trip around Lake Superior.
Drying out in camp the next morning.
View attachment 165768

Good one - I had to do the same danged thing on a '65 Corvair Corsa back when I was a boy.