Get bent

You know how you could fix everything. Just rotate the tubes 180 degrees and get your wife to stand on the same corner. Take a long hard look and Presto- straight tubes, happy wife, what more could you want. Oh- maybe less bruises.

When ya get em back just roll em against each other and all faults left will be revealed. If you can eyeball a light gap, start shopping for more as these will drive you nuts to get nice feeling and fit again. Stick tubes in yokes on bike and see if they are parallel, to check yokes. Do as Jim advises and let us know if it helps or hurts more afterwards : ) My tires only go flat on the bottoms, so flip em and carry on.

hobot said:

When ya get em back just roll em against each other and all faults left will be revealed. If you can eyeball a light gap, start shopping for more as these will drive you nuts to get nice feeling and fit again. Stick tubes in yokes on bike and see if they are parallel, to check yokes. Do as Jim advises and let us know if it helps or hurts more afterwards : ) My tires only go flat on the bottoms, so flip em and carry on.

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If they can be straightened I don't expect them to be anything but perfect. The guy hasn't called laughing yet so maybe it's a good sign...

Hehe, silly boy, tubes don't bend like coat hanger but like a barber shop pole or cork screw, so its not like just bending a plate flat it more like un winding a straw. Trixies deer bent tubes were beyond repair but past Peel were found rather less bent from drag strip crash and gopher hole launches at 55, so got new ones for Peel and gave Trixie the hand me downs, [being just a common New Orleans slut to me]. Trixie's tubes ended up like .003-4" non perfect, within adequate for a factory Combat.

Look close at angle of lower legs after the lower yoke. I think that forward bend occurred when deer hi side landed it on my out stretched L knee flying out stretched after first hitting ground head first. The tubes rarely bend to same amount or direction each.



Might be able to see the slider part of RH leg leaning a bit to the LH.

Before


After

Just need to reassemble...

Good to hear all better, but are YOU ok?

davamb said:

Good to hear all better, but are YOU ok?

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What do you mean? Physically or mentally?

I had so many bruises from riding the dirt bikes the weekend before I can't tell if I got more. :mrgreen:

Mentally I've always been questionable. :|

swooshdave said:

davamb said:

Good to hear all better, but are YOU ok?

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What do you mean? Physically or mentally?

I had so many bruises from riding the dirt bikes the weekend before I can't tell if I got more. :mrgreen:

Mentally I've always been questionable. :|

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OOH YA, 4 days-this weekend- KTM, Taylor Park, single track, looking forward to bruises. Jim

Pansies, I look forward to bruises and bashes off road too but on a real motorcycle, a heavy Norton Twin Commando, sheeze wimpy like MX dirt bikes are for youngsters and old men...


In water skiing or snow skiing or surfing etc, its said if ya ain't falling then you ain't really trying.

BTW play on this terrain surface is where the cleat like dual tread comes handy some what. Its also
how I know hitting big stuff on fully 6" extended hobot Roadholders is a non issue to bending tubes.

Here, I'll put it into perspective. My metal instability lies somewhere this side of Steve's, although I've yet to yearn to take a Commando into the brush. So there's hope for me yet. :mrgreen:

BTW play on this terrain surface is where the cleat like dual tread comes handy some what. Its also
how I know hitting big stuff on fully 6" extended hobot Roadholders is a non issue to bending tubes.[/quote]

I broke my extended roadholders within a couple weeks of extending them. I rode up a 3 ft asphalt embackment next to an irrigation ditch. At the top I decided I couldn't cross there so I started rolling back down the bank and apllied the front brake. I heard a pop but didn't pay much attention until I took off forward again and saw oil squirting from the RF fork. It split the lower slider from the top down about 3 inches. That was around 25 years ago and I took the long damping rods back out and threw them away. Jim

Dear Dave kettle calling hobot's pot black. We are more blood brothers now than either of us would like to admit : (
Always follow traffic too far behind for the amount of traction and brake and time and escape route reserves. Never fiddle with any thing till straight up and clear ahead. Sight your aim to hold before oggling what's not straight ahead. Act up a bit in crowds instead of constant blending into the flow of things. Try to scare yourself a bit with braking effort on each outing to refresh pad surfaces and imprint the sensation into the brain stem/spinal cord computers. Never brake hard if forks turned the tiniest bit. Stay off Gravel, wet steel, fuel spills and mud. I'm putting a child seat on Ms Peel's forks for some buffering...

Took me about 1.5 hrs to get them back together. Still need to fill them with fork oil. And bleed the brakes. I couldn't get the pads apart (I should have put a shim in) so now I get the joy of bleeding again.

Then bounce it on the ground a couple times and tighten everything down.

comnoz said:

BTW play on this terrain surface is where the cleat like dual tread comes handy some what. Its also
how I know hitting big stuff on fully 6" extended hobot Roadholders is a non issue to bending tubes.

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I broke my extended roadholders within a couple weeks of extending them. I rode up a 3 ft asphalt embackment next to an irrigation ditch. At the top I decided I couldn't cross there so I started rolling back down the bank and apllied the front brake. I heard a pop but didn't pay much attention until I took off forward again and saw oil squirting from the RF fork. It split the lower slider from the top down about 3 inches. That was around 25 years ago and I took the long damping rods back out and threw them away. Jim[/quote]

Jim,
Yes i have seen broken roadholders due to increased damper rod length, with the extra leverage imposed on the legs , My old mate Roland broke a few on his modified 500t, its when jumping over rock's and the forks are fully extended when they hit a another rock or tree.. Snap! but that was before oval sliders! carnt see it being a problem on the road ..infact i have seen only 3 in of movement in fork travel after a 40 mile run. on the road..so unsure why 6in is needed...except in the bedroom

Does a fella good to read how others get off road and even backwards with their C'do's to find weakness in their fork mods on trying to follow hobot's antics. Think back deeply now, did any of those extended damper rods also include a spring spacer so forks extended with some pressure to contract again at slightest loadings or just a stupid solid spacer or dumber yet no spacer at all? If not then then they lock up bound in top bush to pry apart the slider. Also backwards tends to extend forks on loading so maybe no mods could avoid that injury, same a Dave smacking a bumper or deer striking Trixie's factory Roadholders.

But you are right that no one needs more than 3" of fokring for road racing which is child's play boring compared to what I'm into on Ms Peel. One slight additional advantage Peel might of had and still does is RGM's fork brace/bridge works that extend over lapping leg/slider support by at least 2 more inches.

Three events tested Peels maxed out forks, 55+ up hill pasture strike axle deep in a gopher hole on full extended forks that almost threw me over bars-face into clocks, as it blasted an explosion of sod/dirt from tire wide trench 4-6" deep to wheelie out and leap some more as rear hit the bottomless hole and launched air borne to land right and keep on going with air knocked out of me. Total silent indefinite stop and rebound. Feeling frisky looking for some adrenaline rush returning to a friends place after spanking corner cripples plastic cycles in spades, 6 ft tall slightly sloped un-mowed ledge hit at 30 mph on power to leap about 8 ft high that landed front tire nose down in a axle deep rut to bottom out and pogo teeth into clocks and almost over the bars, but totally silent indefinite soft stop and rebound of forks. Then similar event to Dave's, not seeing around sharp paved blind at 40ish after dark encountered a tree fall across path so slammed on brake to hit trunk at ~ 15 mph dead stoppie impact -- I lucked out not to be impaled on broken limbs sticking out. Moral of this is dual, you don't know what ya missing out on hobot Roadholders and two, look before one leaps... ugh.

How secure do ya feel chasing surprised deer off trail-trial bike course through raw chest high brush and stumps and ruts at 40+ mph. Deer can hit that with a SNORTON on their white tails. Then they leap over tree falls or fences I can't follow them over - yet. My next decade in my 60's will be spent documenting what yo'all are missing out on.

bwolfie said:

You could always turn them around and hit the @#%&@! again arkansas style!!

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As a kid I was delivering newspapers on a bicycle when I saw a cheerleader practicing handstands in her front yard. She had a great body and I stared wonderstruck at her gorgeous upside down form and ran straight into the back of a parked car. The forks were bent so bad that I couldn't steer well. So I turned the wheel around backwards and rammed it into a tree. After a couple tries it was fine.

This is a perfect example of reverse engineering.

Swoosh - remember this and next time you can fix it the easy way.

jseng1 said:

bwolfie said:

You could always turn them around and hit the @#%&@! again arkansas style!!

Click to expand...

As a kid I was delivering newspapers on a bicycle when I saw a cheerleader practicing handstands in her front yard. She had a great body and I stared wonderstruck at her gorgeous upside down form and ran straight into the back of a parked car. The forks were bent so bad that I couldn't steer well. So I turned the wheel around backwards and rammed it into a tree. After a couple tries it was fine.

This is a perfect example of reverse engineering.

Swoosh - remember this and next time you can fix it the easy way.

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What sort of tree was it :?:

Alrighty JIm S. great distraction and recovery tale. Screw the tree type was she tanned or not on the under side?

We "straightened" the front valance on a TR-4 one time by nosing it up to a tree and putting it in gear and giving it some gas. No cheerleaders involved...

I "straightened" the front bumper on my 78 F-100 with a tree after a drunk caught the edge and pulled it forward 3 feet.. Dam sHAME WAS THE BUMPER WAS nos AND THE NICEST PART OF THE TRUCK. dam fingers and the caps lock.