Heartbroken...

[Koala63]

So about 6 weeks ago I dropped me darling. 39 years riding and I've never managed to shake the habit of every 4 or 5 years, having complete brain fart and doing some moronic low/no speed drop or step off which usually costs me about a thousand bucks to put right.

But this time I bent the fairing stay and snapped the cast exhaust mount on the rear peg. Straight away I found out that the rear peg is no longer manufactured, but got lucky and found one on a shelf in WA. All other parts put on back order and settled down to wait. Today the usual assorted mirrors and indicators turned up. Bike's ready to run with new Staintune cans and new tyres. Just mount the new stay, wack on the old fairing {amazingly unscathed) and new bits and off we go.... Yeah right!... Yamaha website was incorrect apparently and fairing stays have not been available since start of 2019. Good condition spare TRX fairing stays are apparently now like honest men in Canberra - nonexistant.

So my long suffering mechanic will try and straighten the existing one and we'll hope for the best. Bloody complex geometry to undo a compound twist though...

I've always admired blokes who can ride for years and years and never step off their machines and never understood how they manage it. Better blokes than me for sure. But now I'm looking at a situation where even if I can get her back to her usual immaculate looks and condition this time, next time I bend her I wont be able to get the parts to fix her. I really don't want any other bike. Nothing exists that can compare directly with a TRX.

I really am fuk'n heartbroken.

Anyone got a straight fairing stay?

Cheers gentlemen. Stay upright.

[Rod.s]

So sad but so true, good original parts are getting harder to come by! As for the blokes that have never had an "off", they are either lying or don't ride...

[andrewo]

PM sent.

[Koala63]

PM reply sent if I got it right. Thanks Andrewo.

The really sad thing is that, for the first time in many years, I can actually afford just about any new bike I want. And every time I go through the exercise of seriously thinking about what bike I'd really like to have, the answer is the same... my TRX.

I'm pissed at Yamaha for discontinuing production of parts which are going to break or bend pretty much every time you lightly drop your TRX. How hard is it to keep the critical jigs and maintain a small stock of bits likely to bend in silly little low-speed mishaps?

[dicky]

How hard is it to keep the critical jigs and maintain a small stock of bits likely to bend in silly little low-speed mishaps?

For a major manufacturing company, very hard.

Rule #1 - No Stock. You don't make anything unless you have a paid up order for it.
For in-production bikes there will certainly be parts, but they all have to be paid for by someone. Initially this will be the spares department, with the cost transferred to the global dealers.
Once whole-bike production ends there will an best guess estimate for unique parts to continue in production based on historic consumption, and after that the parts simply become unavailable.

Rule #2 - No History. You make new things, not old things.
Keeping jigs takes space, maybe not much but it still costs money.
Even if they did have the jig, there may have been some minor alteration to the manufacturing process that was not fully documented, making any new frames incompatible.

A classic case of this is the Saturn V rocket engine. NASA has the full plans for the engine, but they can't build a working one as they don't have the myriad notes used by the engineers to make the 'plans' actually work.
That may be an extreme example, but I worked for a global manufacturer who were unable to revive products that had been obsoleted only 5 years earlier. It was logistically impossible. Jigs were destroyed, not mothballed.

Don't forget that we are talking about a 20+ year old Japanese bike that was never a major hit.
It is interesting to note that when it was released in Aus in '96 it was the top seller for many Yamaha dealers, even out selling the WR250Z that was the mainstay of Yamaha sales at that time.

[andrewo]

Hey, does anybody know if I can change a setting so that when I get a PM, I get an email notification? I feel really bad that I didn't respond to a reply PM I got from Koala63 as I forgot about it and didn't check my PM's, so better late than never if at all possible.

I just found the option to get a reply notification, so I should have ticked that option as well.

[dicky]

The email part of the forum software is broken.
Probably just a setting on the server, but I don't have access to the server so I can't fix it.
Just one of many things I can't fix.
Sorry.