Riding back from the Island on Monday after one of the best weekends of racing and weather in recent years and the clutch goes BANG! CRUNCH! SIEZE! in Morwell. Now if you know where Morwell is and you know where Sydney is then you know how I’m feeling at this point. To add to the mix Helena was with me and had not yet had her morning coffee. There were not a lot of smiles on offer and as the hire car options started drying up one by one, things were looking grim. (Note – there are no hire car outfits in Morwell the closest is Traralgon and they all want extortionist relocation charges for one way hire to Sydney) We looked into storage (nope) train (nope) by this stage the day was starting to suck BIG TIME!
Traralgon Yamaha to the rescue.
After exhausting all options for getting riders and bike home I relinquished and called the bike shop in Traralgon. (my opinion of bike shops is about to change) They sent a Ute to recover my bike and take it back to the work shop. (free of charge). The mechanic found a second hand clutch basket and bolts in his mates back shed then cleaned out all the ground up bits of metal and springs, broken bolts etc. Then he installed the new bits and bolts, new springs etc. and a bit of silastic for good measure. 5 hours later and $120 for the clutch basket and other bits + 1 hour labor and we were singing “ON THE ROAD AGAIN†and feeling like there really is an angel up there.
Oh Yeah and the mechanic who would have to be one of the best blokes I’ve ever come across lent me his 06 model R1 with flowed heads and some tasty carbon pipes, so we could toddle off into town for lunch at the pub
. The moral of the story – Don’t over tightened clutch spring retaining bolts. I had checked the plates 25k ago and tightened the bolts without using a torque wrench. The result was stretched bolts that finally gave way.
The other moral would be “If you have to break down – do it in Traralgonâ€ÂÂ
THANK YOU TRARALGON YAMAHA!
