Show us your motorcycles

[Richard Selin]

(03-15-2013 19:20)gondolaguy Wrote:  Oh my! What kind of lift, how did that happen?

It was a Blue Ox Sport Lift. I bought it from Randy when I bought my coach, and Randy arranged for a welding shop in Gainesville FL to install it. I was basically fed some misinformation and paid big for it.

Contrary to what everybody believes to be Blue Bird "fact", the SP coaches are only rated for 5000 lb towing with 500 lb on the receiver (not the 10,000 lbs some people state when they advertise the SP). The SP should never have had a lift installed in the first place as it put too much weight on the receiver mount. The receiver cross member is bolted, not welded, in-between the C-channels at the back of the coach and the weight (or more correctly the moment arm) of the lift caused this cross member to rotate, which in turn caused the back of the lift to droop toward the ground at an angle, sacrificing ground clearance. This was apparent on the first trip from Florida back to Alberta. I had a shop in Alberta jack up the lift again and retighten the cross member bolts as hard as they could.

When I left Alberta for Montana, the lift bottomed at low-speed on a dip in the road and next thing I knew my bike was being dragged by the straps. I was turning into a diesel shop at the time and only traveling about 15 mph, but it was enough to total it.

I had a self-locking front chock and four-point tie-down, but I didn't have time to install a rear wheel chock (it required drilling through the deck steel, and I didn't have a drill big enough for the job). I think what happened is the jarring force of the lift bottoming caused the bike to lift up momentarily, the handlebars probably twisted from the tension of the tie downs, and it was all she wrote.

The two saving graces were that I had disconnected my toad earlier (long story) so at least the bike didn't fall on the car and total off two vehicles, and that insurance paid me fairly for the value of the bike. But I was out $3k for the installed cost of the lift, which I dumped at a metal scrap yard in Paso Robles.

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(03-15-2013 19:25)davidmbrady Wrote:  Corey, I'm just now catching up on this thread. There's no question you're a man of taste and refinement. Triumph Bonneville Special, BMW R90S Cafe Racer, Wanderlodge LXi, what more do I need to say. If you ever need to find a home for that R90S cafe, look no further. That thing is art on wheels and definitely belongs on Skyline Drive at Alices Restaurant in Woodside California! It's not Woody Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant but it might as well be: http://www.alicesrestaurant.com/

You mean this place David?



I also found a photo of one of my previous bikes, a 1996 Triumph Sprint 900 triple, at Crater Lake. Both of these photos are from 2005 on my way down to Laguna Seca for the return of MotoGP. I was confused initially because I've gone to Laguna Seca 3 times and I first thought these were from my 1999 trip to see World Superbike.