Topic: Went down tonight :(

[silentone]

Heading home from work on my 550 I experienced what turned out to be a blowout at about 50mph.  I don't recall feeling the blowout, just noticed the back end of the bike swinging around to my right, then my left and back and forth.  I applied light pressure to the front brakes, trying to ride it out, but ended up hitting the curb and up onto the sidewalk where the bike straightened out.  Then the back swung to the right again and hit the dirt.  I did a tankslap and highsided.

I kept my head from hitting anything as I went down and was able to walk away with some light abrasions on my left elbow and knee.  I was wearing my leather jacket and gloves, pants and a full face helmet.

The bike is in pretty good shape considering.  I bent my left turn signal and cracked the headlight bucket.  There is also a little rash on the engine case, grip and mirror.

I feel very fortunate that this didn't end up worse.  I called a friend, put the bike in the back of his truck and came home to hug my wife and kids.   I'm sore, but ok.

[FunJimmy]

I've never experienced a blow out and sure hope to keep it that way.
At 50 miles pre hour a lot of nasty things can happen.
I’m glad you’re OK and the bike will live to see more turns.

Tip a cold one for us all tonight and get back on that horse as soon as possible.

Cheers
Jimmy

[heffay]

what choice words do you remember saying?   

glad you're not too silent this evening.       go lick those wounds... better yet, let wife do that and have kids bring the beers!   

[78 k550]

thank goodness your ok just bruised.
Can you tell us some history on the tire?
How old and what kind?

Paul

[754]

You got lucky, great it ended well..

 I had a front blowout at abot 70 or 75 mph, about a mile east of Warm Springs MT.. Near dusk, I got stopped in the left shoulder of the fast lane, after holding it up with my feet.. going to one side then the other dance.

 Oddly it all stopped faster than I could comprehend..meaning you are still freaking out not realizing yet you got stopped!

 After about 3 or 3 minutes a police car arrived on a frontage road, parralel to !-90 on the right.. which was a bit strange as there was very little traffic even on the Interstate.. Stranger yet was that the frontage road only continued another 50 or 100 yds then veered of at about a 45 degree angle to Anaconda.

 Anyway he stopped and asked if I was OK , and I told him I had a blowout & rode it out & yes I was allright and he drove off.

 I was about a mile from a C-store back at the Warm Springs exit behind me. I tried to push it but it was too hard as it would jump one way, then the other.. So I ended up jogging beside it, idling in gear, till I got tired, then repeating..

I spent an unexciting night near the C-store in the bushes, at least I could buy a bit of food & beer.. There is only one thing in Warm springs, besides the c-store.. State Mental Institution!!

 For once in my life, I stayed put for the night. .  Hitched a ride in a semi , next day to Anaconda.. bought 2 new tubes and installed them..

I will mention this.. I will NEVER..EVER run Balancing fluid /Flat-proofing again .. try getting that out of your rim with very little water..

 Not my worst flat tire story, but it up there..

[heffay]

i have one image from that story and it is 754 huddled in the bushes near a c-store fighting off a raccoon for the last morsel

oooohh... he said UNexciting.   

[754]

At the c-store, I think I got there by about dark..

Thumbing to Anaconda, 12 miles or more away, getting tubes, getting back, taking off both tires.. and DE-SNOTTING the BALANCE CRAP outa the tire and filling back up with air.. blew the next morning till about noon..

Got to ride in a semi hauling lumber though..

[mrblasty]

(shudders rolling over body) Spooky #$%* man, I was a lot luckier than you when my rear tire went flat.  Glad you are O.K

[silentone]

what choice words do you remember saying?   

glad you're not too silent this evening.       go lick those wounds... better yet, let wife do that and have kids bring the beers!   

I remember thinking "Oh f*$k!" After I got up my first words I actually said were "Holy #$%*, I'm ok!"

Oh... and the wife is treating me to a nice massage tonight.     She went to massage school, one reason I married her!

thank goodness your ok just bruised.
Can you tell us some history on the tire?
How old and what kind?

Paul

The tires are Cheng Shin, not sure what brand the tubes are.  I just bought the bike a month ago so I don't know the exact history or age of them.  The PO said they were fairly new when he bought the bike a year before.


As for Putt (the bike).. I'll be shopping for new tires and tubes here shortly.  Don't have the funds until next payday, but I plan on replacing the front as well as the rear.  I want to be sure I know what I'm riding on! 

My buddy blames gremlins for what happened.  He said he'll be bringing over a bell and installing it for me before I get back on the road.

[Tower]

Count them blessings, @silentone!  And even though I somehow feel "left out", knock on wood, it hasn't happened to me.

There's a DOT tyre code on the Cheng Shins.  The last three of four characters indicate the tyre's date of manufacture in the format  WWYY, where WW is week of the year, and YY is Year after 1999, or in format WWY S, where Y is year between 1990 - 1999, the absence of a special symbol S means Year is betwen 1980 - 1989

[hymodyne]

I hope this doesn't resurrect the cheng shin thread...

I've got them on my bike, put them on myself new, three years ago.

I've been looking at Metzler's. looks like I'll look a little harder.

glad you're OK

hym

[azuredesign]

Sorry to hear it happened, and that Chengs were on there. Real glad you're OK.
Many years ago, I had a nasty accident and totalled my R75. My friend Jeff made me take his R69 and ride over the spot as soon as I could ride again. I think riding over the spot is part ceremonial and part psychological, but I really never had any worries about that wreck after that. Hope this helps and you get the bike going again quickly,
Ben

[Cvillechopper]

Good to hear you're ok.  Having recently gone down myself I recommend you check the fork tubes and handle bars.  It's very possible that they got bent at that speed.  Good luck with the sore spots and getting the bike back on the road.

[andy750]

Glad you are ok and you survived relatively injury free. Also a good write up of events for the rest of us.

Like 754 Ive had a front tire go at 75mph....I was coming off the mountains in Tequila region of Mexico on my CB750K4 with a hot Norwegian babe on the back wearing hotpants and a little tight top...we were coming down a long straight after cornering twisties all day so I was gunning it.....I noticed just a hint of a twitch in the front end....one way to tell you have a front tire going down is handling gets heavy in the front.....I began to slow down...by the time I got to 40 mph the wheel was wobbling like crazy...and by the time it got to 15 mph the bike wanted to slide into the side of the road....lucky the Norwegian babe was small and not so heavy otherwise breaking would have been harder ;-) ........when we eventually came to a stop and I was thinking how lucky I was to be alive and not to have crashed the bike.... she asked...."why are we stopped?" 


 Ive had 5 rear tire punctures and 6 front ones in the last 18 yrs of riding. I guess Im just lucky. 

Get some matching tires on your bike and take it easy for a bit.

cheers
Andy

[KB02]

Glad your okay, man. That really sucks, but the bike can fixed.

[troppo]

the bike can be fixed, the important thing is your OK....
sounds like you had a close one but handled it well mate, glad to hear your doing well

[goon 1492]

Whew, man good to hear your ok bro. don't buy those shins again unless its on a dirt bike. I was luckier than you and i locked up a dirt bike motor on a good ol' back country road doing 75mph, got the wobblies back and forth, and danced with it to a stop. when I finally stopped my butt cheeks were still clamped onto the seat.

[mystic_1]

Glad you came through relatively unscathed.  I've had some scary blowouts in the car but never on the bike.  <knocks on wood>

I remember thinking "Oh f*$k!" After I got up my first words I actually said were "Holy #$%*, I'm ok!"

Been there.    Glad you were able to say the second bit.


mystic_1

[hapsh]

Glad to hear you are OK.
What specifically happened to the tire?  Did the sidewall rip open?  Did the tube stem blow off.  Or did the tread split down the center?
This whole thing has got me thinking.  I don't even carry a tire iron with me since my main bike has tubless tire that would be almost impossible to remove from the rim by hand.  But on my 550 maybe I should carry a spare tube and some tire irons.  Do any of you guys use one of those spark plug adapter tire pumps or do you just carry a bike pump?

[ChevelleSSLS6]

glad you're ok... cheng shin are made in china.  I see bicycles/wheel barrels/hand trucks with them a lot.

[754]

What is a tubeless tire that may be impossible to remove by hand??

On the road , I carry a vintage bicycle pump, tire irons x2 or 3, patch kit & beer.


I am a bit ashamed of my record of 5 flats in 10 days, but find it is usually easiest to fix on the sopt than the alternative..

[edbikerii]

What, nobody ever had a blowout on a tire that wasn't a Cheng Shin?  Come on.  I know I've had blowouts on both Dunlops (on my 550) and BT45s (on my Yamaha).

Blowouts I've had were usually the result of a puncture of some sort (nail once, glass a few times), never a tire defect.

Are tubes more dangerous than tubeless tires in terms of rapid deflation vs. slow deflation?

I'm glad you're mostly ok.  Count your blessings, and thank God you weren't hurt badly.

[edbikerii]

I remember the good parts of that story from last year (remember my Norwegian X wife?).  Don't remember the blowout.

Couldn't you just turn off the petcock and pretend to run out of gas like everyone else?  Had to go all out, huh?

BTW, you're lucky she was small.  Most Norwegians are friggin giant Viking women (think "kill the wabbit" and "Die Valkure").  Luckily mine was half tiny spanish chick (so, she had a great ass).

Glad you are ok and you survived relatively injury free. Also a good write up of events for the rest of us.

Like 754 Ive had a front tire go at 75mph....I was coming off the mountains in Tequila region of Mexico on my CB750K4 with a hot Norwegian babe on the back wearing hotpants and a little tight top...we were coming down a long straight after cornering twisties all day so I was gunning it.....I noticed just a hint of a twitch in the front end....one way to tell you have a front tire going down is handling gets heavy in the front.....I began to slow down...by the time I got to 40 mph the wheel was wobbling like crazy...and by the time it got to 15 mph the bike wanted to slide into the side of the road....lucky the Norwegian babe was small and not so heavy otherwise breaking would have been harder ;-) ........when we eventually came to a stop and I was thinking how lucky I was to be alive and not to have crashed the bike.... she asked...."why are we stopped?" 


 Ive had 5 rear tire punctures and 6 front ones in the last 18 yrs of riding. I guess Im just lucky. 

Get some matching tires on your bike and take it easy for a bit.

cheers
Andy

[hapsh]

What is a tubeless tire that may be impossible to remove by hand??

Well, maybe not impossible, but very difficult.  The Bridgstones on my FZR are very hard to break the bead, plus the sidewalls and radial construction make them very hard to pull off the rim once the bead is broken.

[76 cb550]

supposedly tube tires deflate more readily than tubeless tires.  Tubeless tires have some kinda gunk on them that make them seal around nails and whatnot that puncture them.  Tubeless tires just deflate

[silentone]

There's a DOT tyre code on the Cheng Shins.  The last three of four characters indicate the tyre's date of manufacture in the format  WWYY, where WW is week of the year, and YY is Year after 1999, or in format WWY S, where Y is year between 1990 - 1999, the absence of a special symbol S means Year is betwen 1980 - 1989

I had my wife check the tire code for me as I'm at the office right now... she says it reads, "DOT UYY2 4802" and there's a circle around the 4802. 

So (if I have this correct...) this would mean the tire was manufactured in the Cheng Shign factory in Meci Kong, Teipi, Taiwan the week of November 24-30, 2002?

I'd assume that the tube was at least as old.

[fixahonda]

Wow, very glad to hear you made it back to earth with minimal injuries. A tire deflating at speed is one of my bigger worries when I ride. It's so unpredictable.
 
I was riding with a friend once and the rear tire on his R1 went from normal to flat in the space of a few seconds. We were running about 80-85 on I40 in Durham, NC where the speed limit is 65 but 75 is what most likely won't get you run over in the slow lane.
From behind everything was normal and what seemed a second later the back of his bike was all over the place.
Luckily he made it to a stop without too much trouble.

For the Cheng Shin haters, his bike had a brand new Battlax on the rear. We couldn't find a puncture, but it was eaten up pretty good by the time he pulled off.

[bistromath]

I had a fleece sweater fly off my seat and into my sprocket doing about 80 on a deserted two-lane in California. Yeah, I'm a dumbass, but my dumb ass was numb and I needed the cushioning. =D Locked up the rear wheel and I skidded it off into the dirt, managed to keep the rubber side down, amazingly. Scared the ever-loving @($& out of me, though! 

It had sheared the chain tensioner bolt completely off on the left side, so after pulling the melted polartec out of my axle, to get it riding again I hammered a pair of pliers into the tensioner gap and broke off the handle. Rode it to a gas station, bought a pair of nail clippers (after looking around for everything else in the store), took the lever off the clippers and wedged those in instead of the pliers. Rode that a hundred miles to Fresno for the night, found a machine shop in the morning and drilled and retapped the tensioner. Miracle nothing else was damaged.

[shoemanII]

very glad you're ok. 

also had a rear blowout on my old r75/6, shot me into the oncoming lane but no traffic.  managed to stop w/out theatrics but what a ride from 55 to 0!  that was about 1980 or so.  just last year i high-sided off my trailbike and landed on my shoulder, arm and head.  very sore but no real injuries.  armored jacket, gloves, the whole deal.     

sounds like you don't ride in a T-shirt and sneakers, so you get to kiss the wife again.  there's something to be said about wearing good gear, all the time.  hope the bike's ok too. 
bobp