Topic: Share your "Motorcycle MacGuyver" Story!

[Jonesy]

This thread is for us to share our stories on of how our bike broke down away from home and how we rigged up a fix from what we had available to get us home. (For those not familiar with the "MacGuyver" theme, it was a popular 80's TV show starring Richard Dean Anderson as Angus MacGuyer, a guy who could get out of any sticky situation by using conventional items for unconventional uses, hence the jokes about him "making a bomb out of duct tape and a paper clip".)

Here's mine: My wife and I were at a vintage bike show a few years back. She started up her 550 to ride home, and it quit a few minutes into the ride as if someone shut it off. After poking around for 10 minutes, the connection at the key switch was the problem- if you pushed up on the connector, the bike would work. If I only had a zip-tie...

After stewing over the problem and during which time I was ridiculed by some other bikers for not riding a "Dependable American Harley" (thanks for stopping to help, guys...) I hit upon a solution. I pulled the turn signal beeper out of my 750 (It had been disconnected for years anyway) and with the bike's toolkit, I yanked out the wires. I then fished the wires around the handlebar mount and down around the switch connector. Once the wire was in place, I twisted the wire tight so it would hold the connector in place. This enabled us to get home so I could properly rebuild the key switch.

Anybody else have a story to share?

[333]

I wasn't too far from home, and I don't remember exactly why it happened, probably the battery was low on fluid.  But my main fuse blew one night.  I had nothing.  I scrounged around the parking lot and found a cigarette pack and used the foil inside it and wrapped the dead fuse and got on my way.

[Jonesy]

Bump-

Anybody else got a tale to share?

(Great one, 333!  )

[ColinMc]

I was driving my recently re-assembled 1986 Yamaha FZ750 on it's maiden voyage to a family 4th of july picnic a few years ago...everything is going great until I try to shift and Uh oh...shift linkage came apart lol. Well the adjusting rod came partially off anyways. So I stop to fix it...luckily it just came loose but all the pieces were there. So I get everything back together, go to start the bike...starter just spins. Garrr...no cell phone service, long flat dirt road can't get up enough speed to pop start it. Then I realize the starter is loose so it's spinning but hanging out too far to engage. So I take my belt off wrap it around the starter and the flange it mounts to and tighten it down. She starts right up and I ride the rest of the way to the picnic.

[DarkRider]

Lol some of these fixes. But i gotta say i have done one or two as well. When i laid the Interceptor down last spring the clutch lever broke off too short to make use of it as well as the right hand mirror broke off the stem. Well a few min later i was on the road again after removing the stem from brake side and zip tying it to what was left of the clutch lever. Dang thing worked well enough i almost hated to put a replacement lever on lol..

[Shenanigans]

Duck taping road side cardboard signs to make a rainproof airbox for my pods when I got tired of waiting for the rain to pass.


Grohidighast had a few when we were in the west.

Stage 1.


Stage 2.

[Buber]

here you go, 2 stories:
1. I was going on my old 2 stroke, tube type tyres CZ350, and the tube got a puncture (actually it was an inside crack in the tyre, that was "clipping" the tube  ). So, I pull to the side, take the wheel off, tube out, and then think... what now - not having the puncture kit.. i scourged my luggage and found a roll of adhesive plaster and another one of isolation tape. Not thinking too much, I wrapped the tube around , making a bulge in teh tyre  and drove the next town in search of puncture kit. Eventually got it done and drove home..

2. Throttle cable
Once it snapped just at the handle, so I found (from a trucker on a parking lot) a small nut, like m4, and flattened it with a hammer at the end. Got me hone all right!
2nd time, the pull cable broke in the middle - was bound to go, as the outside of the cable was damaged. So, I connected the push cable to the other side at the carbs (as you can't do that at the handle), and continued to drive for next couple of weeks by PUSHING the throttle, not pulling. Was funny. Aha! When cables from ebay came they were good quality, but.. of course too long. Fixed them no sweat.

[joe_and_jeep]

Not a lot of bike ones.  But I got some truck/atv/Jeep stories...

What do you do when you break a c-clip axle shaft and the shaft wants to walk out?  I dtove it 3 or 4 miles to get to the road like this.  Just oiled up the tire to get it to slip.  No damage to the tire either.

[mattcb350f]

Cool stories so far!

My first trial fix was on an XL80 when I was a we lad. The chain broke far from home and I made a new link out of fence wire.....which broke before I got home and was repaired again with more fence wire.

This was also my first experiece with foresight since I took a whole bunch of wire with me after the first fix.

Also, once I was out bush riding at night on a camping trip on my Husky 400 when the headlight blew. Drove back to camp by the light of a kerosene lantern tied on to the front fender.

Outside of motorcycles......

...I've rewired a bushplane to get home with the wiring harness of an old Johnson outboard and I once broke a ski off of a snowmobile and took the other ski off and drove it home like a boat.

 Matt.

[tramp]

first time (that means there were more times) i laid my bike down the kill switch ,among other things,was ripped off
while looking for my parts strewn all over the road i found a washer
used some electrical tape used on the bike already
taped the washer to what was left of my kill switch assembly and fired her up
long ride home with front wheel all bent up
handle bar bent at a 90 degree angle
forks bent and road rash on all the important parts of my body

[fmctm1sw]

Easy... Fishing a broken 1" piece of zip tie out of the bottom of my engine with JB weld on the end of another zip.  Removed oil pan and top end minus jug...  I have a thread in here somewhere about it...

[Soos]

I love this thread...



My most recent mc'guyver fix came lately with the need to plug the vaccum tubes off the carbs i'm running.
they are '85 ninja carbs on a '79cb650 so it's all new territory for me.
I had rode it for 2 days, and all of a sudden on the way home one night the bike suddenly gets audibly louder and looses a bit of power.
First though... oh, s**t. The airbox boots, or the carb isolator(s) had come loose from not tightening something.

Nope, pull off the highway, and the caps on the vacum taps had blown one off(no clamps yet).
..so I promptly walked to the nearest tree, grabbed a small branch and broke off a piece the size of the hole for the vacuum tube.
stuffed it in and went home.
Noise stopped immediately.

Now I have replaced them all with gas tubing capped off with the caps from the end ball point pens stuffed in there.
still need clamps though.
mabey a little bailing wire is needed.
 

l8r

[Caaveman82]

Was messing with the fuel line at one point and forgot to put it back in the retainer clip. It was leaning up against the head and melted and caused me to stall a bunch. I managed to make it to a gas station where I removed the melted line and put in a straw with some valve stem caps I had in my back pack for support on the ends.. (I took a few more just incase the straw didn't hold) Worked beautifully!

This is not my story but it's a good one. My friend works for a medical supply builder. They build non-conductive metal step stools and such and his two bosses are brother and they are like seventy five or something. Last year they were heading to Yellowstone, they blew the engine in their van. Now something to know about these two, they can fix anything. I mean anything. These guys were born to fix and machine and weld. They dropped the engine ground the heads out, by hand, with bastard files. It was insane. I hardly believed it. Not so much a McGuyver story, but still pretty amazing.