Was riding to work on the SOHC, a glorious 4 mile ride down a country road. Bike was running nice and I was having a great ride. Pulled into the parking lot at the hardware store I work in on the weekends, and POP!!! Some f%^er in a giant pickup pulls a left in front of me, hitting the bike on the left side, knocking me off the bike. I landed in my right side, luckily a little bit away from the bike, so it didn't go down on me.
I got up and walked away okay, after a brief moment of testing my muscles and bones. I am pretty sore, but visited the doctor and she said I'm just banged up and to take advil for the next couple of days. My hip has a little abrasion and bruising, and my left wrist was slightly sprained. My right hand has some scraping and my right arm hurts, but I'm not sure what it hit.
Fortunately I was wearing helmet, my riding jacket, which is denier nylon, and my leather riding gloves. I had normal jeans for pants and hiking shoes on my feet.
The bike is banged up in a few places, but is not totaled. The truck had a plow frame, which hit and shattered the stator cover, and mashed the stator. It also dented the #1 exhaust header. The front fender was dented and clutch lever messed up. On the right side, the side that hit the ground, the tank got a nasty dent, the handlebar was badly bent, the foot peg was bent, and the fork ears were bent to one side. Luckily the headlight shell didn't crack. In fact, all of the lighting lenses survived.
The real bummer is that I just got done refurbishing the entire front end, not to mention everything else I've done over the past year. I put in new fork seals, steering bearings, SS brake hoses, rebuilt caliper, repainted gauges and triples, new wheel bearings, you name it. I had plans to leave on my cross country trip in a matter of weeks, and bike was mostly ready to go, after a year and countless hours of work. The guy hung around long enough for the cops to arrive and to get insurance information, and I've already got in contact with them. They're sending a guy over to look at the bike soon, so hopefully I can get stuff fixed on their dime.
Here are some pics of the damage:
The dent is actually worse than it looks here. My father said we may be able to get the dent out from the inside, which would be good. I checked ebay for tanks and people are asking high prices for dented and nasty tanks.
I will obviously need a new stator cover, and probably the stator itself as it's all mashed in on that spot. I am awfully lucky the plow frame it there and not six inches to the right, where my foot was resting!
The bike must have hit the ground pretty hard to bend the bars like that and to have the bars dent the tank so badly. The headlight ears were bent over to one side, but somehow the shell didn't break. I hope that new SS hose is okay, it's stretched pretty tight right now.
So now I'm going to start buying parts so I can get it back together in time for the trip. I was concerned with the forks or steering neck being damaged, but my father had a friend look at the bike and he said the front end is okay. It looks like you can see all the damage, which means I can fix it myself. I am a little traumatized from the whole ordeal. After all that laboring and spending on the bike, it took one dumb move in a split second time frame to take my bike off the road. Hopefully I can get it going again soon!
In addition to being unlucky by having a truck pull in front of me, I am also extremely lucky that the accident was relatively minor. He hit me hard (wtf is with the size of trucks these days?), but I'm okay and the bike is fixable, so all will be well.
So be cautious out there! You never know when someone will pull out in front of you, but if you wear the gear and be alert chances are you'll be okay. I'll keep you guys posted on my fixing progress!
