Saved from Mechanical Incompetence!

My 1985 gsx 550 had had the street fighter approach done to it, the person who I bought it off kept complaining the chain always come off,. Didn't seem to sink in that by raising the swing arm the distance between sprockets reduced
My first question to anyone riding a street fighter was always "how bad was the crash?" Because 9 out of ten fighters start with your arse down the road.
 
XTR M980 cranks, the left hand one fell off, customer insisted on a new crankset, he'd lost the preload cap and it wasn't torqued up properly, I explained this but he insisted, ok fair enough! I used that crank with zero problems for a couple of years before selling it on.
 
Well known retailer....mmmm.....an orange word beginning with the letter H, perhaps?

I haven't lucked in with any bike bits, sadly. Once got lucky with some coilover dampers that were given to me because the lockrings had siezed on the aluminium bodies. Bit of heat and off they came. Sent them off to be serviced and for a hundred, or so, pounds i had a £500 set of dampers.
Best car cheap fix i heard about was one of the hot Volvo turbos. Ran like sh!t if it would even start etc. The owner had been to a well known retailer and even a so called expert with it and nobody could fix it. The owner gave up on it and put it on ebay with no reserve. Chap i knew bought it for a couple of hundred quid, its scrap value, and one short pipe, that cost a quid, like a vacuum pipe or something like that, later he had a 5k street racer!. The ECU was confused with a leak, or a pipe collapsing. Something like that.
 
Had too many to remember, but one sticks out more than the rest. I picked up an unknown 90s MTB to strip and flip for the XT gruppo. It was only about 50 Euro.

It was branded Audi, and the son was selling it. The father had used it in his car showroom to apparently help sell cars. Immediately seeing it it was clear it had nothing to do with Audi whatsoever. I guessed it may have been a Cannondale. Polished AL thing.

Anyhow, once in the man-cave I discovered an homemade shim to fit a 1 1/8" suspension fork in a 1 1/4" headtube with an A-headset.

Homemade shim made out of a vacuum cleaner pipe and filled with silicon mastic to pad it out.

Couldn't fcuking believe it, but I had to admire it.
 
It can be quite amazing how ingenious people can be to fix a problem that has a "known fix" available for pence. For example over length bolts on moving parts.....that then restrict the movement of said part...😂
 
It can be quite amazing how ingenious people can be to fix a problem that has a "known fix" available for pence. For example over length bolts on moving parts.....that then restrict the movement of said part...😂
we always called them Friday jobs. as in "need to get her done and parts aint gonna be here till Monday". the problem with a Friday job is that nothing is more permanent than a temporary fix that just about works.
 
Back
Top