keepemflying Frame straightening and wheel bearings By Matthew Parkhouse #13272
IN 1989, I WAS riding my Slash Five to a staff meet- ing at
the hospital
when an inattentive driver ran a stop sign. I went from around 20 MPH to
zero mph—SPLAT!—into the side of his panel truck. I had a helmet and coat and came away with a torn rota- tor cuff injury. My Slash Five came away with EVERYTHING bent in the front end, and I mean everything: wheel, axle, fork tubes, handlebars and the steering head. I replaced all the parts, which came to $1,600 in used and new parts. The steering
head remained bent, but it was bent straight back, which put the front wheel about an inch and a half closer to the front of the engine than it should have been. I found the bike would track okay, ride “hands off ” in a straight line and was perfectly stable up to around 80 mph. I said to myself, “All right, I just won’t go over 80 until I get it fixed.” That was 36 years and about 150,000 miles ago (of the 400,000 or so that are on that particular bike). Things kept getting in the way, like rid-
ing to Istanbul and back. My friend and fel- low old bike fixer, Paul Swenson, nagged me from time to time to get it straightened, but I just kept riding. Last week, I FINALLY decided to move on this as Paul has the BMW frame jig and knows a fellow in
Denver who can do the work. I started stripping down the bike and about eight hours later was down to a rather greasy frame. Unfortunately, the next day Paul went into the local hospital with heart issues, and he is still there. I have been vis- iting Paul and he gave me Clem’s number in Denver. I called Clem, and he said that the fellow who does this sort of work is still around and he’d call him and then get back to me. As this goes to press, that’s where this job is at. While I am waiting, I’m attending to the various parts that are now arranged in a pile in the shop. Today I’m redoing the wheel bearings in
both wheels as I mount a set of new tires. The front is just about done. It proved to be ever so loose in the bearings, an
Two Slash Fives; Strider and the Mexico Bike. If you look closely at the front wheels, you can see that Strider's (on the right) is a bit closer to the front engine cover than the Mexico Bike's. Despite the accident-caused shorten wheel base, the bike handled fine, as long as the speed was kept below 80 MPH.
40 BMW OWNERS NEWS February 2017
TECH
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