I have been riding my R65 for nearly a year now. I took it out of the shed after rebuilding the carbs and rewiring my signals and decided to tune the carbs and go for a jaunt. Full face helmet, leather riding jacket, riding boots, gloves, Levis jeans (I know..I know, need riding pants) It was a nice cold day at about 35-37F and I feel like I could have possibly been in some serious pain right now if things went differently. Let me start out by first describing this road, it is a very twisty road with a short steep bump where it is possible to catch air at speeds high enough. The backside of the bump is not visible from the front and there is sort of a slight right and you need to be careful not to get too far left for fear of running into traffic head on. While cruising up to the bump at 30mph-ish I intended to just get "light" but not any air and thus gave her a little bit of throttle bringing me up to about 45mph. Well I did catch a tiny bit of air but nothing that scared me and when I landed it was necessary to turn slightly right as expected. This turn I needed to make must have started in the air and when I landed...you are probably expecting a highside here....the back end got uncharacteristically squirrely, slipping all over my side of the road but I was able to keep her up and control it. At this point I am thinking WTF just happened everything was exactly as it should have been and my leg is burning....MY LEG IS BURNING! I look down on the right side and from the knee down along with the entire right side of the bike is drenched in oil. I shut the engine off immediately and cruise to the side. A hose clamp to my oil cooler line had failed and sprayed oil forward onto the front wheel, air resistance blew it back towards the bike and also all over the rear wheel. It blew when I gave her gas for the hill, so it was already coated in oil for the liftoff and slight right that followed, what made it worse was there was an SUV in the opposite lane riding towards me that I would've slide under if I lowsided. Wide-eyed on the side of the road, I decided to walk back to my house instead of call for a ride, I needed the time to think this all over. It could've and probably should've ended differently. :eek1
You did very well considering the circumstance. Many years ago I experienced something similar when a oil fitting let go on a rear brake only Harley. Life can get very intense during an "almost died" experience. I would tell you to buy a lottery ticket, but I have never heard of that response working out. Keep riding!
My dad had a similar situation on his Aprilia a few years ago. Riding back from a recall job for the something inside the gas tank, he was rounding a turn and felt the rear getting loose. Stopped the bike and saw gas pouring out of the bottom of the tank (where the expert mechanics had made the "repair"), covering the rear wheel & vaporizing off the exhaust. Luckily there was no fire or crash and of course the stealership denied responsibility for the job they had literally done less than an hour prior.
It helps when the bike wasn't too sideways. It would have really sucked if the thing went before some hairpins, I would have been down for sure. Being mostly upright and for how fast it happened, I had no chance to hit the rear brake and I even stayed on the throttle which definitely helped me keep from a lowside. Keep the oily side down!
So how long did it take you to pry the seat out of your butt? I always hate that kind of adrenaline rush. Glad you made it out unscathed. Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk
While riding the oil coated rear tire slipping everywhere didn't scare me much, I was more concerned why it was acting like I was on ice. It wasn't until I got off the bike and saw how much oil was on both my tires that I realized that was close. You can still see 4 oily right foot prints on the ground where I got off the bike and stood back.
Overfilled a bike with oil once and it blew it out the overflow breather hose all over the back tire. I came off the bike the first turn that came up. Had road rash all over my back from that one. I was wearing my grateful dead t shirt/shorts and flip flops. I was very young at the time. That Christmas my gift from my sister and mom....a nice leather jacket and leather pants. Best gift i ever got.
