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Anyone see me broken down on the M2 earlier?

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DUCAUDI
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PostPosted: 16:47 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Anyone see me broken down on the M2 earlier? Reply with quote

It's taken all day to get this sorted.

I was supposed to have a lie-in today but my boy called me up at 06:55 with an SOS as he'd broken down on the M2 London-bound having just joined off the top of Bluebell Hill sliproad.

His chain had snapped. Which was ominous as he'd only just replaced it himself on my driveway two Sundays ago.

He'd managed to retrieve his chain when I got to him.

Turns out the split link had given up. I didn't realise this, but I've since been told that split links are only appropriate for up to 125cc and anything bigger needs a rivet link.

It was too early to get a new link from anywhere so I took him to work in Gravesend and phoned the Highways Agency, as they had already attended before I got there and told him he needed to move it off the motorway soon or they would do it for him.

I called them on the way to Gravesend and told them the situation; I could call for recovery but would probably be quicker to just wait until 9am to get a new link and fix the chain myself and it'd be gone.

They were polite to me, but unsympathetic, and said if it's not gone within 2 hours it'll be towed away.

I thought good luck with that as it was chained to the side railing with 3 heavy duty Abus chains and locks.

Anyway I dropped him at work in Gravesend and came back to babysit his bike until 08:45 when I then made a beeline for Barney's on Luton Road, Chatham, which was supposed to open at 09:00.

Spoke to Chris behind the counter (he opened about 15 minutes late due to dropping a bike off somewhere up the road before work) and he was super helpful! What a fecking legend he is! Never been to this shop before but it reminded me of a bike version of the old 4U2Fit car parts shop that used to be on Tonbridge Road in Maidstone, but for bikes. Proper old school but he knew everything off the top of his head that customers came in asking for and stocked everything that everyone asked for while I was there.

I took the broken chain with me and he basically said it was shit LOL. My boy had bought the correct size for his bike, and got a DID one, but basically got the cheapest one he could find which I think was around £30 and only suitable for 125cc bikes. It may even have been a fake, I'm not sure where he got it, as it was only a couple of weeks old as he replaced it on my driveway a couple of Sundays ago and it was already rusted to fcuk! Although he does commute every day on it from Maidstone to Orpington/Gravesend or wherever he's working on the day but it's usually North Kent or Essex. Not sure it should have rusted up in such a short time however?

So yeah, apart from the split link coming off, the chain wasn't up to much in the first place anyway so I came away with a new heavy duty X-ring gold chain, a rivet link tool and some verbal instructions of how to use the tool.

Got back to the bike and just could not for the life of me figure out how this blasted thing was supposed to be used!

I wrestled with it for over an hour in the mud and slime and rain and freezing cold. Kept dropping shit and getting bits covered in grit.

Highways Agency turned up again to hurry me up / give me a bollocking which didn't help my stress levels.

I know it probably seems like the most basic thing in the world to anyone who has done it once, but never having done it myself before, on the hard shoulder in a hurry in these conditions was not conducive to learning to do something for the first time. I probably need to be SHOWN physically and visually (rather than being TOLD verbally) by someone who knows what they're doing, indoors in the dry and in the warm, on a test chain and link so I can do it for myself so I know what I'm doing next time.

The chain came with a rivet link AND a split link. So in the end I gave up on the rivet tool and I just tried putting the split link on in the end but I even struggled with that. I could not get the pressure plate on far enough to let the split link slide into the recesses in the pins. It was a snug fit though so I brute forced and wedged it on over the pins and it seemed stiff enough to stay in place if I took it easy and just rode it to safety using minimum power or engine braking.

I left my van on the hard shoulder and rode it back to Barney's. Bless Chris he really didn't have time to deal with my drama but he dropped everything and came out, put it on a paddock stand there and then, took the bodged link off (while telling me that I ought to be shot for my failed bodgery) and replaced it with a new rivet link and put it all back together and tensioned the chain correctly. He was super polite and patient with me only wanted an additional £6 for the extra link! Outrageous! I dropped him 40 notes for his kindness. I'll leave a glowing review on Google later as well.

Anyway the saga didn't end there.

I then had to park the bike somewhere close to the sliproad to the M2 where my van was. I left it a Buckmore Park Karting, got the missus to pick me up from there, went and got my van (Highways Agency had been back in the meantime to leave a snotty yellow note on the back of my van). Drove the van to Gravesend where my son was working, with the wife following behind me. Left the van there. She gave me a lift back to Buckmore Park to get the bike. She went home from there and I then rode the bike back to Gravesend to leave the bike there for my son after he finishes work and swap over to my van to drive it home, soaking wet, freezing cold and very miserable and grumpy!

This whole saga took from 06:55 when I first got the call until around 14:00.
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DUCAUDI
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PostPosted: 16:56 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

On my way home I found an old boy on the hard shoulder with a Crosstourer with a flat tyre.

Gladly, I had my van full of tools and some tyre repair plugs in my glovebox.

You'll be glad to hear I done the decent thing, and left him stranded!

LOL JK I plugged his tyre for him, pumped it up and went on my way, happy I'd ticked off another good deed towards a fellow biker.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 16:56 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

TLDR: Too dumb to put a chain on.
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Pete.
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PostPosted: 17:12 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

SPlit links don't normally just fly off if it's a quality chain. I ran one on my turbocharged bike. Possibly it was poorly installed or just rotten luck. Either way it's good that you didn't have to pay a couple of hundred quid recovery fee.
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132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good Very Happy
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DUCAUDI
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PostPosted: 17:18 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pete. wrote:
SPlit links don't normally just fly off if it's a quality chain. I ran one on my turbocharged bike. Possibly it was poorly installed or just rotten luck. Either way it's good that you didn't have to pay a couple of hundred quid recovery fee.


True, although it was over a couple of hundred for the new chain and rivet tool and £40 drink for Chris.

That boy is a menace!!!

Kids these days!
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Pete.
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PostPosted: 17:40 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

I fitted rivet links with two different sized hammers. No special tool required.
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132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good Very Happy
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Freddyfruitba...
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PostPosted: 18:12 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

You really do not want to be fucking around on a motorway hard shoulder.
https://www.rescuemycar.com/quoteandbuy/ £20/year for national rescue/recovery. Why wouldn't you?
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 18:20 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

You're talking to someone too dumb to fit a chain properly using a split link....
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DUCAUDI
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PostPosted: 18:36 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Freddyfruitbat wrote:
You really do not want to be fucking around on a motorway hard shoulder.
https://www.rescuemycar.com/quoteandbuy/ £20/year for national rescue/recovery. Why wouldn't you?


To be honest I've had breakdown cover on my taxi fleet in the past, AA, RAC, Green Flag and other third party companies sold to me by my insurance company that don't own their own fleet and just sub everything out. All of them have let me down at some stage or another with unacceptable waiting times.

One of my drivers broke down in London and they told me they simply couldn't recover it. I said that's not good enough, is it going to be hours? Tomorrow? Next week? I'm paying for breakdown cover here you can't simply tell me no. Just tell me when you can do it even if it's days from now. They simply said they couldn't do it as they didn't have anyone available. Not good enough! They were fecking useless! I was so angry I had to go out in the middle of the night and recover the vehicle myself with an A-frame as the driver had gone home on the train hours previous.

Private cover may be relatively inexpensive for an individual but my fleet cover was costing me over £2,00 per year at one point and we were only having one or two breakdowns a year.

I now don't 'insure' against breakdowns because they can't be trusted to provide a prompt service. By prompt, I mean under 4 hours!

Besides which, going on an average of one to two breakdowns a year I'm better off just doing 'pay as you go'.

In the vent of a breakdown now, if local I have a shortlist of local companies I use and just pay the £150 or whatever it is to get recovered and if I'm further afield I'll go through the Yell.com and Google, there's usually someone who will come out in under 30 minutes if you're paying cash.

As for the bike today - in hindsight yeah I'd have called my usual guy for local recovery but I honestly thought I'd be able to sort it out relatively quickly.

Despite Nobby's ribbings, that I fully expected, I maintain anything is easy when you've done it before but in shtie conditions on the hard shoulder crawling around in mud and slime and the wet and cold... it's easy to sit there and laugh and criticise.

Anyway I have fitted a split link in the past on a 125 and had no trouble simply using a pair of plyers and a flathead screwdriver. Maybe I was using the wrong pressure plate on the wrong set of pins or something, the plate just did not want to slide over the pins it was really tough. I get that it's supposed to be a pressure fit on the rivet ones but on the split link one I have done before I seem to remember the plate just sliding over the pins fine and the split link holding it in place.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 18:44 - 31 Mar 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Glad that, as a business owner, you could afford to waste so much of your time to go fix it ineffectually yourself when you pay for that to be done by professionals.
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MCN
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PostPosted: 01:47 - 01 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

I saw someone broken down. Slowed to offer help, saw it was you, Didn't stop.

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Ayrton
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PostPosted: 10:44 - 01 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fuck that the hard shoulder isn't the place to fit a chain, why not just sling it in the van?

I remember fitting a split link to my 650 was much more of a pain to do than a 125 and a pair of plumbers grips we're needed. Now I just use a rivet link, but don't get the £15 tools, they are utter shite, you want the "did style" like this.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223575552191?hash=item340e2430bf:g:e3oAAOSwBgphnlG9&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4H3INsFvG5JnSwTVpTk4zgMMPaDijQSOxWVs1g%2BGX8M7hlXTGLDCJE0d1q%2FN86jilLiEBwlpOkX6QZgpgh5E%2F7WEAApJpih74INxeRHhZaO3%2B8DFhN8WqOSwgbEurTW%2BENj9l64ULePoHUd69pmTA77njulO3%2B1mcA2G0vrEaB87aRJa3w1cSU2qjJWayn8IH4dosjCQukCRRtVYF9NmkpuQG7fIqZjiXIEUsApV9snGm1NrlYPxCiBh1DFLXP5TViKCsi2vRcWlnYy1rEFxshC2tDNdFinHT82o0VS84r2w%7Ctkp%3ABFBM9L2Rw-dh
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woo
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PostPosted: 22:08 - 01 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dunno sounds like if your son had breakdown cover this would be all sorted.
Yes RAC/AA can take ages but when they get to you its sorted with a tow home or to the nearest garage.
if hes late to work, hes late, at least he alive as the chain break didnt cause him to crash.

so much of this story could have been easily solved than making it more complicated than it needed to be.
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ThunderGuts
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PostPosted: 10:54 - 03 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rivet links can be made a mess of too; cheap tools or naff technique (or both) and you can either split the rivet head or not flare it enough. It's possible to do it with a hammer and a punch, alternatively get a proper tool (not cheap) and it's a doddle (DID chain tool actually made by DID, pretty much impossible to not do it correctly).
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DUCAUDI
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PostPosted: 01:05 - 04 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ayrton wrote:
Fuck that the hard shoulder isn't the place to fit a chain, why not just sling it in the van?

I remember fitting a split link to my 650 was much more of a pain to do than a 125 and a pair of plumbers grips we're needed. Now I just use a rivet link, but don't get the £15 tools, they are utter shite, you want the "did style" like this.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223575552191?hash=item340e2430bf:g:e3oAAOSwBgphnlG9&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4H3INsFvG5JnSwTVpTk4zgMMPaDijQSOxWVs1g%2BGX8M7hlXTGLDCJE0d1q%2FN86jilLiEBwlpOkX6QZgpgh5E%2F7WEAApJpih74INxeRHhZaO3%2B8DFhN8WqOSwgbEurTW%2BENj9l64ULePoHUd69pmTA77njulO3%2B1mcA2G0vrEaB87aRJa3w1cSU2qjJWayn8IH4dosjCQukCRRtVYF9NmkpuQG7fIqZjiXIEUsApV9snGm1NrlYPxCiBh1DFLXP5TViKCsi2vRcWlnYy1rEFxshC2tDNdFinHT82o0VS84r2w%7Ctkp%3ABFBM9L2Rw-dh


I say van - it was my 9-seater minibus! So it wouldn't have gone in the back. Annoyingly I did have the option to go up the yard and dig out the motorbike trailer but I thought it would be less messing around if I actually got the bike back on the road where it was rather than recovering it back to my gaff.

I've got the tool now, cost me £70, all I need now is for someone to show me how to use it Embarassed



woo wrote:
Dunno sounds like if your son had breakdown cover this would be all sorted.
Yes RAC/AA can take ages but when they get to you its sorted with a tow home or to the nearest garage.
if hes late to work, hes late, at least he alive as the chain break didnt cause him to crash.

so much of this story could have been easily solved than making it more complicated than it needed to be.


Point taken but even if we'd had breakdown cover I still probably would have taken the same decision to fix it at the roadside as I said I already had the option of taking a trailer up there which undoubtedly would have been quicker than waiting for recovery (i.e. 30 minutes instead of 2 to 4 hours).

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
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