Moron of the Year Award

[mazza]

There I was finishing off polishing my nice gleaming Dragstar the other day and thought that the scuffed wheels looked comparatively scruffy. I know!, I'll put some of that tyre replenisher that I use for the car now and then.

Never, never, NEVER put that tyre replenisher on your bike wheels and definately not on the tread like I did! Once dried I took the bike out for a spin and nearly came off on the first corner! It's like riding on a perpetual oil slick.

If I read the instructions which clearly stated that it shouldn't be used on motor bikes and only on car tyre walls, I wouldn't have got the fright I did.

So, a self nominated contention for the moron of the year award right here. Duurrr.

Anybody else have an experience that they're prepared to share or know of someone else who did something similarly as stupid? It would be nice to know I'm not alone.

[M1ke]

I tried buffing up my mums escort using polish designed for white cars... It turned the bonnet pink.

[Kris]

There was a letter in Superbikes mag a while back about some guy with a mint VFR400 NC30. Apparently he was off on holiday and his dad offered to valet his bike whilst he was away. Humouring the old man (with obviously time on his hands) he agreed. Two weeks later the son went round his dad's house to collect the bike. When he saw it he couldnt believe how clean it was, everything had been removed, cleaned and then reassembled so it shone like new.

He pulled out the driveway with a wave to his dad and then crashed. Picked up the bike, went to turn left at the end of the road and crashed again...

Turns out his dad did exactly what you did
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NSR125RR - ZXR750H1 - ZX9R E1 - GSF600S - GSF600SK3 - VFR400-NC30 - SV1000N - ST1100-R - CBR900RR-R - GSF1200SK5 - GSF600SK1 - VFR1200FA - GSXR1000K2 - ZZR1400 D8F
www.prisonplanet.com

[Bendy]

Nice work.

Not bike related, but I felt like a bit of a twat recently when I tried to get oil off my expensive high-tech uber-fibre sleeping bag.

Stuck it in the washing machine. Came out, still a bit greasy. Clever me decided to put it in the bath with lots of hot water and detergent (Fairy, Persil and some Mr Muscle Orange Clean) and let it soak. Then out the bath and back into the washer on 'hot'.

Hung it up to dry - sorted.

Not exactly. All the filling has dried into little hard lumps, each contained in their own pocket. Might have something to do with the label saying 'Do Not Machine Wash! Do Not Use Detergent!'

Fool.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Time for the motorcycle Darwin Awards.

Yes I have done plenty of silly things (it is how you learn ). Like putting the top end of one of the Aprilias back together, starting it and wondering why it was taking so long for the temperature gauge to show anything. Water would have helped. Riding off with a padlock through the front disk, resulting in one bent disk and one snapped padlock. Putting my old MBX125 back together, then spending ages trying to get it started, including getting pushed up and down the car park to try and bump start it for about an hour. Then found the reed valve block in the garage.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[GFK]

When I first got my bike, I was going home from work one day. Got about 500yds from the car park and the engine mysteriously cut out.

I hadn't turned the fuel tap on.

So I turned it on and tried to restart. Nothing. Dead.

Tried to restart several times, nothing.

I rang the breakdown people on my mobile. Said they'd be there in an hour. As I settled down for the wait, I noticed that in all the confusion, I'd accidentally hit the kill switch when I tried to restart it.

So I rang the breakdown people back and told 'em I'd managed to get it started and was gonna try to get home.

[M1ke]

I also remember when keith helped fix my rs125 (one of many times) and he put the tank back on... tried to turn my bike over and wondered why it wouldn't start. I then pointed out the petrol was turned off.

He turned the petrol on... a few moments later wondered what the puddle below my bike was

[Mattastic]

I did something similar! I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a bottle of wine, put it in my bag, started the bike and got roughly amile down the road when it started to die! I revved but to no avail. I pulled over, punched it, called it all the names under the sun and then realised I'd turned the fuel off!
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Too skint to buy a bike

[mazza]

Yeah! Fuel switches, that's another one.

Went to Hemel one day and the bike ran out of fuel. No problem, I'll switch it to reserve. Errr, still nothing. Pulled over and realised it was switched to reserve all along. No problem, there's a petrol station across the roundabout. Errr, no money!! Wallet left at home. Asked if the petrol attendant could give me a couple of quid's worth of credit. Nope! Nice one, not. So I went back to my bike. Some chap (Vincent Edwards) was looking at the bike when I came back. We spoke a bit about the bike and I asked him if he knew of another petrol station. Why not that one across the road? I explained why. He lent me a fiver and all was sorted. Nice chap.

Why do so many bikes not come equipped with even a basic fuel level indicator?

[sv_cath]

When I first had my TZR250 the petrol tap was on 'ON' and the bike died so I switched it to reserve only to find that the previous owner had swapped the fuel pipes around so I was actually riding on reserve and had to push the poor girl home...

D'oh!!

[Visitor Q]

yes well back in the day, i walked my derbi about a mile, and stumped several bikers about the problem (most going ooooh thats a nice 50cc... but i dont have a clue whats wrong ), turns out it had gone onto reserve and i hadnt changed it over....
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China traffic/travel bike vid - When I make a sweeping statement, please add the word 'statistically' in to the sentence before you bitch...
From September 2014 to January/February 2015 I will not be using any English, nor reading any. As such, I won't be on here. PM at will, but I won't be checking/posting unless in emergencies. Certainly not for the first couple of months. Please berate me savagely if I break that rule...

[atom]

A few times now I've tried to start the bike up/ driven off with the fuel tap off. But the classic is the kill switch, riding along stopped got off turned bike around, tried staring it up, wouldn't start up, checked fuel, tap etc all fine sat there for about 15 minutes trying to start it up, cursing myself for not having taken the mobile ( thought I had broken down by now) then finally realised.. Duh

[Korn]

Taking Zim's ZXR400 apart to remove the restrictors, we found that for some reason the fuel tap was getting caught on something and we couldn't remove the tank - so in a moment of brilliance we decided to try unscrewing the fuel tap.

So there we were, Zim holding up the fuel tank and me removing the little screws that hold the tap on - fag hanging out of my mouth - when suddenly we both remembered that it might not be such a good idea removing the fuel tap where there was a full load of petrol in the tank! Unfortunately we only had this thought about 0.2 seconds after I'd removed the last screw and the tap flew out, followed by a torrent of super unleaded.

I've never put a cigarette out so fast in all my life
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3516 Miles, 11 Countries

[Ninja]

replacing the rings on my GP100 - the barrel didn't seem to want to slide back over the newly ringed piston - I thought I was doing it at a funyy angle or something. It would go so far (past the chamfer at the bottom of the barrel) and then stop almost solid. "Just might be a tight fit" thinks I; new rings 'n all, just needs a sharp tap with a mallet . . . didn't budge. After a lot of sweating I decided to lay a plank of wood across the top of the barrel . . . and stood with my full weight across it . . . . . . obviously fecked the rings doing this - but couldn't for the life of me understand why . . .

until I discovered these little ring locating pegs - I hadn't lined the cut-outs on the rings with the pegs . . .
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James
4 wheels transport the Body ... 2 wheels transport the SOUL

[Sparks!]

Would now be a good time to tell you that the black adjuster knob thingy attached to the fuel tap simply unscrews from the main tap assembly in order to remove the tank?

Most moron thing I've ever done was back when I done my bike test. I was really crap on the 125, not sure how I passed eventually to be honest

But 5 minutes before my test we stopped just down the road from the center to get a drink, on a gravel car park, I pull in and go to turn to face the other way on deep gravel, bike drops down and I go flying.

Bikes still running, I pick it up and bollocks I hit the throttle .. bike goes flying off into some blokes brand new Vauxhall Vectra

Needless to say I didn't want to take my crash helmet off and stay for the drink

And the time when doing some training, emergency stops in the rain I thought I'd be clever and stop very quickly in a puddle , well instead the front wheel washed out from under me and I jumped off and carried on running all I heard through the radio was the instructor pissing himself
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Current Toys: 06 Yamaha WR250F | Nissan 350Z GT | Tech 4 Homes

[jay12329]

It has to be a guy i work with setting fire to morrisions car park!
They were messing around with mini-motos in the car park one Sunday. One of the bikes was playing up so one guy dipped the spark plug in petrol to clean it. He re-connected it turned the bike over, guess what, it sparked and lit the petrol that it was coated with. And then his arm, in the fuss he picked up the half full petrol can which went up in a fire ball. Then as it was dieing down he decided to kick the can over. Up it goes again, flames 10ft high and a nice scorch patch on a wall!
J

Edit; They had it all on camera too!

[sv_cath]

That reminds me of a time when me + the other half were camping at the Donington GP. He was trying to light a fire to cook breakfast + some guy gave him a beer bottle and mentioned something about needing petrol.
He managed to get the fire lit and took a swig from the bottle only to find it was petrol in the bottle! He spat it out, all over the fire, looking like a firebreather then realised there were now flames coming out of the bottle so lobbed that into the fire too! Needless to say the sausages cooked pretty damn quickly that morning!

[mazza]

That reminds me of one day in the school Summer hols. We were out and about in the hot sunshine for ages and got very thirsty. Neither of us had any money to buy a drink and were making our way home from Southall to Ealing on foot. One us noticed some bottles by the side of a pub in Southall. Decided to take a swig and spat it out, realising someone had used it to piss in!

Never laughed so much.

[Sparks!]

You'd drink from a bottle that you found on the street?



That's disgusting.
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Current Toys: 06 Yamaha WR250F | Nissan 350Z GT | Tech 4 Homes

[mazza]

Yes well. Some of us ended up with a career, some in various detention centres. This chap was never the brightest button in the box!