Not your average Sunday rideout.

[MementoMori]

Just got back from an eventful ride about Warwickshire, which is really nothing special but now my bike's broke there's nothing else to do except talk utter shite to you people.

I have an Aprilia RS50, and my dad's bike is a Kawasaki GPZ500. Thought we'd take them for a bit of a run. I knew I had a randomly occuring problem of some sort about a weird noise, which I posted in the Workshop but failed to follow up.

Went down to the petrol station, filled up, headed out of Nuneaton and up towards Bedworth. This went smoothly; went back through Nuneaton towards Ansley. Only event here was a fly entering my pupil.

There's a beautiful bit of road, Nuthurst Lane, we were flying down at a top speed (for me) of about 55 lol, when the bike started hissing and making scraping noises. Which was bollocks cos we were in the middle of nowhere. Pulling over, my dad suggested it might have been a fan, but on further play, it seemed as though a clutch plate has gone. Pulling the clutch in usually stopped the sound, but letting it sit in neutral made no difference. The sound was still there, and increased when opening the throttle. It appears the problem only occurs when the bike is warm which made him think it was a fan but the bike was nowhere near over heating. We had no choice but to carry on, which involved going all the way through Bedworth, down the bypass and back home.

When it came to pulling away in first, I often found that something was immediately slowing me down again. Luckily the roads weren't busy today, so I was able to pull over relatively quickly. Trying again, it usually worked and we carried on untill my dad pulled me over. We were still in Bedworth at this point.

We had another look, and decide to bump start it. I had to crawl along in second while my dad ran back to his bike to catch me up. There's a big big roundabout outside Bermuda Ind. Est. which is rather intimidating for learners, and if I'm going to use it, I usually plan in advance.

However, I didn't have the time and ended up in the fast lane, in 2nd gear, on a 50 . Again I was lucky there weren't many cars around. Moved over into the right lane, and with my dad following me, I stayed in 2nd for approximately 3 miles home, with the sound at its worst.

I haven't been riding for long, so this was an interesting experience. For you, probably pretty boring, so sorry about that if you've read this far.

Does what happened ring any bells for people? I knew Aprilias were renowned for falling apart but I've had mine a year and this is the only relatively big problem I've had so far.

When my dad gets his phone back, I'll try and record the noise but hopefully the bike will be in the shop by then.

If this sounds familiar, I'd appreciate your comments as to what you think it might be. But just thought I'd share this with you.

Thanks, + sorry for the long post.
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The tiger who came for a pint