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Shed Crash
(by Guy 'Guido' Allen, July 2022)
Shed
dominoes – how a minor cock-up led to a big repair
bill...but we all came up smiling in the end
Here's what happened: I
parked the 1975 Gold Wing a little clumsily. Next
morning, eldest daughter Ms M jnr wandered into my
office at the back of the house and said (looking for
the most gentle possible language), "Your bikes don't
look right, maybe something has gone wrong." What she
might also have said was, "Brace yourself, it's a
classic cock-up."
The issue? The Wing had
fallen over. And the end result was so strange, it took
a moment to understand when Muggins wandered out to
survey the problem.
In fact, the Gold Wing was on
its side, so too was the Honda Blackbird, the Daytona
1200 and the Suzuki Hayabusa. It was a sight to behold.
Just for a moment, I wondered if we were both imagining
things. Four large motorcycles having a little rest.
Maybe it was a bad dream and we'd all wake up and laugh
about it. Err, no.
Yep, four premium motorcyles were down and it was a
surreal sight. Just a little too weird to comprehend.
The only good news was the Triumph Super III had somehow
missed the event and was still upright. Which somehow
made it even more weird.
Dammit. Thinking back to the
night before, I recalled parking the Gold Wing,
wondering if it felt stable enough. Nah, she'll be
right. Wrong!
It had settled on its suspension overnight and something
happened to tip its balance just enough for it to keel
over. With near-300 kilos at its disposal, it developed
enough energy to take out three others. Yes, I should
have taken more care...no point in worrying about it, we
now had a problem to deal with.
Shit. The first response was to panic and try to lift
them all immediately, but after a quick scan, the
panorama of four expensive toys on their side was too
difficult to take in. This was a good time to walk back
into the house, make a coffee and calm down. Things
weren't going to change much in the minutes it took to
settle, get the caffeine hit and deal with the grief.
Suitably caffeined, we had to
face reality, march back out into the yard, survey the
appalling vista and come up with some sort of plan. One
by one, muggins levered the bikes to vertical (now there
is a solid morning of exercise) and shuffled them far
enough away from each other to survey the damage. At
first glance, it looked pretty good.
But that was deceptive. In fact, the result was mixed.
The Blackbird had pieces broken on the cockpit section
of the fairing, but was otherwise okay. Still, that was
a central piece and potentially a major pain to fix.
The Daytona 1200? It copped the worst damage, with two
major breaks in the cockpit section, plus a chunk
missing from the right-hand sidecover.
There was good news: The Hayabusa was unscathed. How?
Who knows? Oh and of course the Gold Wing (the bastard
instigator of all this) also got off without a scratch.
So it could have been worse.
Right, damage assessed, it was time to get on to the
interweb and see what it was going to cost to fix the
damage.
The Blackbird was
theoretically the easiest to source bits for, as it's
recent enough and sold in sufficient numbers for
aftermarket suppliers to take an interest. Full bodywork
kits are readily available for under $1000 delivered to
Australia. More than likely made in China, there was
going to be a question mark over the quality, but it was
the quickest and easiest solution. So hit the order
button.
A giant box soon turned up,
which included a complete bodywork kit. As anyone who
has had paint repaired will know, though I had ordered
black there are several different shades of same, so the
outfit was unpacked with a little trepidation. I'd
prefer to replace just the cockpit piece, but, if it was
a bad match, then replacing the entire bodywork was an
option.
Incredibly, it was a great match. The material was a
little thinner than the original, and there were some
subtle differences, but really no cause for complaint.
Had this been a concours build, we would have taken a
different approach.
Disassembly and replacement took a couple of hours, with
some need for caution, as there were several fiddly
aspects, right down to ensuring the air from the
twin intakes from the snout was correctly set up
to feed the oil cooler. The aftermarket unit didn't have
some of the internal fittings quite correct, but
adapting it was easy enough.
One of a few details that weren't right was the Honda
logo on the replacement was bigger and a little more
garish, but really there was no cause for complaint,
given the cost.
I kept the original cockpit shell in case anyone ever
gets enthusiastic enough to restore it back to stock.
Overall, the match was surprisingly good (lucky, I
reckon) and panel fit very close without being quite as
tight as original. All up, a good result for the money.
Next...
Then we came to the Triumph.
Forget getting aftermarket kits – none available and
this was a matter of tracking down used fairing parts
and praying they were okay. In this case we bought
second-hand pieces. The Daytona 900 panels (bodywork is
identical to the 1200) we bought out of Europe were a
perfect paint match – so kudos to Hinckley for being
consistent with its paint.
Fitting that central piece was much simpler than for the
Honda – far fewer components and a much more basic
design.
We however got a surprise with the replacement
sidecover. The paint was a great match and it was off a
900 Daytona rather than a 1200. What I didn't know was
the black dye from the 900 stickers bleeds into the
paint and essentially made the transition from 900 to
1200 sidecover a no-go. Really?
So we had two options: Repaint the second-hand
sidecover, or track down another from a yellow 1200. It
was about the same cost and I went for the latter. The
item (from the USA) was a bit shabby when it turned up,
however a careful clean-up and polish fixed that.
All up, I reckon we spent about $2500. An expensive
screw-up, but it could have been a lot worse.
Since then, I've sold the Gold Wing. I'd like to say the
shed crash had nothing to do with that, but I'd be lying
– the incident kind of poisoned what was already an
awkward relationship. Yes, I know it wasn't the bike's
fault, but these things become personal.
And now I'm much more careful
about how everything is parked before I tuck them in for
the night...
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