First wheelie....learned what to check for!!!!

[griff23jordan]

Lesson learned!  I just bought the bike 3 months ago, and had the pure luck of running over a nail.  So, I had the dealer put on a Bridgestone BT45  140/70/17.   I did a few checks online to see how people would pull a wheelie on this bike, and learned to go about 10-15 mph in first, hold down the clutch, rev to about 9000 rpm, and dump it.  Worked well....except I found out one major thing.  The dealership didn't tighten down my axle that well.  I putted home (luckily just down the street).  The force of dumping the clutch and the weight on the back wheel pulled the chain so hard that it pulled my left side axle adjuster through the swing arm...what was a flat adjuster now looked like a U!!!!!  Chain just dangling there, and shaved off the lip on the right side of my brand new tire since the right side adjuster stayed in place and cocked my wheel over to the right. DAMNIT!  Luckily it was an easy fix, I just put an extra washer behind the castle nut and tigtened that axle down the hardest I could so that this doesn't happen again!  Thank god it was nothing that major...initially the sound of the chain rattling inside the transmission case made me think that I totally f%&ked up the clutch or something....whew!   

[ohgood]

You've found early in your riding that motorcycle shops are not trust worthy. 

Keep away from the wheelies, they're not as cool as it seems.   

[spc]

You Damn Squid!!!!!!!!!!!
Jsut fuckin with ya.  Wheelies get old after a while.  until then try to keep it in empty parking lots at night.  And watch out for those damn space divider concrete things, I saw a guy hit one of those at wal-mart one night   not f%$king cool

[mattress]

wow that's terrible news!

Do you think the shop will cover the repairs since it was their negligence at fault?

[Kasumi]

Yea, when you ring them up they would be fine with it, when you took it down and they realised you pulling a wheelie on it was what broke it then they wouldnt go near it. Standard bikes arn't ment for wheelies which is possible why the axle bolt couldnt take the strain

[griff23jordan]

I'm not gonna bother taking it down...guess since everything is fine it's no biggie.  Like I said...only thing that really happened that I can't fix is the lip was ground off the right side of the tire which isn't going to screw anything up.  Lucky for me, my step-father fixes and customized Harleys...so I had the tools I needed.  Used a vice to flatten out the left side axle adjuster, some pliers to square the swingarm end, and just added an extra washer under the castle nut so that I'd be able to tighten it down a little more and put the pin back in.  I may just have to loosen everything up again though...chain might be a little tighter than it was.  Still a little bit of play in it, but could probably use maybe 1/4 turn loosening on the axle adjusters and it'll be perfect.  I think, I think I hear it just a tad when I'm slowing down and holding the clutch in.

[97gs500e]

I did quite a few wheelies on my old 97 GS and never had any problems

let the flaming begin 

[drowningbird808]

yeh i had a xr50
wheelie all day on it