On the highway going lickety-split.  Bike dies.  Pull over...confused...start looking things over, cranks but no start.  Walk up and down the shoulder of the highway wondering how my bike has failed me.  Bike has PLENTY of gas in it.

It starts to get dark...I hear animals in the trees next to me.  I think of the crazy stories of drop bears.  OK...calm down...I'm not in Australia.  Still nervously pacing at this point.  Why has no one stopped to help me?

OK, think...what have I done recently?  I recount the following:

1.  new jets that are larger in diameter
2.  lunchbox filter
3.  WOT to test out new setup

Then it hits me.  I flip to reserve, and the bike fires right up.  I'm a moron.

Quote from: Janx101 on August 08, 2012, 10:42:22 PM
... several months ago... hadn't been riding a whole lot .. helmet had been sitting on a shelf in the little shed ... got enough time for a quick evening ride so on with the gear and wipe the cobwebs off the helmet and off i go to the local mountain rd .. nice and easy.. just enjoying the solitude kinda thing.. one of the mates happens to be out riding spur of the moment also and at the top turn-around point we chat for a min or so... then both head back down together ..

slight tickle on top of my scalp but as i have my hair usually cut under 5mm i think its just a little rubbing from the helmet cloth .. couple of corners down the hill the tickle on my scalp starts "walking forwards" (along one of the ventilation gaps/channels) ... suddenly the memory image of wiping cobwebs from the helmet seems so much more important! 

in somewhat of a panic i do all the wrong moves and while i did stop without harm on the opposite side of road on a corner in the bushes the mate told me later it looked like i had just been possessed ... frantically scrabbling at the chin strap with gloves on and yelling "theres something alive in my HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELMET!!!!" .. got the damned thing off and peered suspiciously inside ... no spider PHEW .. but one of those little light brown mini cockroaches dawdling around ... removed the bug , replaced the helmet and rode home with slightly less aplomb than normal 

no more helmet in shed on shelf... and i check the inside each time i pull it on now ... dont really want to bin the bike over a bug!

10 years ago, I was in a car with the windows rolled down.  Dead middle of the night.  Was traveling about 60 (100KM/h) when suddenly a large furry flying thing hit my palm, followed my arm into the car, and lands you know where.  Locked up all 4 wheels...got out...and removed said insect.   

   Drop bears!

I don't have anything crazy...yet.  Yesterday I ran out of gas, but due to some kind of instinct I had decided to take surface streets instead of the highway so I only had to push it 1/4 mi. which wasn't bad.  Apparently I have no reserve capacity or something is clogged  .  Anyway, I fill up with a gallon to get me home to a cheaper station, flip to prime, start it up, shift to 1st with the kickstand down, :killed:.  I decide to run on RES. for the 15 mi. home but I end up running out of fuel again within a mile or less, I had to pull onto the sidewalk, prime it, and then switch it back to ON.  After running out of gas twice in 30 min. and walking on the side of the road with my bike I felt pretty dumb, but it worked itself out.  I'll inspect the petcock, tank and RES line later in the year.

One morning I had just finished washing the bike and waxing it. I figured I would take my nice and shinny bike out for a ride. I start it up on the side stand and go around the corner to put away the hose. That's when I hear the sound of metal dragging on the pavement. After yelling SOB, run around the corner to see my bike rolling down the driveway backwards and then almost doing a barrel roll as it bounced off the side stand going down the curb. After yelling SOB again I pick up the bike and my mirror that flew across the street. My handle bars were knocked out of the clamps, my mirror was broken, my exhaust was scratched, and my fairings were nice and gouged.

definitely epic on that one cndn,....i wouldve been,....cussing for days,...

So of course, the day after I mention I had never dropped the bike, I gently layed my ST1300 down in the driveway.  Fortunately nothing more than a minor scuff on a plastic part.  It was a bear to pick it up.  Guess I should have kept my big mouth shut!

wow some funny fails there. good to see we can laugh about them.  haven't had any epic fails yet on the moto and I hope I never do, but had some close calls.

one was trying to take of in neutral from lights.  when I realised no gear selected, I instinctively lifted my left leg to engage first gear, problem was right leg was up on the brake.  lucky I was balanced and was able to take off before falling.

another one was after a driver allowed me to merge, I again instinctively waved, with my right hand,  off course trying to go up hill with any power doesn't work.  nearly stalled it as I tried to recover and not be rear ended by the good Samaritan.

have had some epic fails in the car though, one similar to one above.  sitting at the lights waiting for green and a bee flies in the window between my sunnies and my face.  off course I panic (allergic to bees) and push back, hitting the accelerator pedal.  straight into the back of the car in front of me.  ouch.

I have two...

To Preface this one, I am not mechanically inclined at all...just picked up my GS from the dealership after having it re-jetted.  Got about 3-4 miles away from the dealership and I come to a stop at a stoplight (first one in line)  Once a car had pulled up behind me I went to put the bike into neutral, couldn't seem to do it.  Not too worried I just sat there and waited for the light to turn green.  It does and I go to accelerate off the line, nothing, I am revving and this thing is bucking like crazy.  I could not get it to go no matter how high I revved, finally it just died.  Embarrassed and disgusted I get off and push it to the side of the road.  Try again to get it into neutral and just cannot seem to find the right position between 1st and 2nd gear.  I try to start it and it fires right up and revs nicely.  At this point I get really mad , the dealership must have messed with the transmission to get more money out of me.  I call them somewhat angry and they come out immediately...(by now you should have a good idea of what I have done??)...the tech guy gets there and tries to put the bike into neutral and realizes that I was in fourth gear, no wonder I could not find neutral...FAIL!!!!!

Fail on my part for not looking at a bike closely when buying.  I have since sold my GS and now ride my '93 Ninja exclusively (I bought in Oct).  I just sold the GS a few weeks ago, at the point of sale my wife mentions that now my other bike will break because I don't have a backup to ride.  Last week I am running slightly late for work and run out start the bike, already had all of my gear on, back it out of the garage and just start going without letting it warm up at all.  I coast down my gravel 0.25 mile road to the main road.  Pull out on the main road and go through the gears to 4th without going over 5k since I did not let it warm up.  I come around a corner and see that the temp needle is up and I just lay into it.  It hits 5K and starts coughing and sputtering, then slowly begins to die.  I get it off the road and try to restart, it just turns over but won't fire.  I start pushing it back home.  Call the dealership and have them come get it.  Turns out the PO used household caulking as a replacement for o-rings, gaskets and to plug up holes in the Carbs.  Just a closer look when buying and I would have never bought this thing...FAIL!!!

Quote from: ThatOtherGuy on August 09, 2012, 11:04:09 AM
another one was after a driver allowed me to merge, I again instinctively waved, with my right hand,  off course trying to go up hill with any power doesn't work.  nearly stalled it as I tried to recover and not be rear ended by the good Samaritan.

Yeah, I learned this one early on, too, though not with any comedic results.

from first job,....
I used to work at a door manufacturing company.  Wood on one side and metal across the street.  On the wood side they had a giant sander that the doors would go through and it would level off imperfections etc etc.  I got moved to the metal side (learned to weld there!) and one day boss brings me a door that a customer used to step on at a construction site.  Dents galore.  I tell him it is trash, he says 'fix it!'
Covered in Bondo, I'm air sanding it down, when I get the brilliant idea to carry it across the street and run it through the sander.  Everything goes good the first run through.  Second run, the operator (buddy of mine) drops the width way too low.  The belt hits the metal, sparks fly everywhere, the giant vacuum system sucks sparks into the ducts where they catch the wood dust on fire and a giant speeding fireball erupts the catch bags into a firestorm blaze.  All the employees in the plant run out the door yelling while me and my buddy sprint for extinguishers and (eventually) put it out.  Fire department shows up, smoke everywhere, people in the street stopping to look.

Yea, epic fail.
They didn't fire me though.  Boss should've listened to me in the first place dammit! hahaa

Quote from: omio on August 09, 2012, 11:51:52 AMJust a closer look when buying and I would have never bought this thing...FAIL!!!

Boy do I ever know that feeling. This bike was straight up broke when I bought it. A previous owner torqued one of the oil filter cap studs right out of the block (didn't break the stud.....stripped it clear out of the block), tried to repair it by threading a bolt into the remaining threads and gluing the now flattened o-ring down so it wouldn't leak. There's a mysterious oil leak coming from somewhere on the left side of the lower case (cant trace it for the life of me), and over a course of 20 miles I lost 2 quarts of oil. New engine/transmission on the way, so hopefully I'll never have to deal with this crap again.

Can't believe it's not up here yet...

But

Struggle for the better part of an hour trying to get a little honda to start with my buddy nate.

Nearly blue in the face, can't figure out why we aren't firing. Getting to seriously pissed mode.  Nearly totally beat.

Step back, put my head in my hand.

Turn killswitch off.
Bike starts first kick.

Had to smile, anything else i could've done would have been bad.  also, I never, EVER miss checking a killswitch again whilst troublshooting- Believe you me. 

that reminds me of when I was helping a mate tune his car.  changed plugs, changed points, gapped the points, put distributor cap on, nothing.  check all the leads, nothing.  spent nearly 30 minutes checking everything until we suddenly realised we'd left the rotor button out of the distributor.

and another one of my mates was building a hemi V8 but couldn't get it started.  everything looked right until I took a closer look at the picture in the manual he was using to get the spark leads on the right cylinders.  the workshop manual picture had been reproduced in reverse.  everything was backwards.  I nearly died laughing as he had spent hours trying to get it running and I saw it in about 10 minutes.

I went up a very very very steep driveway to go to a parking lot at the top. Half way up a car comes down the driveway, and it's only wide enough for the width of one car. I do a U turn in the steep steep driveway, but it was too narrow. I stop with my bike perpendicular to the driveway and when I put my foot down, there was no pavement under my foot. I rolled over with the bike on top of my leg. Luckily I had boots on and it didn't hurt. Unluckily, the driver was a little old lady with cataract glasses on. I couldn't get my leg out from under the bike at that awkward angle, so I had to wait for someone to come help me up. I just propped up on my elbow drumming my fingers on the pavement while the little old lady honked her horn at me until help came to upright the bike. ---FAIL!!!!

Okay, i pulled the ultimate newbie fail, so i'm driving to my friends work and about a block away the engine dies on me, so i'm getting frustrated because i'm gonna have to get it moved a way to get home, so anyways im in the gas station parking lot trying to "fix" my bike, testing temps and weak spots etc. anyways, the guy comes out (you can't pump your own gas in oregon unless youre on a motorcycle they will let you) and says "Hey, Kid! if youre not buying gas im gonn ahave to ask you to leave" so i go inside and buy a soda (hey, they can't kick a paying customer out) and keep working. after about 15 minutes i'm like Fark it, i look at the petcock, it was on "ON" instead of RES (i was low on gas) i flip it to prime for about 30 seconds then RES and it starts right up! so iget $15 of gas (nearly a full tank!! very exciting as i pay $60 for my car) and go back to ON and it works fine! i seriously can't believe i did that! atleast i didn't have my bike hauled home only to find out i needed to go all the way back for a gas station.

Rode into work after being off the bike for a few days, and I don't know what made me think about it but I decided to check my fuel line routing once I got there.  Last week when I rode to work I made it there fine and then ran out of fuel shortly after leaving to go back home, and didn't seem to have anything in reserve or a blocked line, so now I'm paying more attention to keeping my fuel level higher.

So I checked the lines off of a diagram that I had in my memory and it looks like my hoses are switched from the tank to the petcock  .  I don't know if the PO did it and I've always put it back the same way, or if I screwed up and switched the hoses at some point, but I think it explains why I've ran out of gas the last few times and not had anything in reserve.  So, I'm going to try riding home with the tank to RES instead of ON and see how that works.  If it works okay then it'll at least let me know that the petcock is doing okay, and hopefully I can run it down to the point where I'd have to switch to my "Reserve" and that'll work the way it should.  Either way, later in the season I'll probably double check the whole thing and end up switching some hose around.

That could be a really mean prank to pull on someone...

"I wondered why it was going so far before I hit reserve....  SONOFAH!"

It's been a while for since my epic fail. Back in 1980 something. I took a tree branch to the forehead while riding my DR125. Knocked me right off the back and the bike kept going. Buy I OK noww it blerp nay.

I've have a history of getting hit in the head while on 2 wheels.
My mom told me when I was 2 or 3 I came down a hill on my bigwheel and slammed head first into a brick wall so hard it made the pots and pans hanging inside rattle. I still have the knot on my forehead 40 year later. But like Ii sed I OK now. Not muhc bran damige.

Quote from: pliskin on August 22, 2012, 07:06:50 PM
It's been a while for since my epic fail. Back in 1980 something. I took a tree branch to the forehead while riding my DR125. Knocked me right off the back and the bike kept going. Buy I OK noww it blerp nay.

I've have a history of getting hit in the head while on 2 wheels.
My mom told me when I was 2 or 3 I came down a hill on my bigwheel and slammed head first into a brick wall so hard it made the pots and pans hanging inside rattle. I still have the knot on my forehead 40 year later. But like Ii sed I OK now. Not muhc bran damige.

I did the same thing as a child! 

And just the other day I was driving in traffic, it was hot so I had my sunglasses on with my visor open, and a BEE came right in my helmet! I don't know how I managed to pull off to the shoulder and remove my helmet without crashing, lol. No brain damage from the bee tho.

Just yesterday i tried riding off with the DISC LOCK still on.
Worst part is that it has a bright yellow cable from the lock to the front brake lever. I just didnt think.

I dont think it damaged anything, except my pride. Scared me though, the sudden juddering and "Oh S###". Thoughts of a bent disc, broken caliper etc. I wont forget it again!