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| Total Despair on my face!😬 #Vonzipper #O’Neal #Powersports.Honda #ProCircuit #HookIt |
Bunker Hill MX track in Delta turned out to be a nightmare but even though I’m tired of nothing but bad, ugly luck I still love riding dirt bikes.
Friday practice started out great even though the temperature was in the thirties; cold.
While practicing on the 2017 HONDA CRF450R and having a great run all of a sudden the rear end just disintegrated. The hub, spokes, rotor, sprocket, everything just blew apart. I’m lucky that I didn’t get hurt. A great way to start the day; right?
My 05 Honda was in Payson. I didn’t think about bringing a backup bike because the 17 was in good shape, so I thought.
Instead of giving up grandpa said, okay, let’s call in and order a complete rear wheel package for the bike from #Rocky Mountain ATV in Payson. Payson is over an hour away from Delta and the first race was going to be Saturday so we got into the truck and headed to Payson. Because cell phone coverage was in and out we decided to pull over to place the order. Rocky Mountain is so busy that you get put on hold for what seemed like forever but we got the order placed. We knew that by the time we picked up the 05 and strapped it down in the truck that the order would be ready. Oh, by the way when we unloaded the 05 at Bunkerhill the front tire was flat. We asked ProCircuit and he said that it was probably a bad stem and when we strapped it down finished it off. Ugh! More downs.
As we were headed back a new friend who is racing a brand new KTM 250 who also has a genius dad texted me and said that he put up the awning on the toy hauler because the winds were picking up with gusts over 30mph. When we got their the wind was terrible. We decided to pull the bike into the toy hauler to work on it in there. It’s a small toy hauler so it doesn’t have a rear garage but it would work out great; especially with the wind and dust blowing everything around.
Grandpa and I pulled everything apart to replace the rear wheel. That’s when we saw that the
brackets that hold the rear chain guard was broken on the rear swing arm. HONDA does a crappy job welding the brackets. They should be a part of the swing arm and not just puddle welded on with little penetration on the aluminum. This is where Camden Schern’s dad stepped in. He was telling us how he had just finished tearing down and completely rebuilding a 05 HONDA CRF450R so he really knew what he was doing. He told grandpa to go to ACE Hardware and pick up some liquid metal weld and some self tapping screws to see if we could but humpty dumpty back together again.
Because one of the pieces holding the chain guide couldn’t be welded he designed a new strap that he bolted together on part of the dangling old strap to secure it. Just to make sure that everything was somewhat secure he used tie wire to double down on it holding.
RACE TIME! My second moto hole shot was amazing. Out of over 24 riders I got up the hill and was holding on to third place. I ride 450 beginners so there are a lot of older riders who have been riding for 100 years, give or take (sandbaggers; right?) Best start ever! Then, I heard the engine wind up and nothing was happening. Evidently on the first breakdown we hadn’t noticed that the chain had possibly cracked part of the case holding the cable that works part of the clutch; I’m not exactly sure what it does. I’m still learning a lot about how the bike works. School of Hard Knocks!
Even with all of the bad luck I ended up placing 19th out of 25 riders and that’s with not even finishing the second moto. What could have been will not be known on this day. My friend finished 9th overall.
