Look at your nuts and bolts
 

My recent close up inspection of some gravel in North Yorkshire revealed a couple of minor details others may find useful:
· The snapped off riders peg can be functionally (if imperfectly) replaced with the pillion peg. The ride may then continue.
· The circlips which hold the pivot pins in are an utter swine to deal with at the roadside when you don’t have access to the proper tool.
· Circlip pliers would be pretty pointless as part of the bikes general tool kit, there are no other circlips used on items you would typically need to play with.
I have therefore replaced the pin and circlip set up with standard (stainless) bolts and nyloc nuts of the type used elsewhere on the bike.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...2/footpegs.jpg

A bit of bodgery like this can lighten the tool kit.

Andy

Not a bodge..

An improvement.


Which is better.. Taking care of the economic shortcuts the designers were restricted to.

:thumbup1:

Design engineer ... makes it work for all supply, climates and configurations.
Production engineer ... replace expensive parts with cheaper parts, change parts that require more labour to assemble with parts that require less labour, remove parts untill it does not work:oops2:, put last part back.
Repair engineer ... find and replace faulty parts. If feasible use parts that will not fail, be easier to replace.
Maintenance engineer ... replace worn out parts with new parts, if feasible use parts that will last longer, be easier to replace.

I'd guess the expectation is that such an event (close up expectation of gravel) should not happen over the lifetime of the bike, and if it does parts are then subject to forces they were not designed to withstand. In plain English, you're not supposed to drop the thing.

I've often wondered how much - if any - thought goes into the crashability of road going motorcycles. Nobody would expect to get away with hitting a wall at 100mph or something similar without damage (least of all to the rider) but slow speed impacts - like Andy's - or zero speed ones (e.g. falling off the stand) must be part and parcel of producing a vehicle with no inherent stability and (you would have thought) something the "Design Engineer" would have considered.

Then again, had he done so, the "Repair" and "Maintenance Engineers" might be out of a job. Is all of this just a conspiracy to keep the greasy fingered amongst us in work. :laugh:

Unfortunately, the product engineers are now in charge. And they are probably more accountants than engineers. And they've probably never had oil under their nails in their lives.

The logic is unassailable. Reduce the cost at production (components and time) and add value to service work (cheap component cost but more specialist to fit). The majority of customers will neither notice nor care. Us roadside fixers are the minority (they don’t supply a tool kit as you aren’t supposed to work on it yourself). I’m actually waiting for some Guzzi polisher to comment it looks ugly. I will praise Piaggio for selling the parts separately, you can buy one circlip (for 13p) not a £££ repair kit of four pins, four circlips, two ball bearings, four springs, eight bolts, four rubbers, a new frame……

At least this one is easily modified. I’m now meeting truck parts that are coded at the manufacturers warehouse. Buy genuine spares via a route other than the dealer and you will find yourself with warning lights latched on. Not so bad if your dealer has a clue as they can reflash quickly and at relatively low cost (still money for old rope). If the dealer isn’t there, wants to act like a ******** or just doesn’t know how to do it, you need to switch brands or budget for dealer service costs. Would you believe the brand doing this big time is German?

Andy

The Germans are the worst for it.....

BMW motorcycles didn't actually make that much money until the 1200GS came out.

They turned it around by cutting about £1000 worth of quality engineering out of it and replacing it with cheap junk which are dealer dependent to replace and maintain.

I think also that the design process now is mainly computerised.

They can manufacture components to a 100th/mm within tolerance which makes them cheaper and lighter.

20-30 years ago engineers would over-engineer a component to make sure it wouldn't fail prematurely.

Now engineers can push a button and decide how long they want components to last and that's usually just outside of warranty.

Planned obsolescence

Here's a case study from another sphere of work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_...lkway_collapse

In a word, cost engineers/consultants were employed to change the original design.