What is your ugliest repair?

[safety-boy]

I have two, one done by the previous owner.

One of the two previous owners really dorked up the headlight on my Kawa 454 LTD. It appears that the face would no longer attach, so naturally, they used a wood screw!



Now, the second one is all me...

Probably my weirdest repair. I broke the right footpeg the first week I had the bike. $45 for the replacement - metal only! Broken footpeg was lost, but bolt and spring remained. Replaced with metal only peg. Was in a "fender bender", so to speak , and the same peg broke!

Now, not being too interested in giving Kawa another $45, especially since I was having so much luck with footpegs, I decided to scavenge one. My in-laws had a bike of their son's sinking into the ground behind their house. I could only get the left foot peg. It was a bit too small, and the bolt hole was the size of the pillion pegs on my bike, so I bored it out, and put it on upside down! Weird looking, but it has lasted. Maybe I'll get the courage to get a real replacement soon!

--Dave

[fireguzzi]

Dude thats pretty rigged. lol

But i did almost the same thing with a little honda 50.

Well the bike got stolen from my house, (stupid crack head freind......but thats another story) and when i got it back the right side peg was broke off. Just a little metel peg maybe 2 inches long.

Instead of buying a new one, i just stole a passenger peg off my srx.
So now there is a much larger and longer rubber peg on it instead of a short metel one.
Damn crack heads.

[safety-boy]

Crack kills, particularly if you steal my bike for it!

Luckily, I have big feet, with bigger boots, so the peg gets hidden well.

I know as soon as I put a dime into replacing it, something stupid will happen and I'll be back to stubby rubber!

--David

[flynrider]

I had a pretty ugly one, but unfortunately don't have a pic.

I got an old bike for free from a neighbor. It ran somewhat OK, but the shifter was missing and the splines on the shift shaft were totally rounded off. Not much hope of fitting a new one on. My solution was to get a cheap pair of vise grips and weld a 1 1/2" rod at 90 degrees to the handle. I clamped the vise grips as tightly as possible to the shaft and Voila! Instant shifter! I actually rode the bike for about 6 months like that without any problems.

[safety-boy]

Necessity is the mother of invention!

A vise-grip shifter. Makes my footpeg sound pretty mild

--Dave

[TechTMW]

OK, I'll play. When my only bike was a yamaha seca and I was broke, the brass tangs holding my main fuse in became brittle and broke. Because all the other fuse tangs were the same i figured the whole thing needed reeplacement. The fusebox is NLA from Yamaha, and I didn't want junkyard crap because it would have the same problem, so I got a cheap fuse block from an auto parts store and cut/glued it into the original fuse holder.

Notice in the bottom picture, there's still space left over in the tackle box to hold spare fuses and even a plug or 2

This repair was made 5 years ago - no problems since.

[safety-boy]

Very cool.

Read an article a while back in, I believe, Loaded (from the UK, likely not work friendly viewing) about bike gangs in Cuba. They can't get motorcycles, so they build them out of bicycles, chainsaw engines, and various other appliance and vehicle parts. The reporter said they were some of the ugliest death-trap bikes he had ever seen, but said they were cool to race.

Cafe racers wouldn't be such a big deal if they were originally all stock. Take a Triumph and Norton, slam them together, and make the other guys look slow.

Try to build your own Honda Civic... Fabrication is true old-school biking!

--Dave

[jaydubs85]

Mine is the duck tape holding my front headlight on the CM200T.

[NorthernPete]

my headlight is held togther with metal shelf strapping and wood screws...

[safety-boy]

While I toy with the idea of restoring my bike (hard to restore something you ride every day), I do find it is part of the fun fixing things on the cheap. Not always successfully, often aggrevating, but still fun

--Dave