After a great first ride, I was moving the bike in the garage, putting it back up on it’s Reynolds Ride-Off after-market center stand, when it failed. Fortunately, a wall kept me from dropping the bike completely, though there is some minor damage to the fairing. I’m just glad it didn’t fail when I was putting the bike on the lift!
After recovering my wits and getting the bike on the lift to investigate the failure, I found that the center stand’s right pivot bolt was missing. It was found on the floor of the garage near where I first parked the bike after the trip. I also found two parts of a bushing (left side of next picture). I found the third chunk after taking this picture.
The bolt and bushing on the right side of the picture above were still in place, but not providing much support, as you can see from the picture below.
What’s a bit scary, if you look at the bolt on the right, is that there are only two threads that extend beyond the bushing. The bolt on the right side of the bike didn’t have a washer that I could find, so it had at most three threads engaged. That’s the bolt that must have loosened during the ride. All I can figure is that someone used shorter bolts rather than pull the exhaust headers, there’s not much clearance otherwise.
Here you can see the center stand pulled over towards the left side of the bike after the right side let go. I’m guessing that there’s some thread damage that I’ll have to deal with, though with so few threads engaged, there are probably still a fair number of good threads in the brackets.
Both the bolts and the stand have this copper-colored thin steel shim material. I suspect this is a repair. As you can see, what the center is lacking, is grease.
So, when was the last time you checked your center stand? It was on my list of things to service, but not high enough on the list, obviously.
I now need to decide if I want to replace the after-market stand with a factory stand, or try and repair this one. This stand is easier to get the bike up on, but it doesn’t allow you to service the wheels. Perhaps I’ll try and find some bushings for a temporary repair while I search for a factory stand.
There was one bit of good news. While taking pictures of the center-stand I caught a glimpse of the repaired neutral switch. No oil leaks! At least not yet.
