[ST] ignition prob results in crash

[Les <chopzooey69@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Listers,

Well, shortly after I decided to get serious about selling my Sprint,
wouldn't you know it I have my first crash in 15 years of riding.
But the good news is, it was an extraordinarily lucky crash with
zero injury and hardly any damage.  I'm writing to you all not so
much to tell you about my crash, but to tell you about what I think
precipitated it.  A few days ago I had what felt like a sudden very
brief ignition cut-out when accelerating away from a stop in first
gear.  It was so brief that afterwards I wasn't sure if it had really happened.
 It felt exactly like the ignition was turned off and then
back on just as fast as you could flip a switch.  I sorta shrugged it
off.  Whoops.

Last night, in a very tight first-gear curve to the left, going about
30ish with the side of my boot dragging but with the peg-feeler still
well in the air, in other words proceeding in a sporting fashion but
only about 6 or 7/10ths, it happened again, for a bit longer duration
this time, just long enough to step the rear tire sideways about a 
foot, which it turns out I wasn't good enough to recover from in the
space that I had available.  I _almost_ got it back, but lacked another
12 inches of pavement.  As soon as the front tire hit the grass, plop!
down we went.  The extraordinary luck showed up as nothing in the way
except deep soft grass over deep soft soil.  If there would've been
an armco guardrail, I might be dead, since I hit the ground on my 
forearms and hands and had my head up watching where I was going.  This
is probably one of the easier ways to break your neck, since my helmet
would've hit the horizontal rail part and my body would've tried to
keep going under it.  That armco guardrail stuff is evil.  The vertical
support posts are like a coarse cheese-grater for human bodies.  Anyway,
thanks to my gel-palm leather gloves and armored cordura jacket, I
suffered only grass stains.  The sprint has some minor paint scuffing
that I think I can polish out, the graphics were completely untouched,
and the top left forward mounting bracket for the side fairing broke
loose, but in such a clean way that I think I can superglue it back
together to be virtually invisible.  That's it.  Mirror folded right
back into place, nothing bent, it's amazing what a nice soft landing
pad will do.

I think I've read on here about a common ignition switch short that is
my number one suspect, and I hope my story illustrates how very dangerous
such a seemingly minor problem can be.

--Les
'02 BRG ST, wounded
Seattle




		
____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
 
_______________________________________________
Triumph Sprint ST/RS mailing list
Send list posts to ST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Change your list options at www.Triumphnet.com