Hi all,
Just relating an incident I had two days ago.
Last Sunday I decided it was getting chilly and moved the cowlings out to redirect air.
I had moved them out this summer and (for me) felt it was warmer with the cowlings out at the time, but then returned them to the in position. I'd like this not to turn into an inny versus outy discussion, it is merely what I decided (TIA). I checked the cowlings top and bottom for tightness each day this week, as I am nutty about this bike.
Three days later on Tuesday. I checked the cowling tightness, along with my usual pre-flight check and went for a ride after work. During a spirited acceleration, going (?) 90+ ... it felt like a baseball hit me just below the right knee -- WTF?!!
I pulled over and the right movable cowling had sheared off but the tabs and fasteners were still in place. A soccer mom in a van (bless her heart) brought my cowling piece to me. The indentation for the forward fastener was punched out and the area around the back fastener indentation was cracked. A couple minor scuffs. The tabs on the bottom were in place. I checked at home more closely. The plastic had deformed and looked like a bowl, shaped upward around the forward faster screw and was still in place with the rubber washer. The left cowling was fine.
Yesterday I drove over to my dealer and my (trusted) mechanic who is the service manager looked it over and said he'd put in for some wawa (his term for warranty replacement).
No, I don't have pics because I haven't embraced the 20th century by obtaining a digital camera. Hopefully the description is accurate enough that you can understand.
So, did I just screw the pooch and was it my bad, or a design flaw causing wind in the outboard cowling position to get trapped at higher speeds, and forcing the deformation and failure at speed? Anybody else had this happen? I thought somebody (? Fencer) had a failure of the right cowling at speed, but my memory may not be serving me.
Just relating an incident I had two days ago.
Last Sunday I decided it was getting chilly and moved the cowlings out to redirect air.
I had moved them out this summer and (for me) felt it was warmer with the cowlings out at the time, but then returned them to the in position. I'd like this not to turn into an inny versus outy discussion, it is merely what I decided (TIA). I checked the cowlings top and bottom for tightness each day this week, as I am nutty about this bike.
Three days later on Tuesday. I checked the cowling tightness, along with my usual pre-flight check and went for a ride after work. During a spirited acceleration, going (?) 90+ ... it felt like a baseball hit me just below the right knee -- WTF?!!
I pulled over and the right movable cowling had sheared off but the tabs and fasteners were still in place. A soccer mom in a van (bless her heart) brought my cowling piece to me. The indentation for the forward fastener was punched out and the area around the back fastener indentation was cracked. A couple minor scuffs. The tabs on the bottom were in place. I checked at home more closely. The plastic had deformed and looked like a bowl, shaped upward around the forward faster screw and was still in place with the rubber washer.
The left cowling was fine.Yesterday I drove over to my dealer and my (trusted) mechanic who is the service manager looked it over and said he'd put in for some wawa (his term for warranty replacement).
No, I don't have pics because I haven't embraced the 20th century by obtaining a digital camera. Hopefully the description is accurate enough that you can understand.
So, did I just screw the pooch and was it my bad, or a design flaw causing wind in the outboard cowling position to get trapped at higher speeds, and forcing the deformation and failure at speed? Anybody else had this happen? I thought somebody (? Fencer) had a failure of the right cowling at speed, but my memory may not be serving me.
