My Diana tried to kill me today....

[Nick]

In celebration of Dovi's brilliant 2nd in Qatar I rode the Diana to work today, a ride which includes a short, high-speed and very exhilarating stint on the freeway. Anyway, get off onto the surface streets and am puttering along at 25mph or so when the front wheel locks up, solid! Kept it upright, no cars following, but stuck in the middle of the road with a bike that won't move. Could only get the bike off the road by manually lifting the front wheel and dragging it off step by step — great exercise for those wanting to work off a few calories.

Take off wheel, can barely pry off brake backing plate...turns out the spacing washer — the very existence of which I'd completely forgotten — located between the backing plate and the wheel bearing had fallen out inside the drum whenever I last installed the wheel and, like a hand grenade with its pin pulled, was just waiting for an opportune moment to jam between the brake shoe and drum.

Dodged a bullet this time. Moral of the story: be sure to put some heavy grease on that spacing washer to hold it in place when assembling the front wheel.

[halfpast]

Glad you're OK - I'll check my spacer first thing in the morning.

Forza Dovi, and hopefully Iannone can keep the shiny side up next time. The Ducs have some serious grunt this season...

[amartina75]

Glad you're ok, and your bike. Is the spacer there to compensate for the wheel not being built with an offset? The same think could happen if a brake lining would come off. Something to look out for also for anyone with original brake shoes being held together with 40 year old glue! I bet you didn't need a second cup of coffee to wake up when you got to work.
Aaron

[Nick]

The purpose of the spacer is to allow one to fully tighten the axle nut without binding the wheel bearings. Will look at the setup more carefully soon, but I have no memory of ever having to install the spacer, so perhaps it is normally held in place by the wheel bearing seal. Or perhaps it just sits there waiting for the chance to fall inside the back plate when you install the wheel.

Obviously, the proper way to install the wheel is to lay it flat on the ground, install spacer, install brake backing plate (which will hold the spacer in place), and then install the wheel without letting the brake backing plate move outwards.

Never a dull moment

[JimF]

I give you a lot of credit! Loosing the back tire is scary enough and sometimes recoverable, but if the front tire stops rotating while the bike is moving forward- that's beyond scary.

One time I was stupid enough to try and make a traffic light on my 250 Mach 1. The light was green, but I should have known better as I knew it was a stale green. I was on a 2-lane and the cross street was a 4-lane with 50-mph posted speeds, and it was during rush hour so that 4-lane under the green would be wall-to-wall cars going fast almost as soon as the light could change.

As I got closer it turned yellow and I realized I wasn't going to get across in time. If I entered the intersection I would either T-bone a car or worse yet be the T-bone-ee. The only though running through my brain was that I was likely going to wreck my beautiful motorcycle.

In a complete panic I climbed on the brakes front and rear. and as I got closer to the light which had gone red, I locked up the front tire for a couple of seconds. Fortunately I was riding perfectly straight up and down, and I had the benefit of being able to release the front brake, a benefit you did not have. I never want to experience that again.

I am glad you and the bike are OK. At least you came out of it with a great story to tell among fellow motorcyclists over pints of beer.

[Eldert]

Hi Nick

you could machine up a top head spacer and push over the backing plate .

Eldert