Them border guards have good zip ties....

Yessir... Lost my front sprocket nut riding in the mountains along the border on Sunday and the sprocket came off the splines - not off the shaft luckily. Coulda been real bad, luckily it happed accelerating out of a corner with the bike already upright.
Looked, but the nut was long gone of course and could have fallen off miles ago. Got a zip tie from border patrol, found a piece of wood to wedge the sprocket back on the splines, made a beeline for the freeway and rode 60 miles home. I'll be safety wiring that nut from now on, thank you very much.

wow! :laugh:

Wowee! When I saw the title to this post, I was thinking that you would be telling a slightly different story. You know the kind of story where those zip ties get used for their intended purpose. Good thing you caught that before the chain came off. So what was the tip off? Did the motor just spin up with no drive? Did anything seem unusual before you realized what was happening?

crazy story. glad your ok.

Thats nuts Sander, glad to see no damage haha.

damnit man!
good save with the zip tie.
i love road side repairs:huh: ,i mean i don't like having to be broke down:silly: .
but i like the enginuity that comes from it.
,glad it wasn't any worse.

leon

That could have been disasterous! Nice fix!

Thanks fellas. What tipped me off was I gunned out of this corner and all of a sudden lost drive and revs shot up to the moon - WHOAH! Better this way than engine braking into a corner :pinch: or cranked over for that matter.

Was there ever any Lock-Tite on it? What about the metal bend washer that holds the nut? I'm an electrician and have seen hundreds of Tie-Wraps break and none of them had to pull that duty. That one looks like a cheapy, the kind with a plastic lock inside as opposed to say a Thomas-Betts with high quality nylon and a metal lock in the head. That has to be the best balls out MacGiver I've ever seen. Glad you made it.

I don't remember if I put lock tite on it but it had the bent-tab washer behind it - I had to drill the locating hole for the washer in the sprocket which is a pain because of the hardening.

The zip tie was cheap but pretty thick. There is not a lot of side load on the front sprocket, and I figured the less I had to shift & shock load the transmission the better chance I had of it staying on, so babied it to the freeway asap. I made it home and it hadn't even moved a millimeter.

The sprocket has 6mm threaded holes (honda style)so I found a boogered up spare sprocket nut and safety wired it, that'll do for now.
Anyone got a clean(ish) spare sprocket nut they can part with?