Throttle cables are for suckers (Kz550 related)

Yup, my buddy's throttle cable broke about 10 miles from home. We had been at another coworker's house working on that coworker son's Sv650. From there we were going to work (we work evenings). I was in my car. pretty far ahead of him, so I was unaware he got stranded on his Kz. He had to leave the bike in a church parking lot, then he caught a Lyft back to work. The Lyft driver was a "hot chick" so he said it was all good.

Anyway, back at work we discussed the possibilities of riding the bike without a throttle cable. We both had ridden without clutch cables at various times, so we figured maybe there is some work-around. I remembered he had installed the choke fast-idle knob modification detailed here: s3.amazonaws.com/gpzweb/TK22mainPage/TK2...astIdleScrewMod.html

The TK22 carbs have a fully mechanical choke with a fast-idle cam for warm ups. With that we figured out we could turn up the fast idle speed then simply use the choke lever as a throttle. After work, late in the evening with little to no traffic, we tried it and it actually worked. At a stop, he would move the choke lever enough to raise the idle, then engage slowly into first gear to get rolling, then reach down and increase the throttle again to accelerate and just shift into higher gears normally, but quickly, so the revs didn't go up too high during the shift. The idle speed knob allowed him to increase the position of the throttle, without the choke plates moving down far enough to affect the mixture. So he was basically only using the first 1/16 or 1/8 throttle the whole time, and the choke plates were not down far enough to affect that.

Acceleration was slow, but he was easily able to get to 45 mph or so. The speed limit was 35 to 40 on the roads we took. The main thing was to see a stop coming up and flip the choke down before coming to a stop. If not, the motor would race while the clutch was pulled. Another issue was hills. Going uphill was definitely a problem. It would really slow the bike down. At first, he found he had to downshift or the bike would continue to decelerate. In lower gears, the bike would be slower, but would maintain speed. But then on later hills, he was able to reach down and give the knob an extra turn for that, and it seemed to help, but then going down hill, he had to reach down and reduce the lever or he'd be going way too fast. The first few starts did look a little drunken as he had to get used to the choke lever and clutch coordination... all left hand. I tried it with reaching to the left side with my right hand, and it was doable, but then you don't have a hand near the front brake. (We tested out techniques in the parking lot first.)

Anyway, he made it home with no problems. I was following in the car, just in case. He said it was actually kind of fun towards the end when he was getting the technique down.

And yes, he felt embarassed that his throttle cable broke... but it really didn't give any warning signs. He's also in the middle of restoring 6 antique bikes and 2 antique cars, not to mention the house he just bought, so routine maintenance on the daily drivers may have been neglected a little this year.

Necessity is the mother of invention!:laugh:

Impressive, that never would have occurred to me. Bravo