Took my first spill today

[Mr Elbows]

Was riding home from work. It just recently stopped raining an hour before I left, so you can imagine there were puddles of water everywhere on the roads. This was my first time riding in weather like this, so I was cringing the whole time. Especially since I was riding with shitty stock tires. But there I was, approaching a stop sign at a not-so-busy neighborhood intersection, getting ready to make a left turn. I realized I rolled over a puddle of water as I was making my turn, but I didn't think anything of it.

Suddenly my scooter's back tire loses control and starts fish-tailing. Now at this point, both of my tires have no grip, and it feels like I'm riding an angry bull that's about to eject me off of it. Suddenly I'm ejected off the bike, tumbling around on the ground trying to make sense out of wtf is happening. I'm rolling, and rolling, and rolling, bump my helmet on the road pretty hard, and did some more rolling around like Sonic the Hedgehog. Luckily I was wearing my helmet, armored jacket, and gloves. Especially my helmet! I couldn't imagine the pain I'd feel if I bumped my head the way I did without one. I endured no bodily pain, thanks to my awesome armored jacket. The shoulder pads on these things really are a godsend.

Well, I stop rolling and I'm in extreme disbelief as to what just happened. A car beeps at me in the opposite direction but keeps going. I get up, put my shoe back on cause it flew off while I was rolling. And there she was..... my scooter.... just laying on it's side with the under-side showing. That's the worst thing any biker could see: the under-side of their bike as it lays on the pavement.

Well, I pick her up, adjust my mirrors [which I am surprised are still intact after such an unpredictable moment as that], and I simply just ride off. Thankfully there was no oil leakage, no gas leakage, or anything like that. I did call my insurance company today and filed a claim to hopefully get these scuff marks fixed. What a hell of a day.

[Honda cub]

Sorry to read this. Glad you are ok, that's the main thing. Hope you get the bike sorted.

Stephen

[Mel46]

Since there might be other days like this, just buy some fingernail polish that is close to the color of the panels. I did that with my wife's pcx until she had finished learning how to ride....well, I should say that she knew how to ride but had problems with controlled crashes. :-))
In any case, i ordered the replacement panels and stored them until winter. The marks on her panels were in exactly the same places as yours. Panels are cheap. Taking the panels off...not so cheap. It would be good for you to learn how.

[dkazzed]

Ouch, glad you're not hurt. Motorcycles can have amazing traction on wet roads, but introduce any oil or gravel into the mix and things can quickly go wrong.

The damage is not terrible, not something I would use an insurance claim over at least.

[kcpcx]

Those body panels come pre-painted from Honda. They are dirt cheap. Possibly so cheap it's not even worth filing an insurance claim over it. You'll be surprised, if you price them, how cheap the plastic is for the PCX. In all my years of riding, I've never seen pre-painted OEM replacement plastic that was available this inexpensively for a cycle.

For example, that tail section piece that's scratched in your pic, if I recall, is like $25-30 range. The lower side panel is around the same $ if I'm not mistaken.

The front fairing is really the only expensive plastic on the bike. If anything makes it worth filing a claim, that will probably be the part. Roughly $200--and still a bargain already painted, really. But the rest are way less.

Probably depends on what your deductible is, and how much you feel like tacking it yourself.

Here is a fiche I use occasionally to look up prices:

http://www.advantagepowersports.com/we- ... arts-fiche

[WhiteNoise]

Ouuu...am I glad to read that you were wearing proper attire and a helmet!! Yey! it worked!
The roads we travel change. Will we always know when? Always? No. Today was a bad day for you, a scary day. I've had a few. Never fun. Try to think hard on what you might have done wrong and what you could change to prevent this from happening again.
I.E., Did you slow down enough prior to the puddle and turn, did you brake to hard before entering the turn (where the puddle might have been)? Or in the turn? Ask yourself things like that. Luckily "you are" good to go and your scoot's not hurt too bad. Just sorry it happened. But heh!.....
First spill is out of the way! Check mark

[iceman]

If I'm coming up to water logged roads and cannot go around, I just slow down and go through very slowly. Never had a problem on stock IRC tyres in over a year of riding in all weathers and the UK gets lots of rainy days and icey roads in winter. Just yesterday the heavens were on full 'WOF' (wide open flood) most of the day and the roads wire in dire condition. There were times driving my car it would seem to aqua-plane and on two wheels it's worse.
Had your tyres had a lot of use and not much tread left? Some people have uploaded pictures showing their local garage fitted tyres the wrong way (arrow pointing the wrong direction). Not saying any of that was the case though.

[RichyP]

Was riding home from work. It just recently stopped raining an hour before I left, so you can imagine there were puddles of water everywhere on the roads. This was my first time riding in weather like this, so I was cringing the whole time. Especially since I was riding with shitty stock tires. But there I was, approaching a stop sign at a not-so-busy neighborhood intersection, getting ready to make a left turn. I realized I rolled over a puddle of water as I was making my turn, but I didn't think anything of it.

Suddenly my scooter's back tire loses control and starts fish-tailing. Now at this point, both of my tires have no grip, and it feels like I'm riding an angry bull that's about to eject me off of it. Suddenly I'm ejected off the bike, tumbling around on the ground trying to make sense out of wtf is happening. I'm rolling, and rolling, and rolling, bump my helmet on the road pretty hard, and did some more rolling around like Sonic the Hedgehog. Luckily I was wearing my helmet, armored jacket, and gloves. Especially my helmet! I couldn't imagine the pain I'd feel if I bumped my head the way I did without one. I endured no bodily pain, thanks to my awesome armored jacket. The shoulder pads on these things really are a godsend.

Well, I stop rolling and I'm in extreme disbelief as to what just happened. A car beeps at me in the opposite direction but keeps going. I get up, put my shoe back on cause it flew off while I was rolling. And there she was..... my scooter.... just laying on it's side with the under-side showing. That's the worst thing any biker could see: the under-side of their bike as it lays on the pavement.

Well, I pick her up, adjust my mirrors [which I am surprised are still intact after such an unpredictable moment as that], and I simply just ride off. Thankfully there was no oil leakage, no gas leakage, or anything like that. I did call my insurance company today and filed a claim to hopefully get these scuff marks fixed. What a hell of a day.

well, i know that our bikes are our babies in effect, but they are only bits of metal and plastic that can replaced, bones, flesh and cartiledge cant!

Just glad to hear you are ok mate and didnt suffer any serious injury

[Bash On!]

Not looking forward to teaching my daughter how to ride on the now-unblemished PCX. (She'll take an MSF class, first.) Perhaps I should buy some 2013 panels now before they become harder to find and more expensive. There's a neighbor with an old Honda Passport; maybe I can pry it loose from him.

[fun2scoot]

@Bash On!
How about adding these and telling her it's for her safety...

[mtheall]

We had some flash flooding a couple of days ago. Some cars ended up totally submerged near the freeway. I can't imagine what kind of traction my bike would have gotten in there.

[Mel46]

http://www.bikebandit.com/oem-parts/201 ... #sch794135
Here is where i got my replacement parts. The most expensive part of your repair will be labor for taking the panels off. That front right panel of yours is only $36.35 at bikebandit.com. I would say that the total cost of ALL of the replacement panels together is close to $120. However, the labor will be about 2 - 3 hours at the shop's current labor rate (maybe $70/hr??). Something to think about for the future.

[Bash On!]

@Bash On!
How about adding these and telling her it's for her safety...

Love it, though there'll have to be a different reason. Kinda like telling her to eat something because it's good for her! (go-faster wheels?)

[kcpcx]

Perhaps I should buy some 2013 panels now before they become harder to find and more expensive.

The plastic will probably stay roughly at the same price level (with nominal yearly increases) until one day the inventory is just gone. Honda is really good about long term parts availability, in general, for bikes with a few notable exceptions (try getting a water pump for a VT500 Ascot--forget it). However, plastic panels is one area where things dry up a lot faster than mechanical parts. A decade from now, you'll probably be able to order any mechanical part from Honda at reasonable cost, but body panels may be NLA at that time. I'd estimate you probably have 5-6 years or so from now until you have to worry about being able to order body panels from Honda. The plastic bits will almost certainly be the first thing to dry up in the parts inventories, and you'll be able to get mechanical bits for a decade or more after that.

Case in point: you can keep the old Honda Elite scooters on the road, mechanically, no problem these days. But the side covers that you commonly had to remove to service the engine are no longer available from Honda in most cases at any price. They had tabs/prongs that pressed into rubber grommets on the frame, and people usually manhandled those and snapped the prongs off. Enough people snapped off the prongs, and ordered new panels, that eventually the stock of spares were exhausted and Honda had long since ceased production. So these days, it's eBay, or nothing. The plastics are actually fairly sought after for those, and hard to come by.

I've wanted an classic Honda Ascot V twin for a while now, and recently came across one not too far away from me on Craigslist. It was immaculate, a unicorn. I was -this- close to buying it when I found out that the water pumps were NLA from Honda or anywhere else in the known universe. That's a common enough wear item that it wasn't worth owning that bike to me if I couldn't get such a common part at any price. So I passed, and it was a shame, but an old Ascot is rare enough that it's not like an old BMW airhead where 30-40 years later you can still get just about any part you want. The BMWs have a cult following, and a fair number of them still running, so parts are still plentiful. The Ascots, nobody cares, so a lot less support a couple of decades later, unfortunately.

[Bash On!]

Wise decision on the Ascot. Too bad the water pumps couldn't be rebuilt. Parts availability is very important to me. As you say, getting parts for my 44-year-old BMW airhead is easy, as it is for the Police 1000, which was made, pretty much unchanged, for twenty-some years.

[speedandstyle]

What a hell of a day.

Glad to hear you survived with no injury - gear works! I agree with others that it isn't really worth an insurance claim but that is your call. A couple of months after I started riding I tried to make it through a snow storm. It was light at first but then started coming down like crazy. Needless to say I went down. My damage was somewhat similar except I bent the handlebar a little and bent a brake lever. I got a used handle bar off ebay and an OEM brake lever. I didn't worry about the plastics.

We had some flash flooding a couple of days ago. Some cars ended up totally submerged near the freeway. I can't imagine what kind of traction my bike would have gotten in there.

I used to work search and rescue and being in the desert we often had flash flood events. Those were always body recoveries. Cars would be nothing but a metal shell, interior stripped and all glass busted out{sometimes a WS would survive}. Bodies were always bare as the water tears cloths off and sometimes limbs too. Fast moving water is nothing to snear at!

[Valiant]

Not looking forward to teaching my daughter how to ride on the now-unblemished PCX. (She'll take an MSF class, first.) Perhaps I should buy some 2013 panels now before they become harder to find and more expensive. There's a neighbor with an old Honda Passport; maybe I can pry it loose from him.

Shouldn't you worry about her gear first?

IMO, much more costly to replace than the panels.

[mtheall]

By flash flooding I didn't mean to imply fast-moving water. It just flooded extremely quickly due to inadequate drainage. The places with submerged vehicles were in road construction areas, so the drainage was probably even worse.

[fish]

If you're bouncing and rolling .....you've too much speed on as you approached that stop sign or intersection. Scoot tires cut through water and are less prone to aquaplaing....but there is a limit to their adhesion on a wet road. No need to fear wet riding...just be gradual about scrubbing off speed when stopping or turning ....especially over the painted areas. If being tailgated....consider not making the turn. Circle back to that corner you needed.
I freq commute to work in the rain (early on using the crap stock Kenda tires....before replacing them) , slow down a bit and plan ahead for all turns and stops. Even braking - front and rear - don't clamp the rears or you will go down in the wet.
Practice in an empty lot over wet roads and puddles. Find the limits of lever pressure and your tires before you need it on the streets.
And you know the method of braking before a turn....so tires only have to deal with turning , without the added stress on adhesion of braking, too.
Fish

[Steph]

@fish - Best advise so far! I applied these concepts last weekend riding home after heavy rains. Had to ride down a stretch of dirt road. My poor bike.