Today I went on a ride with my husband and we both have gsxr 600cc sports motorcycles. We noticed in the morning after we came from the store that the covers on our bikes where half off and it couldn‘t be done without someone messing with them. When we first took off on them everything was fine. At first it was mine my motorcycle chain came completely loose while I was riding, and then my bike started to make sounds and when shifting it sounded like my bike was struggling and then it sounded like it was taking a lot to try to go over 35 mph. My bike has never ever had these problems. I am crazy about how I maintain my bike. Then it seemed like when we rode a little more my husbands bike also started acting funny making sounds and sounded terrible. What can people do to mess with your bike to make it mess up? We are having the cameras checked at the apartment and what can happen happen if we find out if someone tampered with our bikes and we report them? What kind of trouble would they be in ?
Valuable discussion, just what I was searching for.
For a start you should not have continued to ride once you realised your bike had problems, it could end up very badly. I once rode my bike for 80 miles with no problems, then had a scraping noise from the front brake, ignoring it I rode another mile, applied the brake and went straight over the bars – someone had loosened the caliper to remove a tax disc, the caliper rotated and jammed the front wheel –?fortunately I was going slowly at the time. Now if I suspect a problem I at least stop and investigate it. Unfortunately there are any number of hoses, cables and exposed parts that a vandal could attack but I would be surprised if a motorcycle chain is not robust enough to take a stepping on –?what might have happened though is that, by stepping on it, the output sprocket or shaft has been affected. I hope you can identify the culprit, however I doubt they will get more than a talking to – vandalism is not high on the priorities these days.
There are about a million ways to mess up a motorcycle. Everything is out there in the open. I would suggest getting a storage locker for your bikes. Parking them in an apartment parking lot is not a good idea. Once you suspect foul play, you really need to check everything before riding again. Once you heard a noise, you should have stopped riding immediately until you knew what was making the noise and that it wasn't dangerous.
Avatar Tim D makes an important point.NOT to continue riding a bike if its performance is degrading and unexplained. Frankly, when you first realized your bikes had been tampered with, you should have given EVERYTHING a check over BEFORE you rode. Too, when your chain got LOOSE, what was different that allowed this to happen. Short of stretching your chain with an excessive ride , a loose chain as you describe it is indicative of some loose chain adjusting nuts, and/or a loose axle nut . This could throw your chain adjustment out both in tension AND alignment , and create both noise and poor power transfer to the rear wheels (not unlike the symptoms you describe). Curiously, you do not mention WHAT you found to be different as to why your chain etc. was amiss. I would think with your stated previous maintenance that the bike would be very familiar to you, and anything mechanically different would have been easy to spot. and determine. When you corrected your chain tension, did you find anything else loose ? Have you fixed the problems? If there were cameras that monitored your bikes, you should see something if it was tampered with , and you can follow up with the police. In all of this, you should determine what they did SPECIFICALLY to compromise your bike( besides just loosening the side covers). This will be helpful both in determining possible charges , AND fixing the bike. Good luck. Peace.
