high speed engine failure?

[moses]

i have been searching the forum for documentation of any of us that have had the output shaft bearing or the cam chain fail @ speed. read a couple stories of the camchain failing @ stoplights. not too exciting, although pretty f***ing inconvienient! i can only imagine what sort of life threatning situations one of these failures could produce if it were to occour in heavy traffic @ 70-80 mph!! the more i listen to my "paint can rattle" and the deep mechanical rumble and vibration that i feel on accel OR decell, the more leary i am of putting any of my loved ones on the back. WTF?

 

[HellFire]

I wouldn't think you have much to worry about .... should a timing chain break, the engine just dies. I'm pretty sure the engine is "free-wheeling", maybe one of the guys who knows for sure could verify that for me. Worst case with a bearing is that it seizes up and spins in the housing, the chance of it locking up a driveshaft is virtually impossible.
If you have those nightmares where the engine locks up and causes the rear wheel to slide at highway speeds (we've all thought about it), your instinct to pull in the clutch is a very strong one. Trust yourself, it would just be one of those emergency situations that your reactions would handle before you even had a chance to think about it.

To answer your question ... personally I've never heard of that kind of bearing failing without alot of warning. Timing chains have been known to break any time at any speed, but I've only seen them cause accidents at the race track (and thats typically from the case breaking as a result and it spewing oil on the rear tire). Maybe some others have heard of an R3 horror story about something locking up.

 

[xhdskip]

Nope no horror stories here.
My output shaft bearing did go out.
Everything was normal, never a raddle or nothin.
Pulled in to get gas and as I was taking off,
I heard it.
Thought it was a brake dragging.
Got off checked it out, narrowed it down pretty quickly.
Rode it home, took it to the dealer,
they ordered the new rearend.
No problems since.
Sorry for another boring story.
Oh yea, triumph picked up the bill,
All of it.

 

[moses]

thanks for the input. i've been riding bikes for 43 years, and skydiving for 14 years(with a world record in there) so im not prone to suffer from "gear fear". i am thinking that i will contact our friends @ Triumph however, and get thier side of the story. as im sure at least some of you have done. well as always im riding! be safe!