kick stand

I saw a drunk guy awhile back (we tried to get him to stay off the bike, but he was a walking, talking tree trunk) that had a failure. He raised his side stand and then proceeded to put his feet on the pegs and leave. The problem was he hadn't started the engine yet. We tried a second to get him to stay off the bike, but he would have none of it. He picked the bike up, started it and off he went, for about 50 feet. Then, he lost control and parked it in a ditch full of water. We got the bike up and out of the ditch. We left him. When we came back for him a couple of minutes later, we got him up and then he fell backwards like someone doing one of those old ice tea plunge commercials. He was fully submerged the second time.

The "proper" amount of heat applied at the correct angle, will fix the problem.
In other words, get out a cutting torch and bend it.

You ain't gonna rake the neck or anything serious,
just heat the kickstand and get it red hot,
put the torch down and lean the Rocket over onto the stand.
Holding the handlebars and let it lean till you feel comfortable it won't tip over.
Let the kickstand cool off (a couple of minutes) and
presto chango a modified kickstand and your Rocket won't tip over.
Just my solution, as with anything else, modify at your own risk.
Thats a disclaimer.

Seems as though being vertically challenged (as in a near vertical motorcycle) is an industry norm.

My KLR, stock from the factory stood almost vertical on the sidestand. After I lowered it 2". I had to cut the sidestand and reweld the foot. You need about a 15 degree lean from vertical to be safe.

I know of more than one KLR that has been blown over in the wind and the KLR is fully faired. A tip over is always expensive, always.

Nuth'in better than parking the bike, going somewhere and coming back to a bike playing turtle in a parking lot.

tdragger said:

It's the one piece of technology on a H-D that does it better than anyone else. Why haven't other manufacturers made a self-locking kickstand?

Click to expand...

Actually, that may be the only piece of technology on a Hardley.