The once mighty GSXR had a run of bother after a brilliant 65,000km (about 2,000km dirt) and 3 years.

 

First the engine shat itself in the Snowy Mountains in Feb-2003.  The 1500km trip to Brisbane from Jindabyne was trouble free.  While climbing the big hill exiting Jindy and heading for Thredbo, the engine felt lacking in power.  I pulled over at the top of the hill and wound it out to redline, no odd noises.  Several km's later the power "stopped", the dash went dark, and the mirrors were full of blue smoke.  Thanks to kindness and generousity of Jim, Andrew, Julie, and Mell, the bike was carted to Canberra and freighted home to Brisi.

Yes that's the crank shaft you can see!

Spot the difference  :-(

 

So about one month later, and $4,000 lighter for the experience of doing a motor swap, the bike is back on the road with a second hand 20,000km engine ....... until ......

Clocked up 1,000km on the new engine over two weeks and gave her a oil change.  Went up the road for a quick shake down ride with the new oil.  While returning down my local set twisties at my regular speed, things went belly up through the second bend.  Took me by complete surprise as the tyres were warm, I was not on the brakes, clean deck, and had taken the previous tighter bend quicker.  Some folks where behind me in a 4x4 and where chatting to another 4x4 over the CB, conversation went something like
  "This guy is going to crash, his front wheel is everywhere .......   pharrk he's sliding in front of us"
I cannot remember the bike feeling odd, but according to them the front wheel was wobbling all about the place. 

On closer inspection of the wreck, the left hand fork appears to have had a fatigue crack (not a torn stress fracture) develop WITHIN the brake/axle boss.  The bottom half of the fork (slider) has then worked its way UP and OUT of the brake/axle boss until the internal damper rod was the only component keeping the left hand side true.  Given that the damper rod is not designed to be a stressed member, it didn't last long.  Inspection of the brake/axle boss shows about 40mm of slider still threaded in place and very secure.  It seems that there is normally about 60mm of slider inside the boss, with the bottom 40mm threaded.  The bottom edge of the broken slider has the first cut of thread visible (ie, the crack was in the valley of the first thread)

 

 

December 2003, the previously very happy adventure upon the GSXR, and short lived adventure on the RGV is drawn to a close.