I have always been puzzled by people's fascination with removing/bypassing the side stand safety switch, my 95 XR had one and at no point in time did I ever encounter a situation where I thought "man, I sure wish the side stand switch was disabled" so if your thinking about getting rid of it for "simplification" I recommend you don't.
All 4 of my KLRs (85, 88, 13, and 14) have had the side stand switch disabled. No big deal. But here's the thing, a side stand switch is like the majority of other safety devices in this world, under normal operating conditions they are useless. It's only, and only when a special condition occurs that they become useful, and often life saving.
Sunday, September 14, that special condition occured. I had planned to ride up through the Rocky mountains to Glen heaven and see where I went from there. Being paranoid, as usual I stopped to check pokey's (2014.5 KLR) oil before ascending, and as per usual it was full. With that out of the way I saw a gap in traffic and pulled out Into a right hand curve accelerating to keep up with traffic, and then immediately after a turn to the left, as I came into the left turn Pokey came over just past stright up and it was a firm hard stop, with a loud grinding scraping noise I instantly realized my mistake and tried to rectify it, but the angle of the side stand requires the bike to come back to center before it can be retracted. At this point I'm going 50ish mph. I jerked pokey upright, jammed the side stand in and then aggressively pulled him hard down into a left lean as the tires were at most 6 inches from leaving the tarmac, they were on the outside of the paint line on the near shoulder less mountain road with a moderately sharp drop off into water logged ravine.
Was it user error? Absolutely. Could I have handled it better? Certainly.
Could it have been avoided all together? Also yes. God was watching over me, I made it home safe yesterday, but the next guy might not. I got a second chance, but it only takes one screw up to be the last screw up.
What I do know though, is I will not be the next guy, pokey is getting a side stand safety switch tonight. As well as a heap more goodies (new cowlings, T bob, seat rework 2.0, etc) it's been a long time coming for the ol boy.
Ride safe guys, may God be with you.
All 4 of my KLRs (85, 88, 13, and 14) have had the side stand switch disabled. No big deal. But here's the thing, a side stand switch is like the majority of other safety devices in this world, under normal operating conditions they are useless. It's only, and only when a special condition occurs that they become useful, and often life saving.
Sunday, September 14, that special condition occured. I had planned to ride up through the Rocky mountains to Glen heaven and see where I went from there. Being paranoid, as usual I stopped to check pokey's (2014.5 KLR) oil before ascending, and as per usual it was full. With that out of the way I saw a gap in traffic and pulled out Into a right hand curve accelerating to keep up with traffic, and then immediately after a turn to the left, as I came into the left turn Pokey came over just past stright up and it was a firm hard stop, with a loud grinding scraping noise I instantly realized my mistake and tried to rectify it, but the angle of the side stand requires the bike to come back to center before it can be retracted. At this point I'm going 50ish mph. I jerked pokey upright, jammed the side stand in and then aggressively pulled him hard down into a left lean as the tires were at most 6 inches from leaving the tarmac, they were on the outside of the paint line on the near shoulder less mountain road with a moderately sharp drop off into water logged ravine.
Was it user error? Absolutely. Could I have handled it better? Certainly.
Could it have been avoided all together? Also yes. God was watching over me, I made it home safe yesterday, but the next guy might not. I got a second chance, but it only takes one screw up to be the last screw up.
What I do know though, is I will not be the next guy, pokey is getting a side stand safety switch tonight. As well as a heap more goodies (new cowlings, T bob, seat rework 2.0, etc) it's been a long time coming for the ol boy.
Ride safe guys, may God be with you.
