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CB500X Broken Footrest Bodge
Bodge Date - 21 August 2017
By Ren Withnell
So I've just arrived at Haggs Bank near Alston with Pocket Pete. We are here to spend 2 nights camping along with some riding around this lovely area and a little socialising too.
I've never been to Haggs Bank Bunkhouse and Campsite before. As such I take a wrong turning up a very steep hill and within 300 metres I realise this is not the right road. I stop to see where Pete is only to see he and his CB500X are both having a nice relaxing lie down at the side of this steep lane. Dammit.
By the time I have most gingerly and delicately turned my bike around Pete's already vertical again with the help of a couple of other riders. He's OK but he's snapped off his left hand (gearchange) footrest. The footrest is mostly aluminium which snaps as opposed to steel which bends. That ain't gonna be fixed.
Ally pegs tell you the "X" isn't a bona-fide off roader.
Luckily for Pete I have read a lot and met a lot of people who do a lot of off road and therefore spend a lot of time dropping their motorcycles. I know there's a chance we can stick the rear footrest in where the front footrest was.
The front footrest has a fat pin, the rear a thin pin. Use the rear pin? Ah, it's too short. The campsite owner must have to deal with lots and lots of wayward motorcyclists and leads us down to a shed where we happen upon a long bolt, about 6mm in diameter at a guess. This holds the rear footrest and with a yank from my pliers is soon bent a little to stop it falling out on it's own.
The rear footrest sits slightly low and not *quite* horizontal in it's new position. It's also rather slack and wobbly in there. Never the less it is enough to support a booted foot and enough to get Pete home.
Tain't purdy but it'll do for now.
The next day after around 10 miles Pete complains it's all "a bit weird" using the gears then after 20 miles he decides it's actually an improvement. Not only did Pete get home we also covered around 170 miles revelling in the wonder of our surroundings.
So now I'm going to pop a M6 threaded bolt and a M6 nyloc nut into my travelling kit, just in case I snap my own footpeg off.
Got any fabulous get you home hacks in the event of breakage, breakdown or other disasters? We'd love to publish them here, drop Ren a line ren@bikesandtravels.com
Reader's Comments
Pocketpete said :-
Just fitted the new footpeg and moved the temporary one back to its original position.
The new honda peg is £ 32+vat. Yes what a rip off.
I have since found a copy one on eBay for £ 22. Looks just as good.
21/08/2017 19:12:51 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Did it all go back together easily enough?
21/08/2017 20:09:43 UTC
Pocketpete said :-
Yes it took all of my mechanical knowledge to put them both back. But I managed it somehow.
21/08/2017 20:51:31 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Where did you see a footrest for £22 on Ebay, I can't find it.
I'm going to look into the question as to whether or not other pegs will fit - for example off a CBR600 and the like. It's always handy to know
23/08/2017 10:03:30 UTC
Pocketpete said :-
I saw these they do these bto fit all Hondas and you can order them without the rubber and base if required.
I emailed them just the metal bit is £ 22 inc delivery. For cb500x
m.ebay.co.uk/itm/371820700773?NAV=HOME...
23/08/2017 10:29:39 UTC
Pocketpete said :-
I emailed the guy was very helpful. These are a direct copy and fits loads of honda bikes. He said they fit at least 50+ honda bikes past and present models.
23/08/2017 10:32:41 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
I was considering buying a footrest lowering kit for the Super Four and it did seem that most of the kits had a wide fitment range. There are only 3 critical dimensions: pin / hole diameter*, distance between hole and inner side of the bracket, and width of the part that fits inside the bracket. Go round a dealer's shop and measure them.......
*Actually, that's not necessarily a problem - I fitted Buell footrests to my Tiger and of course there was a collision between American inch dimensions and Triumph metric. But of course, having a lathe, I could make slim bushes to take up the difference. I do know people just fitted them without.
23/08/2017 10:35:35 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
I'm guessing - only guessing - that Honda use the same dimensions for most of their pegs. Like Ian says I could go and measure them although I'd be getting some weird looks wandering around a Honda shop with my vernier callipers. (calipers or callipers Ian?).
23/08/2017 11:43:54 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
Calipers......
24/08/2017 10:59:41 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Now...according to The Oxford Dictionary website (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/caliper) they say it's caliper with the one "l".
Now according to the Cambridge Dictionary website (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/callipers) they say it's double "l" and using a double "l" is the *ENGLISH* spelling of caliper - thus implying although not clearly stating using the single "l" is somehow foreign.
Go figure.
24/08/2017 13:08:24 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
Yeah but Cambridge is where all the theoreticians come from. They actually make stuff in Oxford (well, Cowley anyway).
I've always used the single "l" version.
Interestingly (or more probably not) referring back to the z versus s controversy, I do understand that z is the "proper " English - eg centralize - but it always looks wrong to me.
Maybe I've stirred up a hornets' nest.
24/08/2017 13:31:54 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Well I shall continue to occasionally throw in Americanisms, slang, modern phrases and the such like. It seems patently obvious that the English language's rules are not rules at all. Spelling is flexible, words in putting wrong around way matters not and all that matters is being understood.
Callipers, rotors, and disks.
25/08/2017 09:03:28 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
You are of course at liberty to do what you like. As long as I don't have spellcheckers "correcting" my spelling I'm happy.
I was just a bit surprised originally as I would have thought your association with the literate Sharon might have had some effect......
25/08/2017 09:30:36 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
LITERATE!!! Sharon!!! She may be incredibly well read Ian but when I receive one of Madam Parker's missives there's a whole heap of work to be carried out correcting spellings, correcting spacings, breaking up paragraphs so long they're practically a page long and putting words into some kind of logical order.
Sharon has the flare for emotional writing as I'm sure you've noticed, I'm much more pragmatic. However her words fall out of her fingers rather haphazardly and someone (me) has to put them into some kind of cohesive order.
25/08/2017 09:43:00 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
it's flair not flare.......
but point taken.
I take it you haven't read Jupiter's Travels or Zen..... yet.
25/08/2017 11:34:43 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Flair...dammit. I read Zen years ago. I'm delicately poking into Jupiter's Travels
25/08/2017 12:52:35 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
I find I can happily re-read Zen every 2 or 3 years and pick out some new insights (or at least new slants on existing ones) each time.
25/08/2017 13:09:59 UTC
CrazyFrog said :-
To quote Winnie The Pooh :-
"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."
I'm sure this is where Eric Morcambe's famous line to Andre Previn had it's origins :-
"I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right places."
25/08/2017 15:30:32 UTC
Ian Soady said :-
".... not necessarily in the right ORDER........"
Could never stand that middle class winnie the pooh stuff myself. Nice scary Grimm was what we had in rufty tufty County Durham.
25/08/2017 15:57:46 UTC
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