[Kat-A-Tonic]

Sorry to hear about your accident but it's good that you are relatively uninjured. Thanks for the report and hopefully you'll get your Kat all fixed up and this will be nothing more than a distant memory for you.

[woobie]

Well I don't think anyone can ask for pics .

Sorry to hear you binned it, But from those pics it could have been a lot worse.

[Najus]

Man those are some good quality pics, and oh yeah glad you are okay.

[md86]

Let's see ....
Pull the pipe apart and pop the dent out , no problem . Cracked fairing can be fixed relatively cheap , maybe some touch-up paint to hide the repair . New pair of draws . Yup , you got off cheap .

[jw]

Wow, glad your ok. Great write up as well, things like this show noobs like me what can happen.

[JaxKat]

Helluvva day ... Good story teller... Very happy you're OK.

[WildKat]

Good Grief you came WAY too close for comfort to the edge ! And even more fortunately is that there was no car coming around that turn in the other lane too Fortunately you came out not too much worse for wear and except for that nice dent in the exhaust your bike faired pretty well too.

Lesson learned for sure. Trust your bike and your tires. Even when you dont think you're gonna make it, you'd be surprised how much your bike will carry you though.

Did you find yourself target fixating on the spot where you went off the road once the bike began standing back up? How much of the front brake did you use in the middle of the corner? I might have missed it in your post but have you rode that particular stretch of pavement before?

[The CyberPoet]

Anything you walk away from and remember is a learning experience... And I am really glad to see that you walked away.

The segment of NC state road 197 looks very much like Meadow Branch road splits off 129 just before Tapaco and heads over the mountain to the road at the backside of Fontana village... It's awesome pavement & curves until the pavement disappears and then it's deep gravel for about four or five miles (road name changes to Fontana Heights about the same time it turns to deep gravel with nasty drop offs, but you'd never know unless you're looking at a very detailed map), then pavement again and more zipping along. Only time I've really taken my Kat into a serious "off-road" role was over that road (gee, the map says it cuts off 14 miles on the way back to Fontana ).

PS - for the life of me, I can't find NC SR197 on the map...

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[SKNL2]

Thanks to all for the well wishes.

md86: That's exactly what I have been doing. I got a Pops-A-Dent kit and attempted to pull the dent out. It wasn't working very well at first. I used up a stick of glue and still hadn't moved the dent.



I decided to drill out the rivets that hold the can together, take out the end cap and pop it out manually. The inner pipe is spot welded to the end cap on each end so it doesn't come apart without more tools and work than I am willing to give it. So I went back to the Pops-A-Dent kit and used their product warnings against them. They said not to leave the glue gun plugged in and heating for more than 10 minutes or over adhesion would occur. Eureka!





It's not perfect but it doens't look freshly biffed either.

CyberPoet: The section of NC197 I was on leaves Burnsville, NC south toward Asheville, NC and intersects with US19 (Future I-26) just north of Asheville.

WildKat: I wasn't fixated on anything really. I find that the riding experience I gained while road racing bicycles has kept me from doing that. Not saying it won't ever happen, but that it hasn't. I only gave it a tad of front. It clearly doesn't take much at all, I now know. Once off the pavement, I attempted to stop the bike on the grass. Once it was decided that it wasn't going to, I grabbed all the front brake I had and intentionally caused the front to tuck and the bike to fall right. I really thought I was toast. No, I had not ridden that particular section of the Parkway.

Update:

Here's the pipe back on the bike. I have been using polishing compound on the scratches on the tail fairing as well. Looks like most, not all, will come out with a little work.

[USCGC_Katana]

Sooooo glad you were able to bring us that report.
You just about bought the farm. Thanks for the Pics. That really brought it home. Lessons learned.
Glad you are OK and thanks again for sharing.

[md86]

And I kinda LIKE riding in gravel sometimes . Just so long as it's an actual gravel road , and not just crappy pavement !

[SKNL2]

Given the proper equipment, I would, too. Like on my old Yamaha. Not on my formerly cherry Kat, though. I didn't want it getting rattled apart.