Cycledude
Well-Known Member
Yesterday I rode the Tenere to town, pulled into a Kwik Trip gas station for breakfast, as I was turning left into a parking spot the steering locked tight so I had to stop and nearly tipped over ! Wiggled the handlebars and they came unlocked, so I put the side stand down and got off the bike looking to see what caused it to lock, didn’t see anything but there was a small piece of a rock laying on the pavement where I had stopped but who knows where that might have come from. An old high school friend was there and saw it happen so he came over to investigate, we both were looking to see what possibly could have caused the steering to lock but didn’t notice anything. So after breakfast I rode over to my local Yamaha dealer only half a block away and everything seemed to be working normal. Went inside and talked to the guys at the service counter, first thing they asked was does your Tenere have a steering damper ? Nope no damper so the guy says I will come out and take a look at it, well he almost instantly sees a bunch of small rocks sitting on the edge of the triple tree wher the stops are, they were almost the same color as the triple tree so that’s my excuse for not seeing them myself earlier. He told me to pull up to the shop door and he would blow the rocks out with a air hose. i feel very lucky that this happened at very low speed in a gas station parking lot or the results could have been terrible, if the bike had tipped over the rocks most likely would fall out by themselves and everyone would have been saying the rider did something wrong.
