A Swing In The Mud

Here's a word of warning to anyone who might be thinking of riding in muddy conditions: Don't do it on your Swing.

Yesterday I thought I'd try to take a ride, since it's been quite a while, and I've been laid up due to snow and ice, and mud when things melt. I have
1 1/2 miles of dirt road to navigate in order to get to pavement. Sunday the road was frozen, which would have been a good time to get out and back in, but it turns out that yesterday was a little warmer, so the wet dirt road was pretty muddy in places, and already rutted from other traffic. I've had two other smaller scoots that have managed these conditions pretty well, so I thought I'd be ok.

There's one strip of road closer to my house that is especially bad in this way, due to poor drainage, and it's always a bit of a bog. Well, I did manage to get out to the pavement, take a short ride since I was already out, and back in, but not without cost.

Caked tires and wheels, slipping and sliding and dropping the bike 3 times, smoking, burning belt and/or clutch and/or tranny (?), and finally the front wheel is frozen, as in it won't turn at all. I'm not sure how I managed to get back to the house, with only the rear wheel turning. I can only imagine what damage might have been done.

Looks like my impatience will cost me, and now I guess I'm grounded til Spring when I can look into the whole thing, and hopefully be able to fix things relatively easily.

Conclusion: keep your Swing out of the mud (dry dirt isn't too bad if you go real slow). It really doesn't like it at all.

Wow that sounds like a mess. Not much fun to look forward to spring with that job looming over you. Hope there won't be any damage. I'm a pretty fair weather rider...I sort of baby by bikes.

Matthew,

I'd venture a guess that your front brake caliper & pads may be caked with mud effectively putting on the brakes. In addition you may have a fender full of mud that is acting as a brake on the circumference of the tire. There isn't much clearance inside the front fender.

Bad situation, let us know the outcome.

Yea, I hope there isn't much damage. I think I'll have to get into the belt area anyway, just to have a look at things, since there was clearly something heating up and burning/smoking/smelling.

Dale, I think you may be correct about the mud caked brakes, and I'm sure you're right about there being mud up under the fender. As you say, there really isn't much room in there at all, and there is clearly mud in there now.

Right now I'm a bit too discouraged to even think much about it, but when there's a nice warm day or two, and I have the time, I'll start to look into it all. I'm guessing I'll have to remove the fender just to able to get at what's up in there.

I can sympathize with the discouragement, but take a few breaths and then realize this is actually not even close to the end of the world. It's really just a machine and since it is just a machine it can be restored to as good an operating condition as before.

I've been in parades with a load on the SilverWing and have smelled the smoke from the belt. Not comfortable, but the belt will need replacement at a regular interval so - not that big a deal. You should check, but don't obsess about it.

You may be able to get most of the mud out with a low pressure hose. But taking the front fender off is pretty easy so again not such a daunting task. Wait for a nice sunny day and then take your time. You'll have it back to the condition you want soon enough.

matthew wrote:

Right now I'm a bit too discouraged to even think much about it, but when there's a nice warm day or two, and I have the time, I'll start to look into it all. I'm guessing I'll have to remove the fender just to able to get at what's up in there.

Don't let the mud dry hard and make it harder to remove.
The sooner you can try to hose down the better.

Hope all is okay Matthew. I'm sure it is just caked up mud in all the places. Maybe with all this new "Stimulus Money" maybe you can get some of that money to have your road surfaced.

Tell us when all if well and good luck.

Thanks Dale, for your very kind and wise encouragement. It does help to keep things in perspective. I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. It's a good opportunity to practice that patience that I didn't use the other day.

Bill, I'm afraid the mud is already as frozen and hard as it's gonna get. I'll just have to deal with that as things get warmer.

Jeff, wouldn't it be nice to get some of the stimulus money? Maybe for road surfacing, or other things too.

For now I'm on hold. I'll keep you posted as I'm able to work things out.

Thanks for your interest.

Here's a short report of phase one of getting back in gear:

We had a nice warmish (40's) sunny day on Wednesday, so I was able to start looking at the situation. I got the front fender off and sure enough there was a full inch of caked mud attached to the underside, thus preventing the wheel from turning. I managed to clean that up and a bunch of other mud from the front wheel and tire. Happily, the brake caliper doesn't seem to be affected. Got the fender back on and the wheel turns just fine. It's a lot nicer having a bike with two wheels turning than with only one.

I gave the bike a good cleaning, and yesterday I rode my usual 60+ miles to town and back, with no problems.
I noticed a new, pretty slight "slapping" sound from the belt area, which doesn't surprise me. I'm guessing the belt has been worn/stretched/compromised a bit by its ordeal.

I've also noticed that the rear wheel seems to have a little play in it now, which I hadn't noticed before. I wonder if the bearing has been damaged?

I also noticed some scoring on the front tire, on either side of the center groove, where I guess it was rubbing against some hard mud on the short ride I did manage the day of the trouble. I'm gonna watch this to see if these scores go away, or if I'm gonna have to change the tire.

That's all I've got so far. I haven't been into the belt area yet to see first hand what's going on in there. I'll also take a more thorough look at the rest of the scoot to see if I find anything else. We're having a week of sunny and warmer days ahead, so I'll probably ride some more unless I find something troubling to prevent me.

Hi Matthew,

I've "almost" been in your situation. My driveway is only about 70 yards of big gravel with pasture on both sides. During our wet spring season I was carefully(?) heading out to the paved county road we have but got squirrelly in the gravel and tried to get back in the grass. 'Course, being off balance at the time caused me to go down in to the drainage 'swale' on the north side of the driveway.

At this point I stopped to regain my composure (thought I was about to dump it for sure). So then I gave it the gas and thought I'd broken something... no movement at all. Come to find out, the mud was so slick that I couldn't even tell that the wheel was spinning. Long-story-longer, I managed to flatfoot myself and finally got the thing pushed out of there and up into the pasture where the drier grass was.

That only left one thing to do; get back thru where I'd just come from and back on the driveway which I thought would be fairly easy with enough impetus. Well, it worked but only with considerable tire spin and additional foot power. Lesson learned?? From then on I was even more careful on that gravel. These bikes just aren't good "MUDDERS"!!

Anyway, I'd guess you'll probably be okay once everything gets washed off and cleared out. We often tend think the worst at times like that. The best of luck to ya'.

Matthew,

Got it rolling again - that's great news!

It gives a clearer understanding of what "street bike" means. These things were just never designed for off road use. The fact that some of us have no choice but to travel SOME distances off road just adds to the adventure, I guess. I've read about some of the Alaska Bike Run swing riders who have traveled many miles of rough dirt road in Alaska, no other way to go if you want to get there. They seem to have done ok, but it doesn't sound like it was easy. As for myself, I'm gonna keep my off road swing riding to the absolute minimum necessary, and I feel pretty certain now that I'm gonna avoid all but the most minimum of WET dirt road riding.
No more trying to run the mud for me.

Hope you're having some of the warmer, sunny weather we're getting right now.

Matthew,

I have taken my SWing on a few gravel and dirt roads and they just don't ride well at all. I know they are not built for this but sometimes you just have to go down these roads. I didn't go far at all and was very careful. I feel for the ones that have to go down these roads very often.