I was happily driving along the road to work, when all of a sudden, I notice the front left fender is bouncing around more than usual, and making a god-awful noise. I pulled to the side of the road to check things out, and found that the cycle wing support had snapped off at the weld betweeen the round tubing and the flat bar that held the fender itself. To make things worse, in the process of pulling of the road, I had reversed into the spot, and bent the front part of the fender support backward, so it was now wrapped around the upper ball joint. I had to drive home very gingerly (about a mile), and in the process, completely destroyed the cycle wing.
I’m in communication with Tom at Manik, and Bill at FM, to try to get a replacement support and wing (workmanship here was clearly probelmatic), but this effectively means that I’m off the road for the year, unless I want to drive without a front fender, which I’m not overly keen on.
Very sad – I had been hoping to make it to PGP kart track to have a little fun in a couple of weeks, but that will probably have to wait until spring time now. I think I’ll take this opportunity to start on the winter projects, including fitting the weather gear, and replacing the headlights, so that I can at least get some satisfaction with making progress on something, even if I’m not driving the car.
