It was 7 a.m. and looking good...

I was about 15' early in my morning ride to work, and planned on beating the "7:30 rush" by a mile, at least this time...
(remember, I commute in a heavily built up, crowded, European environment where roads are half as wide as you need them and everybody drives/rides at twice the recommended speed...)

So I puttputt my way out of the local neighborhood, thuddthudd my way through the major roads out of the suburb and ride my way down the access ramp onto the local thruway
(can't really call it a freeway, it's less than 10 miles long and it's all inside suburbia Rome).

This is what it looked like in 1757, and this is what it looks like today...  



1/2 mile ahead I see traffic building up, slowing down, over the "Salaria" overpass, so I clunk down 4th-3rd, slow down from 50mph to 35mph with a lovely burble, and prepare to clunk down into 2nd gear...
>- SNAP! -<

...togglewoggle...

Clutch cable just snapped...  

I pull over, try to shift into 1st and "razoredge" my way past traffic but I had lost too much speed and the engine dies...

OK, so it's 7:30a.m., smack in the middle of a flyover in one of Rome's busiest three-way intersections and grounded...

Do I have a spare clutch cable? No, neither with me nor, much less, at home.
Gone are the days when I had a veritable workshop in a steel cabinet...

So I lock the bike and make my way towards the nearest neighborhood... best place to ask for directions and info is - obviously - the local coffeeshop, and by the time I get there it's packed with patrons...

I order coffee, then ask for information and directions.
The nearest CAR parts store won't open until 8:30, but (what a coincidence!) one of the local patrons is the shop owner, who claims he doesn't cater for motorcycles.

I find a bicycle repair shop, who knows, a heavy duty brake cable might do the trick, but it won't open until 10:00...

I walk, and walk, and walk, I feel like "St.Joseph on XMas Eve" (it's a Roman idiomatic expression, meaning you search everywhere but cannot find what you need) until, at 9:30, I finally find a shop that sells clutch cables... hooray !  

Now for the long walk back to the bike...

Hey, guess what? The bike is still there !  

(No, really, abandoned broken down vehicles are removed and towed away)
Now, to fit this cable... oh, luck, all I have is my multi-purpose good-for-nothing combination pliers-toothpick-mouth harmonica !



I pull the old cable out of the sheath, no problem, I lube the head of the new cable with some engine oil and feed it down the sheath...
...all the way down, until it pokes out just over the clutch lever behind the gearbox.

Pluck out the old bit of cable with the... where's the... what the... where's my cable clamp ???



What am I supposed to do, look at the cable with my fiery eyes and solder it to the clutch lever ???  

I trace my way back along the flyover, until I see something that MIGHT look like my cable clamp, there on the painted line between the two lanes...
(No, we donė't have "slow" and "fast" lane, we have "fast" and "getthehellouttamyway!" lane)  

So I break out in my best ever Michael Jackson Moonwalk and scoot between speeding schoolbuses and zipping mopeds and jog happily back to my bike holding the cable clamp like a hard-earned trophy !

Now... how to get the cable into the clamp... tighten down... ouch! No, that's my fingernail you're twisting...

...cable clamp into the clutch lever receptacle... and, of course, it won't fit...

Either the cable clamp is supposed to be fitted from the other end, and tightened with a 6mm/ 1/4" wrench bent 90°,
OR
said receptacle has/was/is twisted out of shape courtesy of too many happy-go.lucky mechanics over the last 25 years...

The cable clamp simply refuses to fit in the receptacle... I try to bend it back into an acceptable shape, but my combination pliers-toothpick-mouth harmonica can squeeze, but not pry open, it's hinged the wrong way.

Think...

Try again...

Think...

Try again and bust another fingernail...

Cuss some under your breath (which is perfectly useless in  roadside repairs but helps ease some steam...)

Bright idea  

Feed the cable the "other way 'round", tighten the cable clamp, adjust all the slack, and then some... in other words, I McGyvered the clutch cable...
(mind you, it would have been easier with a shoestring from my jackboots !  )

Finally ride to work, right ? Not so, I felt it was a safer idea to ride to my trusty Suzuki dealer and have them fix it;
sure enough, they couldn't help but smile (very politely) when they saw my "fix-it contraption", but then nodded when I showed them the only tool I had to work with.

They admitted the clutch lever cable housing was bent out of shape, and fixed the whole thing in a few minutes...

In the mean time, I checked out their dirt bikes...



Couldn't take my eyes of some of their models !!!  

Well, all's well now, and I do have an extra clutch cable and a few better tools in my magnetic tank pouch



Not that I assume I'll be needing to replace it soon, but you know how it is...

Now... about those dirt bikes...

Now that's an ordeal but it seems more Moses in the desert than St. Joseph on Christmas Eve...

ToesNose wrote on 05/15/13 at 06:36:15:


In Italy, in order to verify if an espresso is any good... see if it has a thick coffee foam on the surface



so that you may you ever so gently sprinkle sugar over it;



if it floats, the espresso is nice and thick and hearty   if it plops to the bottom, it's "dishwater"  

Doesn't look like "All The gear All The Time"  THANKFULLLY

Glad you were able to get it working.