Looks to me like there is a big metal rod sticking out of your tire!



Tires beyond 3 years old are becoming hard, and as each year goes by they get a bit harder.  Tires older than 5 years old can be really hard, especially tires that were made for long mileage and most likely started out as hard rubber even before they aged.

No street tire will get traction on wet leaves or mud.....and wet/muddy leaves are even worse!  Even dedicated off-road tires have a tough time on wet leaves...they are really slippery!  I don't know of any available tire that will fit on the Savage rim that will be a good tire for wet dirt roads.  Here is a link to the tire sets that fit the Savage, and I really don't see any tire in that group that has a tread pattern that will be a "good" tire for the wet dirt roads.....they just don't make them in 15" diameter rim sizes.
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1448021014

What you really need is a tire with a tread that looks like the one below (DunlopK70) - but it does not come in a size that will fit the Savage.  These type of tires provide better traction in the dirt/mud/wet - but don't provide a long life tread.



A relatively new rider, on old high mileage street tires, on wet dirt roads covered in leaves......sounds like the a place where "YouTube" videos come from.  Be sure to have your friends riding behind you with their cameras on.

Having survived a pretty tight left on layers of Sweetgum tree leaves with the gumballs spread amongst them for additional friction reduction, I can Promise you that you don't wanna do that. Without the muscles knowing that the seat had to move up and to the right, I would have been sliding to a ditch.

you just had an 'unexplainable' down
that tire sort of explains it
get a rear tire
also as JOG already said, check your spokes, raise the back of the bike and check for loose wheel bearings, check to be sure your rear wheel is properly aligned. and check the rim isn't bent
when you crash a bike, you NEED to check these things as a matter of course BEFORE you go riding the bike around again

I checked for rear wheel warpage, there is no substantial warpage. I haven't checked the front for warpage, though.

The rear wheel was out of alignment, though. Using a straightedge, the right-hand side had around maybe 1-1/4 inch between board and tire, and the left-hand side around 1/8 inch. Is that enough to cause bizarre handling/instability? I do know that it helped alleviate the belt squeak. I moved the bike around and then propped it up and ran it with the tire off the ground, and then I used a wooden block to push the belt over a bit. It still sets against, or nearly against the pulley sidewall, but it's better than it was. The spinning resistance still seems more than it was the last time I checked the rear brake.  Maybe I need one of those rubber shims somebody keeps talking about. However, the pulley does not seem to have a lot of play in that direction. Sometimes I wonder about frame warpage . I know somebody here has that issue. He says he can make the rear wheel track but not the belt . On the other hand, my crash wasn't extremely violent; it was at a moderately low speed. Maybe it just got knocked out of alignment? I hope so. I remember looking at the swingarm marks a day or two ago, and I thought they looked the same, so I don't know. I doubt it had much of a problem when I bought it. Who knows?


Here's a mystery to solve: My odometer a day or two ago read 16691 miles. I haven't ridden it very much since the crash. Can anyone figure out the mystery?

Yes, I know my tire is lumpy!  I mentioned that a long time ago already

I have a 66 Dream , bought it to get back into riding 6 or so years ago. tires looked decent so figured to get a season out of em . I did. but they felt like I was ridin on marbles. next season I got dunlops for her , what a diff it made . when my wife started to ride with I had to upgrade to bigger bike , bought the 650 as I liked the look. just enough power for the 2 of us ( only 300 lbs or so between us ) had a new rear and looked to be decent front. after the first solo ride I knew a tire was due cause of the marble feelin.