Tales From the Milk Drinker

Today I decided to do something with my nice sunshiny day. I went to the cottage to ride my dirtbike. Unfortunately my ride was cut short by a mechanical failure

Pictured above are the guilty components. You're looking at the front sproket. If you think of a bicycle this would be the gear that is attached to your pedals. On a dirtbike this gear is driven by the transmission which recieves power from the engine through the clutch. On the left of the picture is the eliptical shaped clip which uses the two bolts also shown to hold the sproken onto the driveshaft. The problem here is that the clip is supposed to have some little teeth on it that grab the shaft but they have worn off. While I was riding the front sproket jumped off the drive shaft and the chain wrapped itself around the back axle, causing the rear wheel to lock up and the bike to skid to a stop. Luckily I was going slow (maybe about 20 km/h) so I wasn't hurt.

Equally lucky is the fact that I know how to fix this. I just need to buy a new clip tomorrow at the motorcycle shop on Linkletter road. I've actually bought one before and at the time it cost less than five bucks. So hopefully tomorrow if the weather is nice I'll get my longer ride in without spending a fortune. This break down was 100% avoidable and totally my fault - I should've known to check the condition of the sproket since I hadn't really looked at it in about a year. This clip is a regular maintenance item which should be replaced before it failed.