TECH INSPECTION
Operation Racetrack Freedom 2: Triage
Author: K3 Chris Onwiler
Assessing the damage to our salvaged Kawasaki
 An important part of military training is learning to make the most of what the environment provides. While a battlefield is full of danger, it is also ripe with opportunity. In a dire situation, troops will be required to make full use of whatever they can lay their hands on in a combat zone. When troops find themselves without weapons or transportation, any replacement is fair game. If hardware is found, the first step is to assess the piece and decide if it is or can be made functional. Likewise, this is the first task we’ll accomplish with Sgt. First Class Bresnahan’s new racetrack ordinance.
As mentioned in Operation Racetrack Freedom 1, we’ve acquired a 2008 Kawasaki ZX6R for Sgt Phil to use at the track when he returns from Afghanistan and retires from active duty. This $1800 salvage machine took a dive from a trailer while being towed at highway speed and is an absolute mess. We wanted to figure out what the machine would need before beginning its rebuild, so that we’d be able to form a strategy for how, where and when to spend the Sergeant’s combat pay to best effect. Motorcycle triage begins with piecing together any knowledge of what happened to the bike and comparing that info to the damage that you see. In the case of our Kawasaki, we know that it tumbled off a trailer and from the damage present; we’d have to conclude that it fell to the right. Through examination, the left side of the bike showed little damage, aside from energy transfer from the right having punched out all the body mounts in the left side fairings From the seat rearward, there was little damage on either side. We’d have to guess that when the machine slipped its bonds, it flipped over the trailer fender and landed on its nose, travelled upside down for a moment on it’s tank and passenger seat, then flopped onto its right side and slid into the ditch.  Recreating the crash scenario in your mind helps you to diagnose the direction of force that caused the damage and gives you indicators for searching out hidden damage. Since our bike had taken a big hit right in the nose, our first area of concern was the soundness of its frame and forks. If a cycle’s front end is subjected to impact, the most obvious place to find structural damage is in the alignment of the forks. A pair of forks and the steering stem of a motorcycle represent three straight lines that must be parallel. The distance from the low point of the front tire to the top of the upper triple clamp is close to four feet, which provides a long lever for impact force to damage the machine’s frame. An eyeball check showed this area to be straight, which was why we chose to purchase the bike in the first place. For verification, we supported the nose on a steering stem stand and removed the upper triple clamp. If the front end has acted as a lever during a crash, those three parallel tubes will twist in different directions and the triple clamps will bend, making them hard to disassemble and even harder to put back together. In the case of our Kawasaki, the upper triple clamp slid off and back on like a round in a chamber. This was confirmation that we had a sound frame and forks to work with.
|