Near disaster scarey

[BSA500]

Riding home from work Friday. I was about two miles from home when I went to change gear and it wouldn't go,seemed slippery-hmm. Looked down to see oil gushing all over my boot,gearbox,exhaust etc. Quickly killed the engine and pulled in. The oil pipe had completely parted-not snapped-parted from the oil tank union. Solder had disappeared. The scarey bit? 10 mins before I had passed a long sweeping s bend at 60 and the tyre was completely covered in oil on the offside- .
This union is less than a year old-I shall not mention the supplier but it took an age to get the pipe in the first place. I intend to resolder the pipe myself as its cheaper to do that than pay for a new one. Checking the rest of the rockerfeed pipes they are also loose on the joints-basically crap!!

[a10 gf]

wow Good reminder of the potential big dangers in small details. Am happy you made it to a safe stop.
Be sure to use good silver (silver\bronze?) welding, and it won't happen again.

[muskrat]

Lucky boy, go and buy a lottery ticket.
I had the top joint of that pipe go. Made a mess but not as bad or dangerous as the bottom joint.
Silver solder is the way, any plumber/gasfitter would do it in a minute.
Cheers

[Brian]

A couple of things to be wary of with those pipes.

Do not buy one that is chromed or get yours chromed, it makes them brittle.

I cut about 1" out of them and put a rubber piece in, gives them a bit of flexibilty.

Its amazing how much oil comes out of that small pipe isnt it !

[BSA500]

Yes alot of oil does come out of the union. Yes it did have a flexible pipe fitted thats what I thought had come adrift

[Pete Gray]

In 1976 I took my A7 to the south of France via London. Fortunately, and for no apparent reason, I looked down at my right foot as I left the M1 having ridden 120 miles south and had the same horrible shock, oil was pouring out over my foot. The pipe had sheared off at the banjo behind the tank.
I had some small bore plastic tube in my emergency kit and inserted both broken ends tightly wrapping the pipe with wire to hold it in place.
It not only held for a 1500 mile 2 week French run with my wife on pillion but kept going for some weeks on our return.

Rather irrelevantly to this topic here's a photo of me departing Coal Aston for London, snazzy gear eh and not too much saddle room for the good lady !

[bsa-bill]

not too much saddle room for the good lady !

No -- but why is she sitting facing backwards

[Topdad]

I think the caption for that pic should be " was it something I said dear ? " , had the same thing happen to me on Sunday but completely my fault , way overfilled the oiltank and when standing a few mins at lights poured all over the place finished the ride very carefully you can be sure Regards BobH