83 Broken frame

Sunday, after getting our camping stuff set up in Townsend TN, below Gatlinburg, my son and and grandson on their Yamaha FZ1, and the wife and I on the Venture took off down the Foothills Parkway to ride the Dragon. Just after we turned onto 129, as I hit a bump at the beginning of the first bridge, I thought I had a blowout or busted the rear shock. When I found a good place to pull over, the rear tire looked fine and when I checked the rear shock pressure, it was what I had it set on. When I looked under it, I saw that the rear suspension linkage had shifted forward and the frame on the cross bar was twisted and split.

I have checked the frame several times on my 83 Venture and felt confidant that my frame had been replaced with a new one somewhere in its earlier life. I had asked what to look for on this site and was told to look for gussets and any signs of rust. There has never been any signs of rust and the frame looked beefy with gussets around this area. My first look with a flashlight does not indicate any rust present in the split areas and the frame walls look aproximately .075 thick and shiney. The bike is still sitting on the trailer that I hauled it home on Sunday night.

At the moment I have the bike sitting upside down on my trailer. I have all the plastic off except the front fender and the rear frame section off. It appears that what has happened is the center section has twisted and split. I am taking it to a friend that has made a living as a welder and has built many racecars. I am going to have him look at it and see what we can do. I know that if he will agree to tackle it, it will be stronger than new when he finishes it.

What really concerns me is this frame WAS NOT RUSTED AT ALL. It just twisted with the suspension pushing up and the engine weight pushing down on the other side. I did see areas that appeared to have poor weld penitration. I will post some pictures as soon as I can.

Well, she is sitting upright and the rear suspension is on. I took it to my racecar building buddy and he did a great job getting it back right. He also added some 3/8 rod from the tower that has the suspension mount and center stand over to the frame, creating a triangulation for much added strength. I had my collector with me so we could see where we had room and it would not get in the way.

Even though there was obviously some poor welding, but absolutely no rust, I feel I may have also contributed to the problem over the last nine years that I have had the bike. I have routinely spun the bike around while on the centerstand. My garage floor is very smooth and the bike spins easy, but I am going to stop doing that as this has probably put a lot of pressure on the frame in that area.

Thanks Randya, for posting this again, this will help those that need the info.

The trick to fixing this is getting the bent suspension towers back in place. We used a big sledge hammer to get it close and then used a cable "come-a-long" to pull it to where there was not any gap in the broken area. The other part, as I nored in the first post was to take enough plastic off and the rear frame section to turn the bike upside down. This allows you to get to everything.

It has been about 14 months and 7,000+ miles since I did this, including pulling a 440 pound camper down to Vogal and everything seems to still be doing good.

randya