This was a really freak occurrence, but one that Brammo may want to look into:
I tried to park my Empulse on a VERY steep San Francisco hill [Greenwich St between Jones and Leavenworth] that has head-in parking. Usually I try to find two adjacent empty slots and angle the bike at 60 degrees or so, with the back tire against the curb. On this day, there was only one slot open, I was hot and tired at the end of the day, and I had unconsciously placed the bike at a more acute angle to the curb than usual.
When I dismounted, holding the front brake, the bike began to slide down the hill. The angle into the curb wasn't sufficient, and, without my weight on the bike, the front tire didn't have enough traction. As the bike slowly headed for the shiny black fender of the adjacent, downhill, BMW, I desperately pulled the bike toward me to load the kickstand in an effort to stop the slide.
All of a sudden the bike started to fall towards me, inducing stark visions of crushed legs at the worst and immense difficulty getting the bike back upright on this steep hill. I mightily pushed back and saved the fall, just as the carbon fiber license plate holder made contact with the BMW.
Incredibly, there was no dent and no scratching of the car’s fender. I remounted the bike, folded the kickstand and gingerly made my way out of the parking place and up to almost level ground. But now I had another challenge: the reason the bike fell toward me was that the mounting bracket for the kickstand had seriously bent. Now the kickstand, when deployed, was way too far forward, allowing the bike to lean over to the left too far to stand upright. With no center-stand, I had no way to park my bike anywhere!
Spying a street sign pole, at the top of the hill, I drove the bike over a curb, up onto the sidewalk, and maneuvered it right next to the pole, placing the frame saver just in front of the pole to prevent the bike from rolling down the slight incline. I took off my gloves and placed them between the pole and the frame and “gas tank” to keep the pole from marring the finish. I dismounted and used a Rok Strap to tie the bike into the pole.
Next, I sat down on the sidewalk and proceeded to repeatedly kick the folded side stand as hard as I could with the heel of my riding boot. I managed to bend it back in place so that it would support the bike again. I'm sure that all the passing throngs of summer tourists had something to talk about with the folks back in Peoria.
Once home, I rigged up the hardware pictured below to bring the stand back to its proper position.
Kickstand straightenI realize the odds of this happening again, to me or to anyone else, are low. But since steel, once bent, bends again more easily, I’m going to look into what it takes to replace the mounting bracket. Meanwhile, the Brammo engineers may want to look at the design of this piece in light of what happened to me. Or, not, since the odds really are quite low, and it may be better for the mounting bracket to bend that to damage what it's mounted to!
Once everything was done, I sampled The Glendronach, and my bad day came to a good ending.
