Suspension linkage..help!

 

For your information it IS the Linkage that is broken. And in case you are in any doubt, yes, Im angry� I could have died in my accident and by the grace of god I hit nothing.

Craig was not so lucky and he and his family may have to pay the ultimate price. This need not happen to any of you and may possibly have been able to be avoided for Craig. So DO get new links for your bikes.

I talked with Craig's brother Dave this morning and unfortunately things have not really improved for Craig. He is still in a coma and is still unresponsive. It seems that if the doctors have not had any positive signs within six weeks they will be turning the life-support off. As you can appreciate this is extremely upsetting for his family and friends.

I also just got off the phone with Peter Bridge, the Senior Investigator for the Police with the Central Serious Crash Investigations Unit. He said it IS the linkage that is broken on Craigs bike.

He also made it clear he needs to complete his investigation before he can really comment as to whether the linkage broke and caused the crash, or broke during the crash. However� what he did say is that the curve is an easy one and he could personally very easily take it at 100kph (the open road limit here) on his old 1987 Honda Boldor and that he does not see any reason why Craig would not have taken the curve very easily on his late model, high spec, RSV.

So here is some info on the crash and the crash scene that you may find interesting. It was at 7 p.m. and Craig was riding alone. It is Summer here and broad daylight at 7 p.m. It is a gentle curve and could easily be taken on the RSV at 180 kph. Craig's speed was estimated by the police senior crash investigator at BELOW 100 Kph.

This added to their uncertainty as to how he could have crashed. (Note: Craig is a competent rider). The police investigator owns a 1987 Honda Bolder and he said he that even on THAT bike he could very easily take the corner at the open road maximum limit of 100KPH, and that doing it on bikes such as the RSV would be very easy.

There did not appear to be any gravel, sand or anything else on the road that would cause a rider to fall.

Craig and his bike left the road at the very start of the corner right at the point where you would just be turning into the curve. In other words, his bike has gone straight ahead just at the entry to the curve. (Craig is an experienced rider and would easily have turned into the curve at that speed) There are no brake marks or indication that he was breaking hard or speeding coming into the corner. Interestingly, where the bike has left the road Dave said there were two tyre marks in the gravel. One for the front tyre and the other for the rear tyre. They were apart from each other and it looked like a sideways slide. Apparently it looks like the bike has gone off the road while still upright but while sliding sideways and somewhat askew.

This seems important to me because when the linkage broke on my bike I was just entering a curve and without warning the rear of the bike felt like it dropped downwards and the bike simply slipped out from under me with the rear spinning around to meet the front. Basically, it was a sort of uncontrollable low side. I had no rear wheel lock-up to speak of. So Craig's accident sounds remarkably similar to mine.

Craig's bike appears to have no frontal impact. Just major impacts to the rear. It looks as though the bike has come off the road sideways and gone rear end first into the fence line.

As you may have seen in the photos of the damage to my bike in other threads, it looks as if my bike has had a frontal impact. In actual fact it did not have a frontal impact, and no rear impact either for that matter. The crash scene investigator (employed by Aprilia NZ) reconstructed the accident and concluded that my bike simply did a soft low side and spun around, and once it had reached the grass verge it slid backwards for a few meters on its side. This was how I saw it happen as well.

Then he said that as the bike slid backwards the grass caught on the upper fairing screen and simply tore the fairing forward off the front of the bike.) Back to the linkage issue... In the case of my broken Linkage, the linkage has been checked by a Crash Investigator that was employed by Aprilia. It was also looked at by a Metallurgist. It has been agreed that it definitely broke while riding and that the linkage breaking is what caused the crash. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest any prior impacts to the rear wheel, tire or suspension could have caused it.

A full metal analysis still needs to be completed to find out WHY it failed. But the fact remains that it DID fail. An isolated manufacturing fault? An under engineered part? Bad design? A one off problem? No problem at all?

We need to wait some time to find out what Aprilia has to say.

But in the mean time I also urge you to get a replacement linkage for some piece of mind. It is cheap insurance. And I know Aprilia and also the Lawyers representing the NZ distributor for Aprilia will be reading this post and that it will not be doing me any favours� but if the link plates turn out to be a problem and if this info saves one life it is bloody worth it. My personal belief is that the new part is slightly under engineered.

This is backed up by the fact that there do not seem to be any failures of the pre 2004 part which is stronger, yet there have been several reported failures for the new 'lighter' post 2004+ part. So� is the linkage at fault or not???? Evidence now suggests it IS at fault! In my case it is proven that the link failed and that caused the crash. (Testing may find a fault with the metal. If not lets hope they re-engineer the part stronger)

In the case of SWZ24 on the forum (Sjoerd from the Netherlands) the crash report on his bike states that his linkage also failed while riding. Interestingly, his investigation was commissioned and paid for by Aprilia Italy, and mine was commissioned and paid for by Aprilia in NZ. Here is a quote from page 3 of the report from Sjoerds crash. It says in the intro on page 3, �Due to failure of this suspension, which is being accomplished by two connecting rods in pair, as shown in the appendices of this report, an accident had occurred. According to information received, the incident occurred in a gentle curve, at a speed of approximately 80 km/h, and in dry weather (on a dry road).� So in Sjoerd's case there were witnesses, plus Aprilias independently undertaken investigation (including testing of the linkage).

As mentioned, that report confirmed that the link failed as he rode the bike and it caused a crash. Why did it fail? The metal testing concluded the linkage failed as the loading on it was too great. They could not explain why. And there were no pre-existing faults or damage found with the bike, linkage or wheels etc. I have read the report extensively.

In the case of ZejtaN (Ted) from Sweden, his catastrophic linkage failure has also been proven to be as he rode along, minding his own business. He was going along a straight piece of road in August 2006...and bang... on his ass and in a coma for 2 days, multiple breaks and a fairly long hospital stay. In Teds case he had several witnesses, including people in a car he had just passed, and they all said the rear of the bike collapsed and locked up causing the crash.

The accident report and all the photo & direct evidence also reflect this. So that�s 3 proven to be the link failing during the normal course of a ride! Several other linkages that we know of have been found broken after crashes. But we dont know enough about them to make comments.

And then there is Craigs accident, from which he is unlikely to survive... It does not matter that there have not been 10 or 20 reported failures. Aprilia needs to act on this now. Moreover, who's to say that the problem is not considerably more widespread than we think? Let's face it, there are a lot of Aprilias out there and only a small proportion of them will be aware of any possible issue with link plates. Most riders will have no idea. So it begs the question, how many have had accidents on their bikes because their linkage failed but they are just unaware of the cause? The majority of accidents would have been dealt with by the insurance companies and the riders would never have known if the accident was caused by a broken linkage or not.

They would simply get paid out and be none the wiser. The insurance assessors certainly wouldn�t know. They are paid to check and price up the damage, not determine the cause of the crash. Determining the cause only happens in serious accidents with serious personal injuries or death and doesn't involve the loss assessor. And in the case of bike accidents you can bet many simply get put down to speed and not looked at as closely as maybe they should have.

In fact it would be fair to say that the only reason I noticed the linkage broken on mine was because the bike was put up on a trailer and the linkage was fully exposed to me. Plus I had already been made aware of a possible Linkage problem, so when I saw the broken link it registered with me that it may have caused the crash. But had I not been aware of the issue I would more than likely have overlooked the broken link and assumed it was just crash damage. As it turned out, it wasn't!.

On a positive note, you will be pleased to know that Aprilia Italy will have my plates for testing very soon and I hope they are taking this seriously as I expect they want to know whats happening just as much as we do.

With luck they will also have Craigs plates to test as well. Once again, I want to reiterate that nobody yet knows what caused the plates to fail on mine, Teds or Sjoerd�s bikes. But the fact remains... they DID fail.

We also know there have been other broken plates with no real answers provided... but no real investigations done either... We also know that there may be other link failures that have gone undetected... We also know that if it does happen to you, it could be fatal.

There is enough evidence to suggest a pattern. So get some replacement link plates as insurance. It's not worth the gamble! Aprilia may now be sorting it with some degree of urgency, but you cant afford to wait

 

 

Laters

 

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