bike sabotage? (finally, a non-political off-topic thread)

[Zanshin]

I had planned on doing a 250 mile drive on the motorbike today, sending my suitcase via package delivery and using the wonderful weekend warm weather for the drive.
The first picture is taken from right next to my flat's window and shows the bike in the morning sunshine. I got on, turned off the alarm, and cranked up the starter for about 2 seconds and stopped churning the starter when the bike failed to fire up immediately. I checked the kill-switch, noted that the cranking speed was fast enough to indicate a full battery and gave it another try. Nothing, not even a hint of a firing cylinder. I turned the electrics off again and thought about what could be wrong; I'd been driving about 200Km a day every day for the past week (commuting to a customer site in Heidelberg) and the bike was running really well and I'd been babying it on the Autobahn at a mere 120-130Km/H the whole week and had filled the tank about 20 miles before putting the bike to rest last night, so it probably wasn't bad gas.
I reached down to ensure that the two spark cables were tight and not loose and was surprised to see that both of them were hanging loose. "Ah, someone wants to play a joke" I thought and tried to plug them back on but something just didn't seem right, so I took off the helmet and shades and was pretty bummed to see that person or persons unknown had gone to work with a pair of pliers or similar tool.



Now I've got to find a dealer, get new plugs and hope that there isn't another nasty surprise in store for me (hmm, the gas tank doesn't lock...).
What does surprise me a bit is that there isn't much trace of ceramic insulating material underneath the bike - I doubt that anyone meddling with a stranger's bike in the middle of the night would be conscientious enought to clean up after themselves and broken insulator doesn't make much of a memento, either.

[Dirtboy]

- I doubt that anyone meddling with a stranger's bike in the middle of the night would be conscientious enough to clean up after themselves and broken insulator doesn't make much of a memento, either.

Ahhhh but you would have noticed bits of insulator under your bike; that would have spoiled the surprise.

Anti-American statement?

One of those crazed BMW riders?

Have you pissed in someone's garden lately?

DB

[landmineop]

Do you live on the ground floor ? If so, can you push it inside at night ? I did that for many years with an old panhead. My "ex" once got foolish and said " eithr the bike goes out side or I'm gone". Guess what, it was cheaper to lose her than to lose a '56 panhead.

[kd3pc]

it could be the neighbor's way of suggesting that the bike is too loud, started too early or late for their liking, or some such. When I was a teen, my open pipe, big block mopar was my neighbors alarm clock at 5:45 am, for almost 5 years....this I found out 25 years later..

You might think about how it affects the others, while many of us love the smell of traction compound, alcohol/nitro burning, and noise...others not so much.