My Berg has bitten me!!

Sun was out in England this morning for a change so thought I would go out on the berg for a blast. Full leathers were squeezed on and Sidi Vertebra boots to protect the toes. Rested the bike against the wall of my house, choke on, few slow kicks with decomp pulled in just to get things moving, usual procedure I follow to get the bike to start 1st kick, find TDC and move a tiny bit past, raise kick start and give a firm kick....OUCH, the b*****d kicked me back!!
Hopped round the garden on my right foot whilst uttering rude words loudly, took of my left boot and sock whilst lying on my back with my two kids laughing at me. The bridge of my foot was swollen immediately and starting to show bruising. Off to hospital where xrays confirm that I have broken 2 bones in my foot, yes it hurts a lot!
What have I done about it?
Bought a R6 starter motor and a gel battery so I hopefully won't have to kick the animal ever again.

somebody up there (doesn't) love you!!!!

regards

Taffy

OUCH!!!!!

sorry to hear that m8.
what makes them worse is left hand kick.
ive done the same many times.
hope your foot gets better soon. sell it and buy a KTM same bike but right hand kick lol.
stu

RE: OUCH!!!!!

i have done that. and i have super flat feet, the, the out of place bone i have in there was actually sore for a while.

now, i put the kick starter more towards the ball of my foot. much better.

I'm not one to be easily defeated!
I can just about get my motocross boots on over the padding on my left foot and have just managed to start the bike with my right leg whilst standing on my garden bench.
I'm determined to get out on that bike today!
The wife is taking the kids to a party in half an hour, whilst the cat's away the mouse will play!
She'll go mad if she finds out I'm riding with a broken foot!
Gear changes could be a bit tricky but what the hell!

Last winter I was bored so I went out to the garage to tinker with the berg. Instead of going back to the house for proper footwear I tried to start it in my gym shoes. It was cold and icy and my foot slipped off the kickstarter, the kickstarter slamed back up and caught me in the calf muscle right behind the knee.Being the stuborn german that I am I got right back on it and got it fired up, afetr a few minutes I went back to the house, dropped my pants and told my wife to take a look at my leg and put a bandaid on it as my pants were startng to get stained. She took me to the hospital, 10 stiches. When the nurse asked me what happened I was embarassed and told herI slipped in the icy garage and landed om my snow plow blade. I let the bike hibernate the rest of the winter.

Been for a blast, unfortunately the wife was home when I got back, after a severe bollocking she helped me remove my left boot.
I am now sat watching TV with a pint of beer and my left foot in a bucket of ice.
It's certainly more painfull than it was pre-ride but atleast I embarrased a few CBR's and R6's etc.......it was worth it!
I've been kicked back by a few bikes in my 23 years of riding but nothing this bad!
Watch the Bergs lads and ladies, THEY BITE!

Freaky, hopefully this will give you a chuckle. A couple of years ago, I was planning a trip to the Isle of Man, and was re-building my R6 at the time after an "off" which wrecked the majority of the extremely expensive plastics.... To fit a new set of brakes to the front wheel, I needed to remove the wheel temporarily.

Now at the time I was struggling for tools, and did not have the correct Alan-key type socket of a size required to fit in the spindle. I therefore decided to "engineer" one, & I mean that in the loosest possible terms as you will discover. All I could find in the garage was a spark plug extractor that came with the bike.... As these parts are manufactured to have the working surfaces on the inside, I had to grind the externals surfaces as these were in the "as-cast" condition.

Fortunately, I'm not about to tell you a story of a horrible incident with an angle grinder held between my legs as I ran the spark plug extractor across the rotating disc to flatten each surface (which is what I did....). No the incident happened later!

Now the fit of this "tool" into the spindle can only be described as an "interference fit" in that it needed a little encouragement with a hammer, nothing too excessive, as it needed to come out again, no little taps to just ease it in. I turned the little bugger & got the wheel off & then back on again. Tightened the spindle back up & then attempted to pull the Heath Robinson contraption back out.

Sword in the stone!! I had mole grips, pliers etc, you name it I could not get the dam thing out. I was off to the TT in the morning, and this was all that was standing in my way!

In the end I decided to give it one more huge effort, so with one leg on the wheel, and pulling the extractor using a set of mole grips with all my human strength I gave it the final pull.... Out it came, like a bullet, straight into my shin & punctured my leg!!! I've never felt pain like, blood running down my leg which began to swell in front of my eyes. I hobbled whimpering & dazed into the kitchen to get some medical supplies & running water only in a pair of socks (this I used to do frequently when I was only "popping in the garage for 5 minutes dear"), and promptly trod on a wasp on the kitchen floor. This stung the foot on the other leg!!!!!!

My wife still laughs to this day, and I've radically modified my approach to motorcycle maintenance ever since....
:buzzsaw:

Mine only ever kicked back when I tried to start it with the throttle open a bit... Otherwise, house slippers worked fine ropellerhead:

I stand to the left hand side and kick her with my right foot,one day she decided to kick me back my god i thought id broke my foot the arch was black and blue,thank heaven for leccy starters,

I used to think my old Maico 490 could kick back with a vengeance but the 650 Berg is king!
I found that setting the kickstarter de-comp spot on made a massive differance, not had a chance to do the auto de-comp mod (dutch clog) but my new R6 starter did work once the other day. There could be light at the end of the tunnel. As was mentioned above my 650 only really kicks back if i get impatient and open the throttle.
Good luck with the broke bits

Crispin, that sounds a nasty one!
Pumbbob, I too have a maico, only a 250 mind but that can give a kick, a 490 would be one to cause damage though.
Don't normally have any problem starting the Berg after I learned the technique, just this once. I am hoping the R6 starter and gel battery will sort it. Im self employed so when I don't work I don't get paid so this week is pretty much a write off although I can put some weight on the heel of my left foot if I touch the toes down it's painful to say the least. I've got a YZ250 supermoto too so will have to fire that old boy up for the weekend.