Never mind, just pick it up again! It's not difficult

It’s quite normal to approach a GoldWing with sense of anxiety about its weight, wondering how on earth you could pick it up again if you dropped it.

This Page aims to give you confidence that although of course GoldWings can be dropped, there are ways to minimise damage (there is usually none or very little) and they can be picked up by a rider without assistance, as the demonstrations at last year’s Blackpool Light Parade showed.

Indeed one of the things you have to beware of when you are picking up a Wing is helpful bystanders getting too enthusiastic about helping – and doing unnecessary damage by grabbing and pulling in the wrong place.

These notes are based on experience with a GL1800 but they will also apply pretty well to other GoldWing models.
How to drop a GoldWing (gracefully)

Dropping a GoldWing almost always happens at very low speed, almost stationary in fact, and more often than not because the rider grabs the front brake when the bike isn’t quite vertical or the front wheel is not pointing straight ahead. The effect of braking like this jerks the bike into a potential fall which it can be difficult if not impossible to stop.

Like any bike a GoldWing can be kept vertical very easily providing it’s kept nearly vertical. With a lightweight bike it may not matter if it is allowed to lean quite a long way over, the rider will still be able to arrest the fall by putting a foot down and pull the bike up again with relatively little effort.

Never reject and offer from a lady to pick your bike up

Not so with a GoldWing, once it starts to go down it quickly becomes impossible to stop going down and the best you can hope to do is break its fall. You can start to feel this happening as you drop the bike onto its side stand in the normal way; it gets a little heavier the further it leans over.

The extent to which the bike leans when it’s on its side stand is more or less as far as a rider sitting astride the bike can comfortably pull it up from, even he has a foot firmly on the ground. If you ever fit a shortened side stand by mistake, you will notice straight away that the bike has got much heavier (and harder) to pull upright.

So if you fail to get the bike upright as you stop, and especially if you use the front brake to stop suddenly, a GoldWing will try very hard to lie down completely. It only takes a sudden stop from less than walking pace to cause this problem.

The best way to prevent a GoldWing from dropping on you is to bring it to a halt smoothly and carefully, get it upright before you come to a halt (so no stopping while you’re still turning) and use the foot brake to do so.

You can use a little front brake too if you wish, but never (repeat never) risk stopping purely on the front brake just for the sake of getting your feet ready to put down. Unless the bike is completely vertical as it comes to a halt and your feet are placed solidly on firm ground, there will be a serious risk of the bike toppling.
If it’s going down, it’s going down

If you don’t get this right and the bike starts to fall beyond the point where you can hold it then it’s time to accept the inevitable and put your efforts into breaking its fall.

Back to the bike, butt low down, legs nearly straight

GoldWings are designed to cope with being dropped and, unlike lesser bikes, even it you do little to soften the fall, there is unlikely to be serious damage. Superficial scratches on the engine crash bars will often be all there is to show for it.

Unless a GoldWing falls onto a surface which is sloping away from it fairly steeply, it will drop onto its crash bars and nothing else will touch the ground.

If you are unlucky and the Wing gathers enough momentum to go further over, rocking on its crash bars, then the mirrors housings touch the ground and may be scratched. If it lands heavily the clutch or brake lever may also suffer damage and the pannier lid may get scratched. That’s about as bad as it can get. Mostly damage will be limited to superficial scratching of the front crash guard and probably not even that.
Picking it up

This is nothing like as difficult as you might imagine and it can be done by one person unaided, indeed it can be done by a woman of small stature. It’s technique rather than brute strength which gets a GoldWing back upright.

No helping, she's doing it on her own

Before you start lifting, it is important to stabilise the bike, so it won’t run away with you as it comes up to the vertical. The engine will have stopped automatically but turn off the ignition anyway.

Next ensure that the bike is in gear. It may well be in gear already but if move the gear pedal with you hand to engage a gear, reaching under the bike if necessary.

It can also help to stabilise the bike for purposes of picking it up if you put the handlebars right over and apply the steering lock, although this is not essential. It you are going to do it turn the handlebars so that the downhill grip is to the rear of the bike.

Finally if the bike has fallen to the right put the side stand down so it can’t possibly fall over the other way when you get it upright. If it’s fallen the other way this will not be possible until the bike has been picked up.

So the ignition is off and the bike has been stopped from rolling forward or backwards by being in gear and you are ready to think about lifting it up.

But the technique for picking up a GoldWing is based on pushing (in the right way) rather than lifting, so you’re not going to be doing any lifting at all.

If there are willing helpers around by all menas make use of them but make sure they are told where to take hold and what to do. The only safe places to allow helpers to grip the bike is the uphill passenger grip, the uphill rear crash guard and the uphill front crash bar and (providing you have applied the steering lock) the uphill end of the handlebars. And even then make sure they know not to pull on brake, throttle of clutch cables and the like.

The bike is coming to no further harm lying on the ground so take you time, gather your cool, make absolutely sure that the helpers known where and how to try to help. There is a limit to how many helpers can be safely allowed to help and it’s probably no more than three.

So you are going to be the only person positioned on the down side of the bike. When you are ready, and not at the rush, you sit on the rider’s seat facing to the down side (with your back to everyone else) and your feet together on the ground with your legs straight and toes pointing away from you and away from the bike.

Then you slide your backside (or butt as the Americans call it) off the edge of the seat until you are almost off it, bending your knees slightly as you do so. What you are doing by making this adjustment of position is gaining leverage. As you start to apply force by straightening your knees, you will be pushing backwards against the edge of the seat and this will help to start to force the bike upwards.

Next you take hold of the passenger hand grip with one hand and the handlebar grip with the other. because where you placed you backside (butt) your elbows are likely to be bent – keep them that way. You are not going to be lifting with your arms, just holding on.

Success! And all on her own too!

When everything is in place, as described above, you keep your feet firml;y on the ground and start to straighten your knees, push backwarsd with your backside (butt) as you do so, leaning backwards rather than forwards and holding the position of your elbows rather than allowing them to straighten.

The bike will start to lift off the ground and as it does so you start to move your feet an inch or so backwards at a time, one at once, to keep your backside( butt) pushing horizontally at the edge of the seat. You assistants (if any) can help as you are doing this by pulling the bike upwards.

As the bike lifts off the ground you need to keep the pressure on, shuffling slowly backwards with your feet, holding your elbows and shoulders in a fixed position.

This is the hard bit so you must keep pushing backwards hard to get through it. As the bike lifts further and further off the ground it gets easier and easier to keep going. Remember to keep leaning backwards as you push, that’s important too. Don’t stop pushing too early; there is very little danger that you will topple the bike over the other way.

As it gets near the vertical the bike will be noticeably easier to push further up and this is when you must slow down, to judge the point at which the bike is upright. There is no hurry changing positions because it is just as easy to hold the bike upright in your leaning backwards posture as it is when you are sat on it – so pause for a second rather than rush into the next move.

Once you have the bike upright and stable if you have asistants they will be able to hold the bike upright for you while you stand up and turn around. If you’re on your own you will have to maintain the bike’s upright position as you roll forwards on the seat and change grip to end up with both your hands on the handlebars as you would normally hold them, facing the bike and standing upright alongside it.

If the bike dropped away from the side stand, which you will therefore have already pulled out before you started picking the bike up, you can then lower the bike away from you to rest on the side stand. If it dropped the other way you will need to use your foot to get the side stand out before lowering the bike towards you on to it.

Then you can breath a sight of relief before checking for damage, and another sigh of relief when you confirm that there isn’t any.

A demonstration of this technique (and a chance to try it yourself on someoine else’s bike) will be available at this years Blackpool Light Parade next Saturday, September 5th.