Herakles Boardman is the youngest rider in the rally. He has an aux fuel tank on his Yamaha 9 triple and somewhere along Leg 1, the too-thin aluminum plate it was mounted on cracked at all four mounting points. He applied JB Weld epoxy to hold it until the checkpoint. When he showed the condition of the mount to your scribe, Herakles said he was already lining up a welder to attempt to fix the problem.
It was suggested that welding the plate would be difficult, costly, and time consuming, not to mention it was likely to crack again. It was then suggested that spending time trying to weld it was not the most productive way to use time on the rally clock the next morning. It was also suggested that two ratchet straps could be easily applied and would hold the tank just fine for the rest of the rally. The last report we had was of Herakles sending photos from the welding shop and enjoying spending his first morning of Leg 2 having the very nice welder attempt a repair. He noted that “this is what the rally is all about”. We hope the chosen solution works well and gets him to the finish.
