The AA call it Rider Club, the RAC call it Sprint. From either of them it will cost you less than thirty quid (my god, some of our readers want a whole motorcycle for that amount - Ed). Just how much less depends on whether or not you pay for it by direct debit, although it is rather surprising that they won’t give a discount for cash.
Provided you have the little plastic card, that confirms your membership, on you, one of the patrols will respond to your call for help, and if they can’t get you rolling they'll take you back home or wherever you want to go (sounds like a cheap way to do five hundred miles - Ed). They don’t seem bothered whether the bike has suffered mechanical failure, been vandalised or thrown up the road. They will even give you a lift if the bike’s been nicked. So how come I didn’t join until it was too late?
It was almost midnight. I was on my way home from a second, and very enjoyable date, with a new girlfriend. I should have been home before twelve thirty, leaving just enough time for some worthwhile sleep before rising at five fifteen for the early shift. The empty motorway stretched out before me, slippery and black like the back of a wet seal. I was cruising a nine year old R100RS in the mid nineties when it happened.
The clutch plates broke up. It was one of those wonderful heavy duty jobs from Borg & Beck with two fibre rings mounted on the central plate metal tabs. I had noticed earlier in the evening that there was a lot of slack and eventually the drive completely disappeared when the last of those little tabs sheared off.
One of the first things the girl on the other end of the emergency phone asked was if I was a member of one of the recovery clubs. It’s then you feel like a complete pillock when you have to say no. Oh, she was helpful enough, arranged for a local garage to send out a rescue party, but I knew I’d have to throw myself on their mercy and plead abject poverty if I was to afford the ride home.
I waited over an hour for a half asleep teenager to turn up in an estate car - it was all fixed up with one of those fancy bars for towing cars off the motorway; no-one had told him it was a motorcycle. If I’d just hang on (very funny) he’d go back for the trailer. It took another hour for him to return, load on the bike (I did that actually) and drive all of five miles back to the garage. His boss wouldn't let him drive me home that night. Fair enough, I suppose, probably didn’t trust him to find his way back in the dark. I was allowed to sleep in the garage, with the promise that someone would take me home when the lads turned up at eight in the morning.
Natch, I became a member of the AA Riders club the very next day. What a bargain! It had just cost me sixty quid to get trailered off the motorway and spend six hours in a freezing cold garage before the forty mile ride home, Now, for a mere £24, the AA was promising to rescue me from anywhere in the country, day or night and take me to the destination of my choice for no extra charge. Value for money or what? The problem had been, of course, that I truly believed in the school of thought that if you’ve a few decent tools and spares, and you know a bit about your bike then there’s nothing to fear from the odd breakdown. Once a supporter of this philosophy, I now realise that it was more a mixture of over-confidence and delusion.
Let’s face it, no matter how simple your modern machine may appear, the days when your old dad could bodge up a broken valve spring with a piece of of your mum’s knicker elastic are long since gone. The cost of a lift has gone up a bit since farmer Giles put the Frannie Barnet in the back of his haycart and drove you home. Of course, we all have mates who will turn up at a moments notice to render assistance but they’re never at home when you really need them.
Just because I now have a national back up team behind me, ready to rush to my aid should the worst happen, doesn’t mean I don’t take precautions. At the risk of sounding like one of those MZ-ing BMW owners, I’d say that some preventative maintenance and a first aid kit are also essentials for avoiding wasting time sat by the roadside. No-one really expects the AA or RAC man to magically appear just minutes after you’ve put the phone down, and I don’t think an hour would be too far out for an average waiting time outside of the cities. In which time, given the parts and tools, you could have fixed any of those faults which result in the majority of callouts.
A spare clutch cable, as every schoolboy knows, should be taped alongside the original. Careful selection of cable length and nipple shape should allow the cable to be swapped with the brake cable on drum braked machines. Lots of fuses, so you can experiment a little to find out the cause - I once went through half a dozen before finding the chafed wire inside the indicator stem of an R65. A complete set of bulbs doesn’t take up much room, a roll of insulation tape is every bit as useful as the best tool in your toolkit. Team it up with a small tube of Super Glue and you'll be able to repair all sorts of breakages.
I first discovered the value of Super Glue over a thousand miles from home when a two inch rip in a carb diaphragm was repaired with just a couple of drops. The carb functioned perfectly for the rest of the trip and the joint was still intact when we arrived home. Remarkable stuff. Standard tool kits should be checked because they often lack tools for doing the simplest of jobs.
Even the usually excellent BMW toolkit - impressive enough for owners to look forward to a roadside engine rebuild - lacks a screwdriver that can get into the RS fairing and teach the headlamp shell - not the sort of thing you really want to discover in the dead of night when the light bulb blows. Thank heavens I’ve never been stuck like that. When Joe Lucas was better known as The Prince Of Darkness, only the foolhardy would venture forth at night without a torch. In my dad’s case it was a bicycle lamp which could be slung over the handlebars in place of the headlamp. It’s still hanging around garage somewhere, I doubt if my little black Duracell number will still be around in fifty years.
Progress has also brought us the aerosol puncture repair kit. Not everyone approves of this, though, and it really gets up my nose when some traditionalist tells me that I should be able to change an inner tube by the roadside. On a BMW with tubeless tyres it’s impossible to separate the tyre from the rim unless you carry a massive G clamp - I even tried to plant it under a car wheel and leaping on the wing to no effect. No way. Of course, both organisations will help you with a puncture, although the work is usually farmed out to specialist companies in big cities.
Choosing between the AA and RAC is a personal thing, although the AA do boast that they have twice as many patrols and the RAC will take you long distances without any change of vehicles. Both offer their services on the Continent, having a tie up with similar organisations in: various countries. It costs around £34 for 31 days. There’s also personal insurance, international driving licences, the camping carnet, the route plan, etc., etc. They can, and will if you let them, supply everything you could think of for riding at home and abroad.
Whether you're riding to Greece for your hols or just doing a regular two or three hundred miles a week, it’s pretty obvious that the cost of repairs could well be the least of your worries if you break down and you're not in a recovery club - there’s all the hassle of getting the stricken machine back home, the possibility of lost wages and opportunities and even the ruin of your holiday. When you're sat on the armco, as I was, doubtless in pouring rain, you will have plenty of time to ponder all this and think up a few more reasons why you should have joined. But it’ll be too late then, won’t it?
Malcolm Ingham