Never hit a pothole this hard, never seen this before

[1976RD400C]

So my favorite road was closed and I detoured around it. It is a very rural area and a narrow road. Two cars were coming at me, so I was concentrating on them looking up ahead. Glance down and right in front of me and a 2 X 3 section of pavement doesn't look right just as the cars are alongside me. I was only going about 35. OMG, a 6" deep pothole. First thought was "you're going down", but no the bike took it like a champ, bang, bang, crotch slams tank, but not too bad. I think the fork emulators, Works shocks, and a steering stabilizer saved me. This was 2 rides ago and I had it out today, and everything felt normal but when I got home and was checking things out, this. Effing town highway department around here doesn't keep up.

[SoCal250]

Ouch!
Although you're in NY, sounds like you could have been on a California road. It's horrible here.

[m in sc]

- dammit that suuuucks. 

[soonerbillz]

Yeah that sucks.
 But I wonder if one of the auto wheel repair shops could save it?

[pdxjim]

I would say that's not worth repairing, and probably easier and cheaper to source a new wheel.

[IR8D8R]

Man. That happened to me last spring. They were doing highway work and left a transition to new pavement about 5" high. I hit it at 70 mph on my XSR. I think my ass was 2 feet above the seat. Thought I was done. Didn't damage my wheel fortunately. Scary as hell. Glad you're OK.

IR8D8R

[1976RD400C]

Will a Daytona 2.15" wide wheel bolt right up to my '76? Rotor spacing and mount the same? That would be a nice upgrade.

[Hawaii-Mike]

I'm guessing that your tire pressure was low.  Not worth fixing and I'm pretty sure that a Daytona wheel won't fit a '76 unless mods are done.  Brakes and swingarm are different.

[1976RD400C]

I was able to fix it. Big vise and a torch. That is some tough stuff. I put a 2 X 4 on the good side and just let the smooth jaws on the vise push right on the bad spot. Cranked the vise up some and started to apply heat with acetylene torch, kept heating until I could feel the vise give and could be tightened more. On and on I went until I could see in the flat jaws of the vise it was parallel and flush with the rim on either side of the damage. Two more times in and out of the vise to tweak it some and all seems good. The manual says runout should be within 1mm and looks well within that. Can't see and problems eyeballing the tire spinning. I don't know what that rim is made of, but it took a lot of heat to get that to give and the heat didn't seem to travel very far around the rim. I hate downtime. This one was 24 hours. 

[2 Smoker]

Highway 12 north Idaho