A bike maintenance weekend it seems to have been.
On friday night i entered into another chapter of maintenance on the 2006 Suzuki VL800, with leaking coolant and missing headlight screws alerting me to their state on a ride to the Bendigo Historic Motorcycle club meeting a couple of Sundays ago.
Another adventure worth writing about. While the weather was terrible, and has been on and off rain since July, with fierce winds, hail, and thunderstorms pervading week in and out. Leaving my fellow Victorians wondering if spring will ever break with winter this year? The roads are terrible and the state government has recently announced that they will be focusing only on built up areas and the metro networks. It was these combined conditions that had me belting along the corrugated and pot holed roads of Jaara country, trying to maintain a decent clip when all of a sudden at 100km/h the headlight popped out.
I pulled over carefully bringing the VL800 to a steady stop and popped it back in again (wondering how in the f#ck did that road rattle those loose? swearing i had Loctite'd the buggers in). Taking the ride extra carefully i passed through a hamlet on the way to Dunnolly where i could tape the headlight back on again, once i had sculled a ginger beer.
That was when i noticed coolant leaking onto the front guard. Once i had checked the coolant leak. But rode home no issues. I figured i must have a holey radiator and proceeded to research prices on new, or good radiators, and picked up some JB weld, later in the week. I topped up the radiator only to get a better look from where the leak originated and figured it was in the top part of the radiator, if it wasn't just the hose.
So Friday night for as long as i could after all of my family commitments i played around, draining coolant, in the rain, whilst leak testing the radiator. I felt like crap (something i had eaten) and went to bed early, and rose basically at dawn, to a slow start to the day, but managed to get the new overflow bottle installed, the headlight reinstalled with spring washers and Loctite, and the coolant bled through and bike running.
I couldn't get the thermo fan to come on, and the sensor reads 50Mohm. That's a future fix, and I will face that at some point in the next few weeks. All in all good news on the Saturday morning, my hack is back on the road.
Spent all of my free Sunday alone time away from the family practising Zen meditations (and somehow, not altogether failing nor succeeding) in motorcycle restoration.
The rear and front wheels both needed some love, care and attention, and while just a new tyre, on each and some disk machining was probably all that was required, the disassembled and rat flavoured project needs some deep kind of love. I figured, a wheel bearing kit will be a simple process and will save me having to do it later on, and perhaps eliminate one more goblin
from popping up in a more inconvenient manner.
The wheels are loose anyway, so all i had to do was pop the seals out (nice and crispy after perhaps 30 years of neglect) with the tyre iron. Making sure i cleaned the beads near the seal point with a fine point, cleaned with solvents and heated everything up with the heat gun.
I love heat guns, torches, thermocycling, and press fit parts.
The flat faced drift was used to drive the bearings out with some force. No damage to the mating surfaces, but the old bearings got a solid mashing.
I prepped the surfaces and gave all of the spacers, Speedo gear, axle bushes and so on a really good clean. I had to spend some time sanding with emery and medium steel wool to get the fitments to a smoother and less corroded state than what was found.
Froze the bearings and seals and drove them all in with whatever bearing drivers i could improvise. The seals slid in by hand and everything got a thin film of moly grease (i normally use natural but it's in the other workshop) and i felt whole and complete, and stunk of kerosene, grease and various aerosol lubricants.
That feeling subsided rather quickly once i realised the mountain keeps jutting up, and the next day's climb requires that same amount of effort to round the col of the swing arm pivot kit, and the steering head bearings.
Until the next chapter, know that working on your projects can really help distract from the problems of your existence. But it goes on forever.
Always kicks my ass, I don’t think I have the right technique but got it done with minimal rim damage. The old was worn down so much that I noticed about a 100 rpm increase at highway speeds with the new taller rubber.
