Yesterday's long hot labourous day.....

[vadasz1]

So yesterday I decided it would be good time to do some work on my bike.  And since I had nothing else to do at work I had a whole paid day to kill.  First off was to remove the top fairing and replace the steel button head socket cap screws I had used to fasten the windscreen down, with Philips drive pan-head SS screws and also SS lock nuts.  Next I removed the big blister I had on the TOP of the fuel tank.  Seems that when I pulled the dent on the top and had a buddy of mine weld in the holes, one of the holes had a microscopic pinhole.  I have been riding full-time since the first week of April and only last week did I notice a small blister that slowly grew bigger and bigger.  Pulled off about a 3x5 inch piece and then took some 220 sand paper and sanded the edges down a bit.  Cleaned with some lightly soaked rag of Xylene and then spread some JB Weld onto the area.  We'll see later how it will hold up.  Good thing I have a spare tank that I can work on.  While the JB Weld was curing I decided to install the polished forks.  My old ones were leaking fork oil and just making everything black upfront.  Took the front wheel inside to see if I can find out where it is slowly leaking air, and after dipping it in a tub of water I noticed a single bubble coming from the valve stem underneath the securing nut.  One bubble about every 3 seconds.  Then I removed the instrument cluster and took it inside to take a part and remove the speedo unit.  It has been reading about 20KPH faster than I was actually going, since I greased the thing back in April.  So I liberally sprayed it clean with some brake parts cleaner and sprayed some grease LIGHTLY only onto the plastic cogs.  Replaced the speedo unit and then replaced the cluster back on to the bike.  Replaced the top fairing and called it a day.

I started at 8AM and finished at about 2:30-ish PM.  It was a long hot and humid day.  My digital thermometer that I have velcroed to the inner lip of the top fairing was hanging on the dash board in direct sunlight and showed a reading of 50C.  Went inside and soaked a rag in some cold water and put it on my forehead as I took a nap in the boss's office.  He is away this week. 8)  Woke up about an hour later and did some work on the computer (checking the ROV, GTAmotoorocycle, Ebay, etc.)  5PM comes along andI head home and the speedo unit is actually reading correctly as far as I am concerned.  I was doing about 100KPH and turning about 6000 RPM-ish.  Got home parked the girl inthe garage and went inside to shower off and downed 2 cans of beer (each can is 500ml).  Went to bed at 9:30 PM.   ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[Brian Moffet]

First off was to remove the top fairing and replace the steel button head socket cap screws I had used to fasten the windscreen down, with Philips drive pan-head SS screws and also SS lock nuts.

You have SS screws and lock nuts holding the windscreen down?  Those should probably be nylon so that they will break if you hit the windscreen.  Otherwise it becomes a contest between you breaking or the windscreen breaking into pointy pieces...

Just my opinion.
Brian

[kev10104]

Nothing like working on the bike and getting paid.Now if the rest of us can only figure out how to do this.

[Rikugun]

Nice job, very satisfying to check off the "to-do" list items.

Re: the steel windscreen screws, I use them on my other bike and never gave it a second thought. I just assumed the nylon screws were to prevent over torquing and damaging the windscreen. Maybe I'll look into a new set of screws!

[YellowJacket!]

First off was to remove the top fairing and replace the steel button head socket cap screws I had used to fasten the windscreen down, with Philips drive pan-head SS screws and also SS lock nuts.

Thats a good AND interesting point that I was actually pondering the other day when I was going through my workbench drawers and found the original - still in the package- nylon bolts that came with the NOS shark brackets I bought a couple years ago.

I've been using the SS hex bolts with nylon nuts that I got as a set off ebay but now that you mention the importance of the nylon bolts, I may change them out.

David

You have SS screws and lock nuts holding the windscreen down?  Those should probably be nylon so that they will break if you hit the windscreen.  Otherwise it becomes a contest between you breaking or the windscreen breaking into pointy pieces...

Just my opinion.
Brian

[Brian Moffet]

Just so people know.  The reason you use nylon bolts (the nuts don't matter as much) is so that in the case of an accident, the bolt heads will pop off before the windscreen breaks.  That way, if you happen to be the reason the windscreen is being forced, the nylon bolts will give way without too much damage to you or the screen.  The last thing you want is to have the screen break into sharper bits while you are impacting it.

You can purchase black nylon bolts from Ace Hardware for 30 cents (http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/productdetails.aspx?sku=2147002195&source=GoogleBase)

Brian