The "Today I did something to my bike" thread

I was in my mates garage a few weeks ago having a cuppa and the Snap On man arrived, I nearly bought a torque wrench off him, then remembered I didn't win the lotto. My Parkside one will have to do!

But the snap on is so sexy... I've a few snap on bits and honestly, I'd save them from a fire before the missus

How do you check it though do you need any special equipment

I have 2 Torque wrenches that I have had for a while and never been checked

Cheers

Plenty of YouTube videos.. torque wrench can be brought back into spec with luggage scales or solid fixed weights and a bench vice to hold your wrench

I just check mine by comparing the reading on one to another...but on another note...

Today I decided to change the front wheel bearings. I did this once before many many moons ago and all I remembered from it was that after pouring boiling water on the hub the bearing race just flopped out. No such look today on this bike. The bearing spacer was up tight against each side so I decided I'd use my yet unused €bay special blind bearing puller set! Bolted it in and was hoping the lips of the split collet would force their way in between the spacer and the bearing. Tightened it up...few bangs of the slide-hammer and the puller just slid out with no bearing. Had a few more goes and the last attempt, tightened up the collets to fk to the point that two of them just snapped off. Absolute waste of money buying cheap...(I should've known!!!). Eventually went at it again and was able to get enough bite of a punch to knock the first one out and then the second is just a formality. Had a 36mm impact socket to drive in the new bearings and got the speedo side in handy enough but my socket was too big to get the other side fully home - looks like I needed a 35mm socket which I didn't have so I had the bright idea of using the old bearing on top and after giving it a few whacks I had the new bearing fully seated and the old bearing more than half-way into the hub!...oh the joys!!...lol. Have to now source a n anchor bolt to try and see if I can hammer the old bearing back out...ugh

Yeh...I hear ya...I did think of that at one point but the fridge in the house I'm in has no freezer...

Ah yes, I remember cutting a bearing like that sometime before, I think maybe it was when I was fitting steering bearings, God only knows when that was. Never even entered my mind this time before reaching for the old race.

Which puller set have you got? I see good ones priced at a few hundred which would be a bit much for like you said - the amount of times you'd be using it, so I might just see if I can source some good quality split collets on their own and see if I can get them working with the slide-hammer I've got.

I picked up a stock exhaust for the 954. Its a bit scratched but I'll dona job on it

It had a stubby dominator, the bike ran very lumpy with it, obviously it messed up fuelling. Much smoother now and I'm not deafening my neighbours.

Exactly, more air needs more fuel. ECU parameters are quite narrow and while they can cope with some changes a massive change to airflow needs to be tuned.

I am going to tune the power commander, my bike has the exhaust and intake flaps deleted so needs a bit of fuel down low.

maahh.... more electric gremlins on the Dragstar. This time the key needs to be wiggled about a bit before the power comes on. Something to do for the weekend I suppose.

Won't work on a leak at the rim or in the sidewall.

Bead sealer? Not heard that term before - got any brand names I should look up?

Oiled the petrol cap, a little while back, so it seems okay. The petrol isn't going down on days when it's not used. Ethanol is an ever present water absorbing menace (and growing once E10 becomes the rule). One way of helping (I am told) is replacing existing rubber piping with modern piping of a suitable grade. Now that might only be an issue with older (than 2002) bikes, but that is a simpler sort of job (albeit not super simple on the Magna which needs the radiator loosened and moved to access front plugs). Honda Magnas are no bother bikes tho.

It seems to be keeping a seal over the past few weeks. Not sure how common super unleaded is nowadays. A number of petrol stations sell a more expensive petrol, but it doesn't appear to be higher octane fuel, but maybe it is.

Added some shorty levers

Never got the point of those. Usually when people end up with short levers after a crash they feel the need to replace them 😁

also some knucklegaurds don't fit full lenth levers.

Headed off for a spin and got up the road and noticed I had no back brake.

Back home and bled the system but this had little or no effect.

No sign of leak anywhere.

I then adjusted the push rod in the master cylinder.

This seems to have done the job... for now at least.

Strange one.

You could have probably guessed I had the caliper off and bleed nipple above everything else when bleeding.

A prick of a system.

Not sure what was going on tbh.

Lever was bottoming out and no pressure at all.

No sign of air in system and fluid was up to the max line.

A first for me anyway.

Not that the rear brake on these are much good anyway but I alway use it to varying degrees depending on surface etc.

similar issue at the moment with the R100 rear brake. Took it off the mount, held it so the bleed nipple was the highest point and got more air out, but still not great.

Front brakes are fine.

Came out to a leaking fork this morning.

The oul homemade sealmate to the rescue.

Seems to have done the job.

The usual scenario is if the bike hasn't been used for a while,then when you go for a spin it leaks.

I hadn't ridden the bike in 3 or 4 weeks until Friday.

When I got back on Friday it was probably leaking but didn't notice it until Saturday.

Not a drop out it now after giving it a good testing 😁

I got my bike to levitate briefly....with some assistance... :)

I find that you have to reapply it after washing and after prolonged driving in heavy rain.

It does work brilliantly of you do that.