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December 6, 2008

Routine Maintenance

I have a bad habit of procrastinating. In all likelihood, it is this that doomed my academic career. Nesting for the F1 has impelled me to accomplish some long deferred tasks such as clearing off the work bench, described below. Yesterday, I finally got around to calling up the BMW shop to ask whether they ever received the brake pads the ordered (and charged me) for me two months ago. Indeed, they had and the pads were there ready for pick up. Pads in hand, I pulled out the trusty Clymer manual and set about my task.

The new pads, lacking the quality of being soaked in fork oil for many months, stop only marginally better than the old ones. I'll keep the old as spares for the time being.

That small bit of wrenching accomplished, I thought I would start up the Trail 90 to see if the Battery Tender is doing an adequate job of keeping the battery up to snuff. Sure enough, the ever-reliable little single fired right up. After months of using the F650 for the same tasks for which the 90 has been used (viz. commuting, running errands, etc). When I shut down the bike, I noticed a significant fuel leak. Crap. I rolled the bike on to the lift and removed the carburettor. I pulled off the float bowl and checked to see that the float needle was not stuck. Turned on the gas to observe more leakage. I removed the carb again (as everything, the time spent is diminished with the frequency of the operation performed) and this time tightened down the fuel filter screen. The leak decreased but was still there.

There were two possible sources for the leak: the o-ring that sits between the screen cover and the carb body, and the fiber washer that sits under the screen cover retaining screw. As it happened, what was once an o-ring had become a squared off seal. So much like a seal did the rubber thing appear I was not sure an o-ring would fix it. But it did, and I am happily no longer in possession of a leaky carburettor.

The lessons I take away from this mundane episode are:

  1. A lift in the garage makes working on motorcycles much more comfortable;
  2. Room enough in the garage that one of the bikes does not have to be moved off the lift in order to work on another speeds up maintenance considerably;
  3. Those boxes of assorted nitrile o-rings which Harbor Freight carries bags of spare o-rings are nice to have around;
  4. Years of experience with sundry motorcycles over many years has allowed me to save heaps of anxiety (and money);
  5. Work benches are extremely difficult to keep free of clutter.

In other news, I took apart a little fuse-holder I just happened to have had rolling around the bottom of my old toolbox to understand how I might be able to use it in the F1 (for which I thankfully have a delivery date). I felt pretty stupid when I realized that taking it apart was completely unnecessary.

Posted by Underblog at December 6, 2008 7:43 AM

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