
Yesterday afternoon, I spotted an old Kawasaki riding towards the Parks Hwy in the late afternoon. I don't think that I will be able to get my bike out for another month or so due to all the snow and ice in our driveway and subdivision roads. I still have more work to do on the bike anyway. This weekend, I plan on adjusting and greasing the swing arm bearings, replacing the front and rear brake fluid, engine oil, transmission oil, drive shaft and rear drive oil, adjust the valves and lube the rear drive spline. That should be just about all the maintenance I need to do at this point. I still need to pull off the exhaust headers to try and get a good look at the exhaust valve seats to see if there is any evidence of valve recession. So far I haven't seen any evidence in the valve adjustment changing rapidly but it doesn't hurt to get a better look. I needed to remove the exhaust header nuts anyway to put on a coat of high temperature anti-seize. I've been reading a lot of other blog posts about people out riding some complete with video. Makes me feel a bit jealous. Just a bit....
This must not be my month for computers. When I turned on my PC at home, there was a "pop" when something blew in the power supply. Instead of ordering a new power supply, I just pulled out the hard drive and put it into another old PC we had laying around. After booting up and installing a bunch of drivers, I'm up and running again. Maybe it's time to retire this machine as it is about 6 years old, still running XP and all I normally use it for is going on the Internet and accessing network devices around the house.
Richard:
ReplyDeleteI think isolation and lack of local dealers forces you to be more self sufficient, which is a good thing. I have always wanted to learn more about mechanical things and understand what I read and who others have to say, but there are tricks to everything and unless you are actually doing it, you don't gain the experience. I think if I could look over your shoulder to see what you are doing, then I could attempt it myself. Regular maintenance seems easy enough but it is simpler for me to just bring my bike into the dealer, then there are no questions as to warranty issues.
bob
bobskoot: wet coast scootin
Thank you for stopping by. I guess that I have a distrust of dealer service departments. I think it's because I used to work at one. The goal of management always seemed to be crank through as many jobs per unit of time and do barely justifiable warranty work. I have more confidence in my own work.
ReplyDelete