I’m going to give the quick and dirty run down of my day today, mostly to just get into the habit of posting stuff before I hit the sauna and head to bed.
The day can basically be split into thirds. The first third was spent with my friends, celebrating the new year with breakfast and coffee. Afterwards, I spent a good few hours with Zuul and Jaster, and figuring out potential job opportunities. After Zuul departed, I spent the next several hours breaking two different motorcycles.
The first issue occurred with my Yamaha TW200. The very long story short is that about a year and a half ago, I sucked a valve into the bore, and absolutely wrecked the head and piston assembly. I rebuilt the head and piston, but I cheaped out and used a gasket kit I purchased off of eBay. I did this because I did not know which gaskets I needed, and believed that purchasing a kit would solve that issue. Not only did I still have uncertainty about which gaskets I needed, as the kit came with 30 or so gaskets, once I did figure it out and put the engine back together, the engine began leaking oil. So now I’m stuck trying to put the engine back together after figuring out all of the gaskets I need. The problem now is that while putting the head back on, I somehow messed up the cam sprocket assembly, and somehow pushed a dowel pin into the assembly. The dowel pin is what keeps the cam sprocket aligned with the TDC of the cam, and without it, my timing will be thrown off. I’m currently deciding whether I should just purchase a new cam all together, or if I can somehow get my machine shop to pull out the dowel pin, and somehow prevent it from slipping further in.
The other issue was with my 2008 Suzuki Bandit 1250S. I decided to ride it to work, as I have not been riding due to the ice storms and with the TW being torn apart. On my way to work, I discovered that the license plate holder/turn signal assembly was sagging on one side, likely due to a bolt that had vibrated off. After spending hours on the TW, I decided that the Bandit would be a quick fix, and after about 10 minutes of tearing the bike apart, I did indeed find that a bolt was missing. Luckily I had a spare that was close enough to the size and shape. However, while putting the tail rack back on, I stripped a bolt. After swearing for a good 5 minutes trying to pull the bolt out with my hex keys, and further stripping it, I ran to Harbor Freight, and purchased some vice grips and a tap kit. The bolt was a hex key bolt with round edges, so i had to use my angle grinder to cut a relatively square shape for the vice grips to grip onto. After that, it was a relatively easy process of pull the bolt out, cleaning the treads up wih the tap kit, and cutting new threads on the bike itself.
After the twin disasters, I decided to clean up the absolute tornado of a mess of the basement, and organize all of my tools.
This year is off to…. a start. I suppose that it will have its ups and downs.