The giddy thrill of Acquisition

In aus.motorcycles on Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:12:07 +1000

Well.. At least I can tick that box, but not till I'd been riding over
20 years.

One of the reasons I got rid of my Kawasaki was that the valve
clearance job was a right pain.

These days I have bikes that are incredibly easy to work on (except
the Devil, and it has its own mechanic who works on it for free), but
I quite often pay someone else to do do the work.

Because I can.

Zebee
- who is very happy there's a specialist Guzzi mech in Sydney again.
It was so *nice* to give him a bike and say "new clutch in that
please John".

 

J5 I can do all of that (and more), but I still send my bikes into the shop
as much as possible because I honestly don't enjoy mechanical work on bikes.

And if I can afford it and they do a decent job then I'd rather pay someone
else to do it.

I could still do pretty much anything short of a full rebuild (it's been 20
years since I rebuilt a bike motor from scratch) but why should I? *shrug*


G-S

 

Bollocks, your not a real rider until you have ridden the Nullarbor, and the
Strezleki, welded up your frame by using 2 car battery's, respoked wire
wheels and ridden a sidecar backwards across Bass Straight.

Young people of today have no idea!

Boxer

 

In aus.motorcycles on Sun, 15 Oct 2006 08:12:25 GMT

Damn! Will riding one backwards across the Tasman do?

Zebee

 

Bypass my point entirely and counter with an illustration of how long
you've been around... if I didn't know better, I'd say it almost looks
like you're attempting a diversion here, Nev...

We're not talking about doing engine rebuilds on the kitchen table here,
but not paying a dealership $300 to change the oil and filter.

To summarise, routine motorcycle servicing performed by a workshop
struggles to qualify as value for money as the amount charged for the
job, unlike the work carried out, is far from trivial.

Apparently, there's a sign hanging up at reception of the fabled Harris
workshops in the UK. It says,

"Labour Rates, per hour
Standard, 30 pounds
If you want, 40 pounds
If you watch, 50 pounds
If you help, 75 pounds"

Thus, I accept your offer; at the current conversion rate of ~40p to the
dollar, that'll be $125 per hour... plus a $10 surcharge for it being a
Honda... Hondas don't come apart with as much logic as Kawasakis.

Ultimately, I'm (also) perplexed by your insistence on taking your bike
of a particular brand to a dealer of that same brand for servicing. Why?
Any workshop can work on any bike.

 

Oh well, 3 out of 5 isn't *too* bad I suppose (and I'm working on
getting the sidecar).


BTH

 

In aus.motorcycles on Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:46:43 +1000

It's the bits.

If I took my Guzzi to a Yamaha dealer, the chances of them having
gaskets and filters are nil. Of course if all they are doing is
draining the engine oil then all they need is a couple of stock crush
washers, but if they are doing a real live service - oil and filter,
tappets, airfilter, then they'd need the sump gasket, the valve cover
gaskets, and the filter.

(and be able to count to 30 so they know they have all the bolts....)

I expect they could get them in if they had notice, and could be
arsed, and they'd likely be more willing (if only because they
wouldn't have to ask me where to get them from ) for another Japanese
bike.

Also, I know that a dealer in a particular make gets the service
bulletins, so they know of problems, they know of changes, and they
know what to look for when a bike comes in.

Zebee

 

Second one on order from WA. First shipment arrived in Oz last week. Made it
through customs and in transit to WA now.

Theo

 

Would this be an opportune time to admit what a hairy-knuckled
Cro-Magnon I've been in having never replaced a sump plug crush washer
in my life? *blush*

Yes, but that's a Guzzi which remembers the moon landings.

On current stuff, unless the head's coming off, or worse, there's none
of that.

The cam cover gasket is rubber. Remove, wipe all the sealing surfaces
clean, do your thing, wipe all the sealing surfaces again, reassemble
and you're done.

On Kawasakis at least, ignition trigger, clutch and generator cover
gaskets come off intact, stuck to the cover, in my experience...
speculatively, that could be a consequence of the covers being magnesium
while the cases are aluminium. Either way, it means that taking the
covers off, which doesn't have to happen unless clutch plates are being
changed or the stator rewound (I like to hand-crank the motor for valve
clearance checks from the front sprocket instead of the ignition rotor
retaining bolt), doesn't have to kill the gasket.

That's just the thing, though. Even dealers keep only the absolute
barest minimum of bits in stock.

When I called Sydney City Lane Cove, the biggest Kwaka shop in Syndey at
the time, for shims for the ZX6, they had to get them in from Kwaka Aus
in Rydalmere; it took two days. When I did the shims on the ZX9 earlier
this year, none of the shops in Canberra had the shims I needed in
stock, even in their workshops; ended up getting them through the mail
from Precision Shims Australia... as, incidentally, a couple of the
shops I phoned advised they themselves do when they need shims.

Same thing with chains and sprockets. Bike comes in with a chain
dragging on the ground, the shop rings up Link International and gets in
a set of aftermarket JT sprockets and not the genuine parts at between
two and three times the price.

Steering head bearings, wheel bearings, fork seals... see above.

A great many modern bikes have foam air filters; you don't replace
those, you wash them out, reoil and refit.

Oil filters and brakepads are common across brands and models. The oil
filter on the ZX6 atm has "Yamaha" written on it. The 6-piston Tokico
front calipers shared by the ZX6 and the ZX9 (and the ZX12, and the
ZRX1100/1200, incidentally) can also be found on the GSX-R750, the
TL1000R and the Hayabusa.

Yes, but that presumes that the workshop staff can be bothered either
reading, remembering or implementing them.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:37:58 +1000

I've found I get fewer drips if I replace them.

Mine might, but Theo's has the same problem and it's a youngun!

Which is why people have to book services.

My mate Phil also grinds shims. It's easier than trying to keep full
stock. OK, he's a timeserved fitter and turner, so can handle a
grinder and knows how to use a micrometer, but still, it's easier than
keeping full stock in the shop.

On the other hand, when I had a Kwak the dealer in Ballina always had
the shims I needed.

Ditto a lot of Italians even now. My bike runs a Pantah oil filter.

Pick your workshop better.

I guess that's the key for me. I go to ones that do that sort of
thing. I used to travel quite a way (around 40km) to go to one that
did for example.

Attention to detail of that kind is why people used to take their
Ducatis to Phil for service as soon as they bought it from the
"dealer" who, some swore, didn't know a pre-delivery service from
"pull it out of the crate and bolt the numberplate on".

I know a Ducati mech who was lured to work for a large Jappa
dealership by it being much closer to home, and paying more. The
downside was that they wanted him to crank the bikes through as fast
as possible and to do the minimum on them because volume paid the
bills.

If I ever spent the money on a new bike (and it's not likely as I
can't justify 20+ grand on a single motorcycle so there's no Griso in
my future!) I'd have to do a lot of homework to find a good
spannerman. Bungendore's too far for routine work never mind Adelaide
and those are the 2 best I know.

Zebee

 

Curiously enough, I have in the last few years talked to people who'd
bumped into all four of those problems, every one of them done at a
paid-for service by a qualified mechanic... (admittedly the sump plug
falling out was on a car after 10km, not a bike after 1500...)

Sure, you can **** it up yourself, that doesn't mean someone you pay to
do it isn't going to **** it up for you and then bluster about and deny
all responsibility - I took my Monster in to Frasers for its 10,000km
service many years ago, and at the first set of lights I stopped at the
rear brake caliper twirled around the axle and damaged the mounting
bracket and the brake hose - they hadn't reassembled it properly,
there's a pin on the swingarm thats supposed to engage in a slot in the
caliper braket. I took it back literally less than 5 minutes after I'd
picked it up, and the first words out of the service managers mouth were
"someone must have taken the wheel off, it was right when it left
here"...

big

 

Was that 2500 because they were already used, or 2500 because that's
their normal life ?

JL
(buying a new front in a couple of days and intending to get a Pilot
Power - although the new dual compound is out now too (Power 2CT))

 

Not an illustration of how long I've been around. Just an illustration
of how some people can mindlessly repeat the same thing over and over
without listening that they get boring.

Finally you're veered off the "fix your own bike at home it's a piece of
piss path. Your homework for today is to list all the reasons why not
to take your bike to any old workshop.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

That's just the thing... the only time I've had oil weeps from the sump
plug was before I learned to carefully wipe all the grit from around the
drain hole, the plug and the crush washer.

A young'un in manufacture only.

Point was, routine servicing on the overwhelming majority of current
designs requires bugger-all in collateral-damage consumables like gaskets.

Point is, though, if even a shop which sells the same brand as the bike
you're looking to get serviced is going to have to order in the parts to
do the job, that's a further reason less to make the shop being a dealer
for that brand a condition for considering them a candidate for your
servicing.

If you have a Yamaha, and both the nearby Suzuki shop which does decent
work and the Yamaha shop halfway across town which does patchy work are
going to have to specifically order in the clutch plates you need
fitted, say, there's *zero* reason to give the job to the Yamaha shop.

What workshop offices I've been in tend to have a very eclectic
selection of workshop manuals on their shelves.

Two considerations there; one, this would've been a while ago, and spare
parts stocking practices have changed recently, and, two, it was in the
country.

Well, there you go...

Well, that's exactly it. When it comes to getting a bike serviced, you
have the following options:
1. Take it to a dealership and run the risk that it'll be worked on by
the work experience kid and get charged a far-from-trivial sum of money.
2. Take it to a specialist bike mech, like Lloyd Penn or BMS, where the
chances of getting quality work done are greater, but still far from
certain, and where you'll pay even more.
3. Do the work yourself or with the help of a mate (did that really need
to be stated explicitly), be certain in what's been done, and save some
serious money.

I've sat here for a bit trying to think of some kind of a threshold
level of difficulty above which you give up and lob the bike at a
workshop, and, really, it'd have to cut at the level of a rebuild;
top-end, bottom-end, or gearbox.

Anything else, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at doing it on the footpath out
the front of a terrace in Newtown; the 20 grand that would instantly lop
off the value of every other house in the street and the apoplexy that
would bring about in the yuppie residents would only be an added bonus.

 

Interesting choice of words...

No, I've just gotten around to mentioning the second level on which your
approach to servicing baffles me.

Not only do you seem hellbent on paying someone $300 every time your
bike needs routine, trivial work done, you seem insistent that the logo
above the shop door must match the one on your bike's tank.

Yours is to come up with a direct counter to any one of the contentions
I've raised so far.

 

I am thinking of the Power 2CT for the Monster, let me know how you go.

Boxer

 

They were barely singed when I got them, and when I say they lasted
2500km, I really mean I rode the last 300km home from Bermagui with
cords showing on the rear.

The Power Race are a completely different tyre to the Pilot Power. I
loved the former, I wouldn't fit another set of the latter if they were
giving them away for free. I normally like Michelins, but found I just
could not get along with these things; they felt really reluctant to
deform and way too eager to spring back when climbing off a bump. I
ended up running a full turn of compression less and a full turn of
rebound more on the front, 3 clicks of each more on the rear and 29f/31r
tyre pressures to try to flatten them out a bit and to stop them kicking
through the suspension at both ends.

 

You must be confusing me with someone else, Al perhaps?
I never stated that I don't want to do my own routine trivial work or
servicing, or that I don't do it myself, or that I want to pay someone
to do it for me, hellbent or otherwise.
In fact I haven't had a bike serviced by a shop for a couple of years,
with one exception, when I was on holidays earlier this year, 4500km
from home and staying in a motel for a few days where I could literally
see the bike shop down the street from the motel room.
Granted, the manufacturer of my bike recommends servicing every
12,000km, and I could have made it home before that was due, but I like
to change the oil & filter every 6,000 regardless, even though I'd
barely had the engine over 1/3 of available revs in the entire time
since the last oil change.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Further, what's made me wary about the Pilot Power 2CT is the fact that
they're, apparently, Power Race compound(s) on a Pilot Power carcass. As
my issue with Pilot Power would appear to be related to the way the
carcass deforms under load, chances are I won't get along with the Power
2CT, either... in the same way as I rate the Dunlop D208RR, which is
D208GP rubber on a D208F carcass the crappest tyre I've tried since the
D207F. Massive grip, but without a pillion on the back of the ZX9 to
flatten it out, they just wouldn't turn unless the bike was right on its
ear.

 

The 6... it's on Diablos atm and much happier with it, but not so happy
that I'm not keen to try a set of BT-002 Racing Street next.