Lube jobs and tappets and bolts, oh my.

Lube jobs and tappets and bolts, oh my.

Another long delay between updates, following the usual story: the bike won't die or throw a real hissy fit, no matter how actively or passively I neglect it.

In no particular order, I have...

...dumped some Activ 8 friction reducer in with the oil. The huddled fearful masses who haven't tried it will swear blind that it will wreck your clutch, cause your piston rings to give up the struggle, and inflict leprosy on your sons and your son's sons. Those who have tried it (well, SteveF from The Chinese Bike Forum, anyway) tell wondrous tales of increased response and improved power under load. This humble correspondent has noticed nothing, yet, with a 60ml to 950ml dose and several hundred km running. However, I've just done another oil change (well premature) and dumped another 60ml in the new oil, which is when Steve noticed the big improvement. We'll see - more of that in the next post.

...re-adjusted the tappets. SteveF (again!) noted that his tappets had closed up over the course of just 500km, to the tune of bending a pushrod. Steve really looks after his bike (or did until Codger Man wrote it off), and I'd noticed a loss of high rev power and a sinister silence at the end of a long run, so I whipped my top off and founds that my tappets did indeed have no - zero, nil, zilch, nada - gap, only a few hundred km after adjustment.

I gapped them again to the generous side of 0.08mm, and they've held steady this time after another few hundred km, although I haven't been doing any fast runs during that time. So the jury's still out on whether they're prone to major slippage during high rpm runs, or whether I'd simply badly mis-adjusted them in the previous service. Either way, the valves and pushrods seem to have survived the experience.

...replaced one of the stock chromed exhaust manifold nuts that dropped off when I was doing the test run after the tappet adjustment! Now, this one is definitely Idiot Rash, since I'd noticed the nuts slackening off, and done nothing about it. Given the expansion and contraction in that area, it's not really surprising, and I should have followed the Way of the Spring Washer. All the nuts are now washered up, and seem to be holding. Again though, I'm slacking, since I should have replaced the studs with the A2 steel that I've bought for the purpose. They are going to go, it's a common issue on these engines, and it's just a matter of when. I did have a tentative go at removing them, but they're pretty solidly screwed into the head, and I wimped out on crushing the threads in order to attempt removing them. I figured with my luck, I'd just shear them off rather than extracting them, so might as well wait for them to shear under their own steam. The seem in good condition just now, but I guess they're going to go without warning when they do go.

Which brings up back to our old friend, Mr Sump Plug. The bodge job (crush washer replaced with a rubber seal) is holding up fine with not a drop of leakage, although the plug itself was actually slightly slack when I did the recent oil change. I splashed out on an M12 bolt from B&Q and cut it to slightly longer than the sump plug bolt, but it's not for fitting, and I don't want to force it and chew up the sump any more. It appears that while the thread pitch is the same as the stock plug, each thread is slightly thicker than on the sump plug. I'll keep the bolt for an emergency repair attempt (in my new Pimp Tool Roll), although I'll have to bite the bullet and helicoil the sump sooner or later.

It may be sooner, since I've planned something a little... rash... which we'll cover in the Next Exciting Installment of bikeinabox. I see you shiver with antici...

Until then, I'll just confirm that the bike is still a sweet runner and great fun to ride. It reaches 50mph without breaking a sweat, then pushes on a bit higher, and that's all she wrote. Despite all the gearing changes, CDI, coil, filter and jet fiddling, the plain fact is that peak power is at 8500rpm and (with a 17 tooth front sprocket) that's an indicated 60mph, or a fraction over on the flat. That's south of the 100kpm required for an A motorcycle test, so you honest learners might want to beg, borrow or hire a genuine Japanese hack for sitting your test.

...pation.