What's your 'pain in the bum' bike maintenance story?

[Bob_Defly]

I just had to remove a cotter pin this weekend, and holy sh*t was it in an awkward place to get to! I had to jack the bike up on an ATV lift to be able to get right underneath it with an awl/screwdriver and hammer. Took me way longer than it should have.

Also started taking apart my Dad's 1997 Speed Triple, same thing with that. Couldn't for the life of me find the one bolt holding the airbox on! Now I can't get an electrical connector undone.

What 'one bolt' had you flummoxed?

[mckeann]

Various electrical connectors that you can’t see, can only get 1 hand to, and can’t tell if you need to push or pull, and then can’t get any leverage to pop it off. Grrrrrr

[gareth_r]

Air filter on my 1997 Triumph Sprint 900.

On the Kawasaki GPZ900 that Triumph copied, you remove the side of the airbox, slide the old filter out and slide the new filter in.

On the Triumph you remove:
the seat
the side panels/seat hump
the tank
the air intakes
the carburettors
the airbox.

Then you replace the complete airbox (£50-odd quid last time I did the job - EDIT: £65 now) and rebuild the bike.

Then you cut the old airbox open, to find that it's not even a proper paper filter, it's a stty piece of foam.

I'm still plotting the hideous tortures to be visited on all who specced, designed, and signed off that bloody mess.

Edited by gareth_r on Monday 7th January 09:36

[Rawwr]

I once took all the fairings off my RR9 Fireblade and then couldn't figure out how to get them all back on.

[Dog Star]

I remember the throttle cable snapping on my way to the Elefant Rally about 2002 or so. This was on a Triumph Tiger.

Breakdown assistance took the bike to the local bike dealer in Pirmasens. Girl mechanic spent ages - on her day off - stripping the bike down to replace the cable (she made a new one up). The sheer amount of stuff that needed to be removed was insane - see the Triumph air filter post above - but even worse. The bike had to be dismantled.

So she does all this and the very last thing she did was to reconnect to the throttle twist grip (I did actually ask when she was doing it why she didn't do this at the same time as she hooked up the carbs)..... and the cable she'd made up was too short. She burst into tears - and I really can't blame her. What an utter total ballache of a job.

Had to do it all again.

[Prof Prolapse]

Rawwr said:

I once took all the fairings off my RR9 Fireblade and then couldn't figure out how to get them all back on.

Have you tried pulling panels off your Uganda Twin yet?

I was trying to route some wiring for my aftermarket heating grips and 12VDC supply. After reading the manual and two you tube clips I just fked it off and squeezed the cable through some panels and used some cable ties. Silly amount of work.

You can see why it's big money to have the clearances checked and adjusted despite it just two cylinders with easy adjustment, you're almost certainly paying for Honda mechanic to piss around with plastic clips for two hours. The checking and adjusting of clearances actually looks the easy bit.

[Rawwr]

Prof Prolapse said:

Have you tried pulling panels off your Uganda Twin yet?

I was trying to route some wiring for my aftermarket heating grips and 12VDC supply. After reading the manual and two you tube clips I just fked it off and squeezed the cable through some panels and used some cable ties. Silly amount of work.

You can see why it's big money to have the clearances checked and adjusted despite it just two cylinders with easy adjustment, you're almost certainly paying for Honda mechanic to piss around with plastic clips for two hours. The checking and adjusting of clearances actually looks the easy bit.

Hah! Funny you should say that. I was pondering installing the OEM heated grips on the Mugabe Twin and downloaded Honda's installation guide. It was terrifying. I decided to have cold hands instead.

Edited by Rawwr on Monday 7th January 10:46

[Prof Prolapse]

I'm not sure if it's the OEM heated grips and/or 12V supply, but for one or both of them the fuse is buried inside the panels as part of the OEM wiring as well.

Could be two hours work to replace a fuse if it should go. Considerably more depending on if you have crash bars.

Now that is a "pain in the bum".

[dern]

I took the engine out of my 929rry fireblade to get an insert put in the head after the sparkplug ejected itself...



All went to plan except that while all the electrical connectors were unique and not possible to mix up I found that right at the end of putting it back together I had 2 male and 2 female connectors that were identical. Plugged them together and bike wouldn't start. Swapped them round and all good.

However, turns out one of them was a connector to the fuel pump and in mixing them up I had broken the low fuel light somehow. Found this out when the bike ran out of fuel 3 miles from the nearest petrol station.

[jakeharvey63]

Changing front indicators on 2012 street triple.

Remove side cowling bit which indicator attaches too, on the left hand side have just enough room to get my fingers on top of the engine to disconnect indicator wiring, go to right hand side, and see that the same connection is bang on the top of the engine. And then it goes like this:

-Disconnect and remove tank
-Disconnect ECU, unbolt from airbox and pull out of the way
-undo and remove airbox lid
-undo throttle body trumpets and remove
-undo airbox, remove breathers
-access to wiring now available.

And this is what it looks like



This took me a good hour and a bit the first time, I can now have it done in about 10-15 minutes, why do this triumph, why not just make the cables more accessible? And why make one just about accessible. From the previous posts, it seems this is a triumph thing. Rant over.

And the best thing is, with LED rear indicators, I added triumphs genuine relay to overcome the hyperflashing which worked perfect. Added genuine Triumph led indicators to the front and now I had hyperflashing. Needless to say, I put the originals back on so all of the above was a worthless exercise.

Edited by jakeharvey63 on Monday 7th January 12:42

[supercommuter]

Prof Prolapse said:

Rawwr said:

I once took all the fairings off my RR9 Fireblade and then couldn't figure out how to get them all back on.

Have you tried pulling panels off your Uganda Twin yet?

I was trying to route some wiring for my aftermarket heating grips and 12VDC supply. After reading the manual and two you tube clips I just fked it off and squeezed the cable through some panels and used some cable ties. Silly amount of work.

You can see why it's big money to have the clearances checked and adjusted despite it just two cylinders with easy adjustment, you're almost certainly paying for Honda mechanic to piss around with plastic clips for two hours. The checking and adjusting of clearances actually looks the easy bit.

hahaha that is what i did. Just ran them all over the shop. No way i was taking all that st off

Edited by supercommuter on Monday 7th January 13:01

[dern]

It's not a bike but everything I've done pales in to insignificance compared to this royal fking palava...

Some time ago I had a lotus elise S1 that needed a new radiator fan as the fitted one had siezed. The process to change a fan included...
1. Try to remove entire front clam shell
2. Find out that the captive bolts spun in body
3. Remove front doors to get at bolts
4. Find out that the captive nuts for the doors spun in body
5. Drill out the nuts for the doors and remove doors
6. Drill out the nuts for the front clam
7. Fish out the old captive nuts with a magnet on a stick
8. Install new captive nuts having borrowed tool to do job
9. Refit doors
10. Remove radiator to get to fan
11. Replace fan by drilling/grinding out fixings and replacing
12. Reinstall radiator having checked the state of the hoses
13. Reinstall front clam shell
14. Discover on test drive that disturbing the previously fine radiator that show not signs of leaking is now leaking
15. Buy new radiator
16. Go to step 1.

[Krikkit]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yep, picking up a theme!

[moanthebairns]

Rear peg removal on the fireblade, five minute job on the Daytona, 5 hours on the blade.

https://trinityzxr750l1.blogspot.com/2014/01/fitti...

Not the worst job I've ever done but fk me it was ridiculous to have to remove the whole rear end to take a pair of pegs off.

[silobass]

Bike fell over and broke a mirror. Couldn't get hold of the Kawasaki proper ones anywhere so ended up ordering from ebay/China. Couldn't figure out how to get the fairing off for ages but eventually found a youtube video that showed the exact problem. The guy recording it did it holding his phone to record it and took the fairings off all in about 15 minutes.

Took me months. Not an easy job for an illiterately mechanical person such as myself. Eventually got it all sorted but lost a screw from the dash part.

[Jazoli]

My Exup, I thought the chain looked a bit slack so decided it needed a quick tighten up, undid the rear axle nut, undid the locknut on the adjuster and went to wind out the adjuster, after putting approximately 1ft-lb of torque on the bolt it snapped flush with the swingarm

There was nothing on eBay and I had just moved to Spain, didn't speak a word of Spanish and all my tools were in a lockup back in the UK

I couldn't fix it, there were no engineering shops nearby that I could find (at that point I spoke zero Spanish) and due to the location of the bolt simply drilling it out was impossible, I had to contact my Mum who was back in the UK and get her to pick up a blown up complete bike I found on a forum (think it was pre TRC but I can't remember the name, Loon and BN were on there) then bring it back with my van 3 months later.

So I was surrounded by amazing roads with amazing weather and the bike was sat like this mocking me.



I eventually got it sorted with the spare swingarm and as a bonus the spare bike had a nice akrapovic system on it and a YZF 6 speed gearbox which I sold to someone in the states for almost what I paid for the whole bike.

[jjones]

moanthebairns said:

Rear peg removal on the fireblade, five minute job on the Daytona, 5 hours on the blade.

https://trinityzxr750l1.blogspot.com/2014/01/fitti...

Not the worst job I've ever done but fk me it was ridiculous to have to remove the whole rear end to take a pair of pegs off.

tt of a job, when I sold it to a mate I handed him the rear pegs and 4 bolts and told him to have fun fitting them (his mrs wanted to have a go pillion), he had no idea of what a ridiculous job it is

[crofty1984]

BSA Starfire. Had to get the primary case off to change the clutch. That necessitated taking off the left footpeg. Nut, washer, footpeg on splined shaft. Easy. OK, the nut is some size that is neither metric nor imperial, god, it's a bit stiff, well, the bike's 50 years old. I don't want to round it off, I'll give it a break, I'll try again later. And another time, and with heat. and a breaker bar an-
IT'S A LEFT HAND fkING THREAD!! WHY? WHY THE JESUS H CHRIST IS THE THREAD LEFT-HANDED? THERE'S NO NEED!!! NO NEED AT ALL! fk YOU, YOU BRUMMIE aholeS, I'M GLAD YOUR FACTORY CLOSED!!! IT'S NOT A ROTATING PART!!! THE SHAFT IS SPLINED!!! THERE IS NO. fkING. REASON.

I did find that one a little frustrating, I'll admit.

[gareth_r]

crofty1984 said:

BSA Starfire... the nut is some size that is neither metric nor imperial...

BSA/Triumph used BSF and BSW and Cycle threads, then gradually (gradually!) moved to UNF and UNC.

Three sets of spanners for one bike.

Ducati often just used whatever parts were lying about the factory, but at least they (almost) invariably had metric threads.

[kev b]

The valve shims are a bit involved to measure and swap on belt driven Ducatis, you need a few special tools and plenty of patience especially as the shims are over a tenner each, so its a trip to the dealer as not many folks have a bag full of them handy.

On most aircooled Ducatis, ie Monster, 900ss you can drop the engine to make the job easier but I had a Cagiva Elefant and the swingarm spindle that holds the engine in as well was stuck fast.
It took an age to finish the job, faffing around on my knees for hours with magnets, pliers, micrometers, screwdrivers with blobs of grease on the end. Half way through I took a hundred mile round trip to pick up the new shims from the dealer, I could have had them posted but the thought of getting fifty miles away from the bloody thing seemed appealing.

Putting the carb rubbers on a Kawasaki triple in a sub zero garage is a bit tricky too.