A blog about motorcycles, motorcyclists, and motorcycle shops

Musings on riding and working on bikes, and observations as I travel and visits bikers, riders, motorcyclists, events and shops

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Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Too long on the road-but not riding

I am finally near the end of nearly four straight weeks on the road for work.  The one day I was home not only did it rain but I had much more important business than riding or wrenching on motorcycles to take care of, including visiting some dear friends having a medical emergency/distressing news and spending some time with my family.

Which means as soon as I get home I have some deferred motorcycle maintenance to get done, and some riding to do!  The projects I know I have to do are:

Replace a Kawasaki Concours front tire
Remove/Replace other Kawasaki Concours front brake system
Bleed and adjust both Connie's clutch fluid (may just change both out)
Clean the K&N air filter on the Harley Sportster
Sort out linking tank on "new" Connie or migrate tank from bike to bike for test ride

Speaking of test ride, I need to ride too!  March 11th and so far ZERO miles ridden.  Blah.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

New motorcycle maintenance videos coming soon

I just found two motorcycle maintenance videos on my tablet.  A few months ago I removed the front forks from my 1999 Harley-Davidson Sportser, took them to an independent shop and had the seals replaced.  I re-installed them, tightened everything up, and front fork is good as new.  I did the work back in October of 2013 and shot two short videos of the removal.  I even blogged a little bit about the fork seal replacement project, but never posted the videos to YouTube.  Since my YouTube channel is taking on a definite motorcycle maintenance theme, with both Sportster maintenance and Kawasaki Concours maintenance videos making up the majority of the uploads, I'll add these two videos as well.  Both are fairly short-one isn't even a minute long.

I don't go step-by-step into how to remove your front forks, but show enough that someone with basic skills and either the shop manual or a Clymer manual should be all over the job.  It was very easy-I was able to do the front fork removal project quickly on my floor lift but left the fork seal replacement to an independent shop I have used in the past.  He's a real pro and between not wanting to hassle with the forks at that time and give him some business it was a no brainer to take the forks and new seals to him.  He was able to squeeze the project in between some major work he had on the lifts.  The fork seals were really boogered up-if not the originals they were pretty close to that age.

In the second video I also disclose the true goal of any motorcycle maintenance project.  How's that for a teaser?  Hopefully my WiFi will speed up today and I can get them uploaded as both are 50MB and a 9MB e-mail attachment is in limbo.

Ride far!

Friday, February 28, 2014

Verification post

This post has nothing to do with custom Sportster motorcycles, motorcycle maintenance, riding with my CMA brothers and sisters (and eating ice cream!) or any other fun motorcycle topic like making a Kawasaki Concours C10 last for 100,000 miles.  Nope, it's a simple verification post, but if you've read this far, thank you!