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All of these are a one time issue you deal with when either fixing some other person's fuckery, or when pulling a bike out of storage that has been put away with fuel in it. Compare it to someone loving with the mapping of an ECU. People usually don't have the knowledge about how to gently caress around with those. But if it was as easy as plugging the bike into a laptop and a console with sliders popped up about injection timing, amounts, air/fuel ratios etc etc you can bet your rear end that the first thing you gotta do when you buy a bike like that, is reflash the ECU to stock. If you were to import a big american diesel pickup truck here, that should normally pass the emissions test, a LOT of them would fail and you'd need to gently caress around with them because a lot of their owners gently caress around with the fueling, remove the particulate filters, remove the recirculation and stuff. Are those modern technologies to blame for the truck failing the MOT? No. It's the fault of the person who screwed around with it and for instance made the fueling richer to get more power out of it. If you'd magically make the adjustments of the carburetor disappear, they'd do totally fine for years and years. Don't blame a carburetor for the incompetence of a previous owner. Do blame Suzuki for not just putting the glowplugs in place from factory, though. It's not too big of a deal but it's a bit cheap of them. As a side note, analog radios have all kinds of adjustment points too. Sometimes people gently caress around with those because 'Ooh, a screw hole, let's try it out and see if it improves reception/makes it receive the police band'. And then things go horribly wrong. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 16:29 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 16:24
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I disassembled the rear brake caliper of my fzr600 again to try the 'rotate without seals and see in which position it's smoothest' procedure, to see if that makes the brake quit dragging so much. I found something i didn't see last time: there's some black crud floating in the little bit of brake fluid that remained in the cylinder. I have a hunch that it's from a seal or some other rubber component in the master cylinder. I'll take pictures tomorrow. Done with it today.
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May 26, 2022 20:38
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  The cylinders. The black/brown crud was not there when i opened it the first time. All brake fluid exiting the bleeder was clear, probably this crap just sinks to the bottom and doesn't show up when bleeding or flushing through the bleeder.  The pistons have visible wear lines, but i can't feel these if i run my nail over them. The brake line is a braided one, aftermarket, with a blue plastic jacket. But it looks kinda old to me. Doesn't have a date on it (unless it's hiding on the back side which i can't see easily) So i guess this is the moment to replace that one? LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 10:09 on May 27, 2022 |
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May 27, 2022 10:04
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Gorson posted:
That's just some liquid, combined with some reflections. The ring is fully intact.
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May 27, 2022 15:36
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Its not in your head. Carbs that are dialed in are mostly better than fuel injection as far as general responsiveness and feel goes. There are also ways in which FI is better, but "feel" isnt one of them, feel being the immediacy combined with smoothness that comes from a carb that is tuned to react that way. I haven't paid too much attention to throttle feel, but i can say that the Duc Supersport and the KTM SMCR both have that very annoying low engine load choppy feeling. The 2019 monster and the 2020 KTM duke 890r don't have that iirc. Of course all of those are fuel injected. I can say of the 2019 monster that it also isn't better than a 20 year older SV with carb. But all in all, i was completely satisfied with the Monster. I do recognize the sense of immediacy with my SV650. Just holding onto the bars a bit tighter, results in a response from the bike. It's magical. It's mind blowing how precise one can modulate dozens of kilowatts of power with just a mechanical system. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 15:48 on May 27, 2022 |
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May 27, 2022 15:43
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Ordered new brake line, and while i was at it, the rubber components that hide within the master cylinder, juuuust in case. I'm not gonna touch the master cylinder if replacing the hose solves the problem, but it's worth a couple euro to not be frustrated if it turns out i need the rubbers anyway. Stay tuned for next week's installment of 'Electronics engineer tries to fix mechanical things'!
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May 28, 2022 13:17
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So far i really like the Battlax T32. Used to have Michelin Pilot Road, but they make cornering much harder.
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May 30, 2022 16:32
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I once mailed Michelin about it because i was in the same situation, and this was their (translated from Belgian Dutch) reaction: quote:As we agreed upon, we have escalated your question, and below you will find the answer from our technical department: So Michelin says you can definitely repair tires, on the condition that you check the inside of the tire for damage, the size of the hole is not too big, and you use mushroom plugs. In my case, i wanted to get it fixed, but the local bike shop outright refused to do it. The guy on the phone says they don't really have experience with it, and that they just normally replace the tire. They were prepared to do it on special request but sounded super unsure of themselves, explicitely denying responsibility if something goes wrong, so i ended up replacing the whole tire after all. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jun 5, 2022 |
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Jun 5, 2022 19:56
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Wide bars make a pretty big difference, yeah. There were wide sumo style bars on the FZR when i got it. With the stock ones, you gotta use a bit more force.
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Jul 13, 2022 19:02
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Lol, been there done that. It was at the Amsterdam canals. In some places the side walk is canted towards the canals. I saw a nice spot, between some unused bicycle racks, and i expertly parked my bike there. I did notice it was inclined slightly but i ignored it. Then, when i got back, i had to waddle backwards. I just couldn't. The paving stones were too slippery from moss and crap from trees. The bike rack saved me, i could push myself backwards with one hand while keeping the other on the clutch for if i'd lose my grip and needed to stop the bike from rolling into the canal. Yeah, i learned from that. I'll just park with the front facing upwards next time.
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Jul 14, 2022 14:50
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I like quickshifters. I'd get one, i like the way they work better than conventional clutchless shifting. But i'd also mount some kinda switch to turn it off. To me it is hard to find the appropriate amount i close the throttle. Not enough and it'll shift with a big jolt. Too much or too long and i'll have unwanted engine braking. With a quickshifter i get a lot more consistency. But they have a downside. I am used to putting a tiny bit of force on the shifter, and then pulling the clutch. The bike will then shift gears at the exact moment i pull the clutch. With a quickshifter, that force will be recognized as a shift command so it will cut the injection (or on a carb'd bike, ignition). So if for some reason you still want to use the clutch (useful at low speeds, low revs, gentle riding with a pillion), you have to conciously first pull the clutch and then push the shift lever. You can totally get used to it, but it's just a bit more 'interrupted' than the way i normally shift. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jul 16, 2022 |
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Jul 16, 2022 14:27
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It's not really anticipating a shift. You shouldn't apply force to the shifter seconds ahead of your shift because that'll put wear on your shift forks, and comes with the risk of a bump causing an unexpected gear shift. Depending on your particular bike it WILL shift under load if you ham fist it enough. It all happens in one second or so. The gearbox won't shift as long as the driving force keeps the dog gears pressed together. As soon as you pull in the clutch, the dog gears will slide freely and engage the next gear. This is also how clutchless shifts work, except instead of interrupting the driving force with the clutch, you do it by closing the throttle so there will be a split second in which there is neither driving, nor braking force. The SV is pretty average, shift force wise. There are bikes that shift particularly easily (the Duke 890r i rode at a test ride event is one of them). I thought it had a quickshifter so i tried clutchless shifting with the throttle still open. It just shifted, but a bit rougher than normal. Took me about 3 rough shifts before i figured out 'this is not a rough quickshifter, i'm just shifting it under load and it's really easy to shift'. I used the clutch for the rest of the ride, since it was a group ride and i couldn't stop to gently caress around with all the menu settings.
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Jul 16, 2022 19:06
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If your clutch switch is mounted on the lever, you can (jerkily) accelerate by killing the engine, putting it in first, then pulling the clutch lever (even if it doesn't do clutch things) and hitting the starter. If your battery is worth anything, you will get started. Alternatively, and i don't know how hard it is, you can keep the engine running, push the bike roughtly to the speed it would have when idling in 1st gear, jump on and kick it in gear. I don't think i have that kind of coordination and i'll probably end up on the pavement with the bike next to me.
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Jul 17, 2022 09:07
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RadioPassive posted:That trick melted the started motor on my car once. Is it safe on bikes? YMMV with this kind of off label usage. Depends a bit on how much load is on your starter motor already. With my SV it would be tricky. It starts reliably, but it doesn't really have starter torque to spare. With the FZR it would probably be easy. You can't do start/stop traffic with it. Do it more than once every 5 minutes and you're likely to wreck the starter. Cars don't have the clutch interlock bikes have. I've also done the '*lurch* whoops!' thing when starting my little twingo. I was distracted and didn't do my routine of wiggling the shifter, pushing the clutch and such.
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Jul 18, 2022 07:20
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And get some of these to avoid loving around with probes that you gotta keep in place in impossible ways while pushing the starter button and keeping the meter from sliding off the seat/whatever. 
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Jul 19, 2022 15:42
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SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:I hate to say it, but I think it is partially a function of engine rpms. On longer rides my 300 kawasaki gets my hands fatigued and numb due to vibration. It doesn't happen on other bikes and I'm not really death gripping. Do you have interchangeable bar end weights? In theory, removing them will kick up the vibration resonance frequency to a higher one. Perhaps a frequency you only reach a couple times when accelerating, but not during cruise. Putting heavier ones on, will make it vibrate at a lower RPM, again hopefully outside of a rev band you're using on longer rides.
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Jul 25, 2022 08:40
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Cheap crimping tools are bad. I use them because i don't have anything else (and a proper tool is really expensive) but it's very easy to gently caress a crimp up with them. I always remove the little colored sleeve from the spade terminal with a knife, so i can crimp on the bare metal. Otherwise there's a huge chance that the jaws will move side to side sliding over the plastic, loving up the whole terminal. Or you have to squeeze so hard that you essentially cut through it. Afterwards i put some colored shrink tubing on them to mark the positive and negative. Always bench test those terminals when crimped with a cheap tool. Put a big load on them, pull and wiggle them, if they get even a little warm or if they can wiggle around, cut off and do it again. I ended up first crimping them and then soldering them. While officially A Very Bad Thing, the connection seems to hold up pretty well. We'll see after the trip. The currents are sub 5 amp in my case, so even a lovely made crimp will likely not burn out. Soldering has its own issues: solder creeps into the wire, making it rigid, causing a stress point at the point where the wire goes from 'tinned' to 'not tinned'. But so far, my soldered connections i've made in cars for car radios, have worked fine for over a decade. With spade/faston terminals, you gotta mind the isolation. You can't leave them flapping around somewhere, you gotta put some isolation around them. Ideally shrink tubing. Standard electrician's tape will often unwrap over the course of months or years when exposed to motorcycle engine heat. I just prepared my bike for a camping trip without electricity, putting an extra detachable battery under my buddy seat to use for electricity in my tent (why yes, i am spoilt). I used the optimate style connector (the left one in the picture above) to connect them together. Just some faston terminals would be enough, but then i'd have to take care of isolating them when the extra battery is not connected. For the sake of standardisation, i got a car style power strip with 2x USB (5v) and 2x the lovely cigarette lighter socket. I am very aware the cigarette socket is severely crap, but my low voltage lighting and fan just plug into it without loving around with building even more adaptor leads. Word of warning: those optimate connectors don't come in male and female variants. If you'd put those leads on two different bikes parked next to each other and connect those optimate connectors together, you would connect the + of one bike to the - of the other, and the - to the +, creating a hard short circuit instead of charging one bike from the other bike's battery! My leads came with fuses, but if it's an unfused lead something WILL start to smoke and burn. I had to swap the red and the blue lug on the wires going to my 2nd battery to correctly connect them together. Also the isolation jacket is thick but the actual wire is like 1,5mm^2 enough for 10 amps max. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 11:10
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My carb'd SV also starts less easy when hot. No choke and a bit of throttle always gets the job done within seconds though.
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Aug 2, 2022 20:33
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I go through chains pretty quickly. I got the chain replaced twice in the 20.000km (5 years) that i have the SV now, which i think is really quite fast. I keep them well lubricated, pretty much once every tank and a half of fuel (or earlier if it rained and the rollers start to look shiny/not covered with some lube) I don't often clean them though. Even though the sides of the chain get mucky, the surfaces where the rollers contact the sprockets are always clean (except for a layer of chain lube). My garage suggested that riding in winter with salt on the roads (something i do fairly regularly) is the cause of the fairly rapid wear. Idk, sounds like it could be. Or is cleaning *that* important?
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Aug 7, 2022 15:22
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That makes no sense indeed. The only thing that to my knowledge can reduce your fuel economy, is the addition of ethanol. This is because ethanol contains less energy per liter, so for the same power you need more fuel. But because usually it's only 10% ethanol the effect will be very small. The reason why i use non-ethanol or low-ethanol fuel, is because both my bikes are kinda old and filled with rubber bits that are probably already in their golden years, and adding ethanol will only accelerate that problem. A liter of gasoline contains 2 times the energy (about 45MJ) ethanol contains (about 20MJ). When you run e85 or only ethanol, this is a very important difference. Ethanol has a very high octane number so you can increase compression a lot, but you also need much more of it. Put E85 in a normal bike and it'll probably run, but you'll be down on power because your jets or injectors don't nearly put enough fuel into the mix as they should. There are two things that radically affect my fuel economy, and that's highway riding with a headwind, with a floppy rain suit - and strugging with carb freezing in the fog in winter, while running half the within-a-city trip on choke because it's so bloody cold and the engine doesn't heat up that fast. Besides those situations i'm very consistently getting 1:17 to 1:19 per tank on the SV, or between 5 and 6l/100km. Getting RON95 in Belgium and Germany didn't have any difference at all, compared to RON98 (both <5% ethanol). Never tried the 10% ethanol stuff. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 12, 2022 09:13
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It's likely dragging, exactly what my FZR600 did. If you cannot rockit back and forth with a few fingers, or if it doesn't roll away when you're on a very slight incline, it's dragging too much. If it's dragging, there can be multiple causes: - Worn or swollen rubber seals in the calipers - Plugged return passage in the master cylinder - Worn/swollen rubber seals in the master cylinder - Swollen rubber brake lines. It's hard to diagnose what exactly is the cause without just doing all of it. The easiest thing to diagnose is the return passage. Follow the little hose that goes from your fluid reservoir into the master cylinder. Take it off (take care not to spill brake fluid on painted surfaces, it will damage the paint!), and you'll see a big hole and a very small one. Make sure the very small one is open. If you pry the brake pads apart so brake fluid flows back from the pistons to the master cylinder, some fluid should come out of it. Perhaps poke something into it. If it's clogged and you just unclogged it by poking it through, you kinda wanna flush out your whole system to prevent it from clogging up again. If you see any kind of dirt, gel or flakes in the hose or in the master cylinder, you have to take apart the whole system and clean everything. In my case, everything *was* clean except for that exact part, and that just kept releasing particles and flakes until i cleaned it out. Also there was a ton of rust behind the dust boot of the master cylinder. Cleaned that up too. In a lot of cases, the rubber seals in the caliper are the culprit. They're not too hard to replace. Just take care, if you use air pressure to pop the pistons out you gotta wrap the caliper with piston in a rag to prevent the 4 or so bar of air pressure to make the piston fly across the workshop. The master cylinder usually isn't the culprit, so you could start with first checking the return passage, and then the caliper seals. If that doesn't fix it, master cylinder and (if rubber) brake line.
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Aug 12, 2022 15:08
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I can understand why the guy thinks that - ethanol has a sky high octane number. But overall, the gasoline-ethanol mix has the octane rating as indicated on the pump. If the ethanol would function as an octane booster, then the gasoline used in the mix would simply be of a lower octane number to end up at (for instance) AKI 87 with the ethanol added.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:06
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No. If the engine is still rotating but just not igniting, the chain is not causing the stall. If your chain was so tight that it absolutely ruined the bearings in your engine and seized them, you'd still have ignition during the time it takes to go from whatever RPM to stopped, but this is not a realistic scenario. Sounds more like an electrical issue to me, i've witnessed something very similar with a moped on which the battery connections would occasionally break contact. It sorta kinda ran on just alternator power during those moments, but very inconsistently and would stall when revs (and thus voltage) dropped too low. So first check battery connections for oxidation and tightness. If that doesn't solve the problem: Hook up a meter (can be one of those cheap aliexpress digital volt meter modules, be sure to get a reference to a known voltage because they can be uncalibrated, though some have little trimmers to set it correctly) to the ECU or FI system 12v rail. Alternatively, use a little incandescent light bulb (no LED) and see if there's anything weird going on. See if the voltage remains constant, or if the problem coincides with voltage fluctuations. If it fluctuates, it can either be a short (but not bad enough to blow a fuse) or a bad connection. It's fine to use vampire connectors for this so you don't have to strip the wire and then re-isolate it again.
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Aug 27, 2022 20:33
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epswing posted:Talk about anti-climactic... also I was overthinking the multiple-pistons thing, there's only one on the rear. Remove the dust boot. You'll probably find a joint that allows the rod to wiggle around a bit, that now is just tilted to one side a bit. If the rod is actually bent, it sounds like it's hosed. Check the service manual to see if there are any drawings of the pin, to figure out if it's supposed to be bent. I think it shouldn't but i've seen weirder engineering choices in my life. Cleaning the parts with brake cleaner is fine, but make sure to not get any rubber in contact with brake cleaner, and all of it is completely evaporated and blown out of all passages before assembling. Before assembling, put brake fluid on all internal surfaces, including the rubber seals.
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Sep 9, 2022 09:07
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Seems like assembly 24 can wiggle on top of assembly 22.
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Sep 9, 2022 09:48
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epswing posted:The caliper has a couple rubber dust boots. Is brake cleaner to rubber what (DOT3/4) brake fluid is to paint? Or not a big deal just wipe it off after? First: Brake cleaner is only meant for the metal parts. You clean rubber parts you want to reuse with some standard dishwashing soap and water. Hardened rubber parts you absolutely have to reuse you can boil for 10 minutes in soapy water to get them a bit softer again, temporarily until you can get a new part. To be completely honest, it's hard to predict and impossible to generalize, so because of that you always err on the side of caution. Volatile petroleum solvents are bad for many types of rubber. However, there are also types of rubber (or materials that act and look like rubber, but aren't actually rubber) that are not harmed by it. For instance: if you wipe an inner tube with a benzene soaked rag, you'll find a big black mark on the rag from the instantly dissolving rubber. With brake cleaner, it takes about 15 minutes for it to weaken nitrile gloves, but about 5 minutes for latex gloves. But there are rubber fuel lines that can withstand fuel contact for years. Some brake cleaner overspray on your tires doesn't instantly make them fail, but you definitely don't wanna have the stuff dripping over your tires all the time. If i use brake cleaner, i put down some news papers over the things i don't want to get soaked. E: in the USA you can still get chlorinated solvents-based brake cleaner. I have no idea how bad those are for rubber. I know one single thing about those, and that's that they turn into phosgene (yes, that poison gas that was used in WW1) if you get them too hot. Multiple people accidentally poisoned themselves after cleaning metal parts they wanted to weld together, while not all brake cleaner was gone yet. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 15:36
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Definitely a good idea. The spray can be powerful enough to be deflected by something. I've learned to just put some sun shades-style safety glasses on, even with silly little jobs. Today i was wearing them because earlier i was working with 2-3 bars of pressure to see if certain tiny (6mm outer) air hoses that don't have any specs at all can handle that pressure, and i kinda expected the hose to burst. I was wrangling a spring clip-type hose clamp off a hose. The pliers slipped and i heard the hose clamp shoot past my ear with a very cool and slightly scary ZHJOOOM! sound. If that little thing would've hit my eyes, it definitely could've done some damage. I never ever thought about wearing them for removing springy things, but here we are.
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Sep 9, 2022 22:35
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Oh, so ABS *can* actually randomly do that? I thought i was crazy when i noticed it happen twice in my parents' Smart Roadster they used to have a long time ago, when i was a kid. It freaked me out enough that i didn't wanna ride in it anymore.
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Sep 26, 2022 07:10
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Captain McAllister posted:Wait, that's actually a thing? On the Smart (which is a french built german designed car, so kinda german?) it never showed up as faulty, and it also never blinked a light. Once it kicked out the rear leaving a roundabout (definitely not power sliding!), another time i could hear the ABS rattle when there was absolutely no reason for it. It had more computer fuckery though. Not the most reliable of cars. If you'd accidentally turn off the engine while still in D, it wouldn't always start when you move the lever back to N and try to start it. I think it got towed once because of that problem, and the garage never found anything wrong with it. Luckily it was under warranty. Still, i yearn for one that i can spoon a SV1000 or one of those tuned-for-touring inline 4's into it, obviously not mating it to the terrible automatic. The ride 100% feels like a very tiny light 1990s Mercedes E-class with a bit shorter suspension travel. Way more comfy than you'd expect. Never drove the thing myself - parents got rid of it well before i got my car license. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 16:16
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Question: i am looking for transparent brake line. Does it exist? https://www.tps-racing.com/fg9439-30-fg-brake-line-clear-1-st.html Is this stuff suitable for the high pressure side, or is it like the stuff that's between a reservoir and the master cylinder? I have never ever seen transparent brake lines in the high pressure side of brake systems. I will not be using it for a brake system, but for a small heat pump demonstration model. Brake parts are very easy to get, and very easy to manually get up to a good pressure, so that's the first thing i want to try out. I want to show how the refrigerant liquifies with rising pressure. So i need something that's transparent, can handle a bit of heating up, and can ideally handle more than 6 bars for R-134a. Brake fittings can handle much more than 6 bars and are very easy to just bolt together, rather than having to solder everything together.
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Nov 19, 2022 10:07
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Everyone should have a little dentist's mirror and an assortment of wedges and blocks of soft wood.
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Nov 26, 2022 13:31
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=================================== EDIT: Got some ether starting spray. It didn't cough a single time when spraying it towards each of the 4 carb throats. Neither did it help to slide open the slide and squirt some directly onto the throttle butterfly thingies, opening the throttle, and starting. It sat on the charger for an hour. EDIT 2: Got the advice to check the plugs themselves. Because the bike hasn't seen full operating temperature in 6 months, and only having run for 5 minutes at a time at a high idle, the plugs may very well be fouled. =================================== Is this a thick enough spark? Seems somewhat weak to me, but i have no reference to what's normal. The number 4 spark plug lead is comparable. Maximum spark distance is about 5mm on either of the outside cylinder spark plug wires. It has two coils. FZR refuses to start, i'm currently trouble shooting it. During this starting attempt, battery voltage slowly dipped to below 10 volts while cranking. It is currently charging. Doing another attempt in half an hour or so. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/590236456942043136/1053298074992250940/VID_20221216_132526741.mp4 The fuel hose to the carburetor pukes out enough fuel. I can't smell much at the moment due to the flu, so idk if there's fuel smell in the exhaust or whether in 6 weeks time, the carb has fully clogged up. 6 weeks ago it started and ran for the last time... Going to buy some starting spray now. It coughed once on brake cleaner but the can's empty so it doesn't atomize properly. I wanna rule all this crap out before loving around with clogged jets and stuff. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 14:24
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Chlorinated solvents are pretty much prohibited in almost all consumer products in all of the EU. Brake cleaner here is just very volatile hydrocarbons and often used as a starting fluid or air intake leak finder. Usually without benzene too. Luckily we do still have ether starting spray although undoubtedly some people somewhere are getting high off of it. I am aware of phosgene production when (trying to) combust chlorinated solvents. Also of chloroform able to form unstable peroxides and becoming 'energetic' when left in storage for too long. Checking for fouled plugs is the next step. As for why i don't unscrew a plug and ground it to the chassis to test for spark - it's because it's not a completely wrong way to do it (these spark length testers have existed since forever in various different shapes: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7FEAAOSwkDthY~9n/s-l500.jpg) and because it was getting dark already at 16:30 because of this stupid winter thing. AFAIK i need to bend the FZR's radiator out of the way to be able to remove the plugs, so that's not something i wanted to do in darkness and freezing temperatures. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 22:00
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Slavvy posted:But now you have to take the plugs out anyway. You're doing in two steps something that you can definitively do in one step. Also I don't trust those gap testers to give a legitimate result because they don't have a resistor the way plugs do. It might seem to you that it is inefficient, but trust me - i don't do anything without thinking 'is this a waste of time'. I try to avoid touching 0 degree C metal kneeled on a pad of styrofoam on the sidewalk as much as i can. Rather spend it indoors next to the christmas tree. Furthermore, learning how different parts of the machine function is a goal in itself and never wasted. I could just call the shop guy and tell him to pick up my bike and fix it - i have the spare cash - but you don't learn anything from that. If the spark plugs are easy to remove like in the average car, of course i'd unscrew them right away. On my parents' car it's a 5 minute job. However, the FZR plugs are wedged in between the cam shaft covers, in a deep hole that is pretty hard to clean out (pun not intended, a bit of sand and some spider nests collect there) so removing them is not a trivial job (at least not to me). If i would have removed them, i'd spend something like 45 minutes. If i *then* figure out they're not sparking because the ignition circuit is faulty, i would have wasted 45 minutes. Therefore i'd rather waste 10 minutes making sure the things that send the spark to the plugs is actually working. With some starter fluid, i know that it's not the carbs that are gummed up with stale fuel. Turns out, the ignition system does work fine, the fairly puny spark is normal according to another FZR owner, so the next step is putting in the effort to remove the plugs and checking them out - and they're nasty and all sooted over. So i've ordered new ones. Should i try to clean them up? No, to me that would be a waste of time because they're not that expensive and god knows how old these are. 
LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 13:40
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I did the brake cylinder cleaning with a plastic wire wheel in my Proxxon 'dremel'. Worked well enough. Wear some protective glasses when working with them. Even plastic fragments can get right into your eye.
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Jan 5, 2023 16:54
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My experience with Proxxon is limited to a modern electric jig saw (very quiet and precise) and an old Micromot 'dremel', the one with the external transformer. The Micromot has ball bearings for the main shaft. Its weak point is that after 30 or 40 years the plastic that holds the ball bearing in place has shifted or deformed a bit, making it vibrate a bit more. That's a bit of a nuisance. But otherwise, it's a great tool, and it used to be pretty much completely vibration free up until 10ish years ago. I could probably fix it but eh. The micromot with the external transformer i have is only 18 watts. Despite that i can do a lot of stuff with it. But i am considering buying a brand new one, and that would be a mains powered Proxxon. Cutting through small steel things takes a long time with the little 18w motor. I've also personally had a mains powered dremel knock off from a store brand. That thing sucked, because you could feel power go down as the device (quickly) heated up. At work i have a nearly identical Dremel brand one. That thing is good. Doesn't get hot quickly, powerful enough, not too noisy. Idk if it has bushings or ball bearings. There is one important thing to consider when you buy a multitool: some use a 'drill-like' claw/head (idk the english name), that you slide the tool into and then twist with your hand to clamp it in place. Exactly the way you put a drill bit in a cordless drill. That's good. My Micromot has one of those. Others (the dremel and the knock-off), however, come with one 'sleeve' and multiple different inserts.   Like that. I hate that. Because if you buy random tools from different brands, or just want to use a tiny metal drill you already have etc etc it seems like you never had the right size insert. You then buy one. Remove the most used insert and put it aside. Do your work. And your most used insert you put aside is gone. That sucks so so SO bad. I think there might be aftermarket universal claws, but ymmv. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 20:40
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Power tool battery advice: Remember to charge it occasionally if it's Ni-MH. Those lose capacity and shoot up in internal resistance rapidly if left to self discharge for more than a few months. Ni-Cd doesn't give a poo poo. Whatever's fine. They will always work. They don't really suffer much from deep discharge. But Ni-Cds are practically extinct by now, the survivers often being bad because of old age. Lithium should be fine for 2 years if the thing has a 'real' on/off switch. Charge it to 70% and forget. Don't store lithium batteries at more than 70% and less than 30% if you put them away for a long time. Charger might refuse to charge if it's deep discharged because the battery chemistry gets all fucky wucky if it's really really empty, so just check the state of charge at least every 6 months even if it takes more than a year to self discharge. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 20:50
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My bicycle has hydraulic operated rim brakes. Weirdest combination ever. They work fine but i get the impression that in cold weather they get progressively mushier up to the point that at 0 deg C, i can easily squeeze the levers all the way to the handle bars. Still plenty to stop way faster than anyone expects from a bicycle but certainly odd. They're of the same brand KTM mounts on their motorcycles.
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Jan 22, 2023 09:59
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Once you've done it, brake work is really easy, on the condition you have the right tools. Taking a front MC apart is literally just taking it off the bike, unscrewing the hose and reservoir, taking the lever hinge pin/bolt out, removing the rubber dust boot and removing the circlip under the bolt that keeps the piston from shooting out. Then clean, clean, clean. There is nothing special about it. The only daunting thing is the feeling of 'If i gently caress this up, i have no brake anymore'. I've done 2 MC's now (i know i know, that's not many at all) and in both cases there was coagulated crap in places where you don't want it. In my case, the rubber components looked fine. In the case of the rear MC i replaced because i had them - the front rubber parts i'm gonna leave in place, just to see if the stock MC works well with the different, more powerful calipers that are on the bike. No point in spending the money on that if i'm gonna end up not using the stock MC at all. Do not lose the piston's circlips. Do not use those cheap chinese circlip pliers with 4 different 'heads'. They will bend and make the circlip fly away. New ones are surprisingly hard to buy as a single part, and universal sets don't always fit right, or lack some protrusions on the inside to keep the piston in place. There is a bit of an 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' aspect too, of course. You might just opt for flushing out the passages with fresh brake fluid, if the MC is otherwise working just fine (so no squishy feel, no 'creaky' feel, does not sink to the bottom of travel when held for a while). But be aware - clear fluid coming out of the brake lines does not mean the MC is necessarily clean inside.
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Jan 29, 2023 12:00
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 22:47 |
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Debugario posted:I've got a possibly dumb question about heated gear. Check if the suit has any ventilation holes or slots that are suitable to feed the cable through. Perhaps you could do the neck hole, if the cable is long enough. Otherwise, you could consider punching a hole into the suit, and feeding the cable with connector through there - though if the connector is a bit beefy, that might not be a good option. A hole for a 3,5mm jack would be the biggest hole i'd be willing to put into a leather suit. If it's more for permanent installation, punch a tiny hole the size of the cable, desolder the cable at the heated liner's end, feed cable through and solder it back again.
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Mar 10, 2023 12:31
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