Rainy Day Projects....

My riding buddy, John, rode up to my place on Friday evening. We were going to do a little motorcycle maintenance and some riding on Saturday. The weather did not cooperate, so we ended up having a full day in the garage working on the bikes.
What did we get done?
1. Changed the spark plugs on my FJR. The original plugs had 26,000 miles on them and didn't look too bad, but I still changed them. The spark plugs look better in person than they do in the picture.

2. We sync'ed the throttle bodies. John brought along his Honda carburetor vacuum gauges so it was a fairly easy job. It's a little tight under the fuel tank and the little rubber caps are small and easy to lose. John ran a little piece of fine wire through the eye of the spring clamp on the caps before trying to pull them off. That way, if he dropped one, it would still be attached to the wire and it wouldn't drop down into some deep, dark abyss.

We followed the FJR Service Manual and things went smoothly. The cats weren't too impressed, they sat and looked out the window.

3. We also wanted to take the rear suspension links apart so we could clean and lube the pivot points. We needed to hold the rear of the bike up and take the load off the rear suspension so we could take the bolts out. We rigged up an aluminum ladder, some pipe, some wood, and some tie down straps. It had all the makings for a "hold my beer and watch this" moment... Things worked out really well.

With 26,000 miles on the bike it was definitely time to do that job. A few of the pivot bolts looked a little dry. The bearings were still OK, so we cleaned, lubed and reassembled.
4. We took a short break from the bikes and hung up some racks to hold the kayaks.

5. As long as the system for holding up the bike worked on my bike, we thought we'd do the same thing to John's bike.

6. It was raining, so we had more time for the bikes. Time to put new brake pads in the front calipers of the Zx-14.

The pads were worn about half way, but they had 29,000 miles on them and I wanted to flush and bleed the brake system, so we did them now.
7. Before.... Yuck!

After..... Ahhh, better!

8. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing a few extra garage projects including, putting up a couple of shelves, putting a longer cord on a florescent light, adding 2 speakers to the garage stereo, and cleaning the volume control with electrical contact cleaner.

Thanks John, I couldn't have done it with out your help!