Saturday, July 20 2019 [10,862 miles]
Almost 11K
The bike has been at almost 11K for a couple of weeks, but I tweaked my back a few weeks ago; it’s been too painful to even think about working on the bike. My back still hurts, but not enough to keep me from getting started on the service. I will, however, delay changing the front tire until the pain is gone.
Where did the seat screw go?
Disconnected – that’s not good
I started by removing the side panels. Hey, one of my saddle retaining screws got lost. I’ve spares. Two of the screws that I removed when installing my rear rack are the same as the lost screw.
I removed the seat and found my after market carb breather filter had come disconnected from the breather hose. That’s not good. Who knows what crap was ingested into the carb. I re-attached the filter with a zip tie to keep it attached.
Tank removed
Old plugs
The tank was pulled and moved out of the way. My service schedule says plugs should be changed this service. The existing plugs don’t look bad, but they are cheap enough that I broke out a new pair and verified the gaps were correct.
Came off easy
Intake valves adjusted
Many have issues removing the timing hole plug and the crank hole plug. Both came free easily. Whith the plugs free I removed the rocker arm inspection covers and found TDC on the compression stroke so I could adjust clearances.
I didn’t take the time to measure existing clearances because I don’t have a complete set of angled feeler guages. I do have angled feelers for the desired clearances.
buttoned up, new plugs
Air cleaner
Dirty
The new plugs were installed after the inspection covers. I removed the dirty air cleaner and sprayed it with cleaner. While the cleaner was doing its job I put the battery on the charger and checked most of the chassis nuts and bolts to make sure all were tight. I found a few loose.
The charger indicated a fully charged battery within a few minutes. That tells me the battery is probably still fine. I’ll still keep in on the charger until tomorrow afternoon when I continue the service.