Thursday, May 9, 2013 [23929 miles]
I’ve started the actual 24,000 mile service by checking out the front forks… again. My 35 MPH head shake was back and everything else checked out fine. The lock nut on top of the upper fork guide was loose… again. This time I cleaned off much of the grease that covered the nut and the fork tube and torqued it down with a few gentle taps of a dead blow hammer. If the head shake comes back this will be the first thing I check.
While in the garage I cleaned the bike, put the battery on the charger after testing the lights, and checked tire pressures. The rear tire was down a bit, the front was OK. I also needed to tighten the center stand hardware on the right side. I used some blue thread locker on the nut this time.
Tomorrow I’m picking up a platform bike lift—I made room by slightly re-arranging things in the garage. That was made easier with only one bike to move around since my GS is gone to a new owner and its ordered replacement has not yet been manufactured by BMW. The R69S is my only bike for a while.
Saturday, May 11, 2013 [23950 miles]
Yesterday I got the lift home and modified to use with my Condor chock. Details here. Today I used the lift when changing oil after coming home from brunch with the Groeger group.
Oil drained
It sure is nice working at lift height. I can either support the bike with the Condor chock as shown or remove the pivoting portion of the chock (takes maybe 10 seconds) and wheel the bike in far enough to then put it on the center stand. That’s what I had to do to check the steering.
The steering was better, but not right at low speeds. I removed the handlebars with risers to get better access to the adjusting nuts. Oh…. Should have done that earlier. I got the bearings re-adjusted and just before tightening the top nut I gave a final test by gently guiding the front tire from side to side with my finger tips.
Wait… what’s that? A notch? Yep. Notched so well its as if there were a detent to keep the wheel straight and true. Too bad a front motorcycle wheel doesn’t work very well when locked into a straight and true position :)
New steering bearings are on order. Also in progress is my new GS. Just got an email saying the bike is in production. Might be another 8 weeks before it gets to me. More reasons to keep the R69S running its best.
Thursday, May 16, 2013 [23,988 miles]
Front end removed
headlight bucket
lower bearing
Steering stem
The new bearings arrived this afternoon. After running some errands I pulled the front end off the bike to get at the old bearings. The top bearings felt OK but when I used the top roller in the bottom race I could feel some roughness that shouldn’t be there. Tomorrow I hope to start removing the old parts.