After the restoration: Engine Teardown

That is what I saw when I did my last service. Worse, when rubbed between my fingers it felt like sand. I was going to let it go until the next service before doing something about it, but soon realized that it is not going to fix itself. So… less than 20,000 miles after the restoration I’m going back into the engine. Slowly. I’m not in that much of a hurry. Mainly because this means I’ll have to clean the garage to store some of the stuff I take off the bike. Grumble.

First things, first. Today the UPS man came with a package from Benchmark Works. One of the items ordered was a sealed replacement battery. I took the old battery off the bike to remove the wire pigtails. I cut the ends off and crimped/heat shrunk the terminals for the new battery.

The final thing I did this session was to remove the air pipes. Air pipes, air cleaner, and battery are about all I’ve room to store, right now. More things will come off the bike as I make room to store them.

The mufflers won’t take up too much space. I pulled them off the bike, putting the hardware back on the bike so it isn’t misplaced. I’ll clean off the old loctite before putting the mufflers back. They are dirty (last ride was in the rain) and also sport some road tar stains.

Some 0000 steel wool, mothers wheel polish, and about 20 minutes per pipe got them looking good. No show quality (the steel wool does leave some swirls where the road tar was extra thick) but good enough for me. I finished them off with a thick coat of paste wax.

I wrapped the cleaned, polished, and waxed pipes in brown paper and put them where they shouldn’t be in the way. That’s all for today, and likely all for a few more days. My GS will need its 54K service when I get back from breakfast, tomorrow. I’ll do that before getting back to the R69S.