Saturday I spent half the day helping my friend Dan get his motorcycle. It’s a Kawasaki 400 (not sure what year and it’s pretty cool looking. I never even thought about it before I had a bike but something about motorcycles from the 70’s just makes them seem cooler than today’s bikes. It’s going to need some work but once it’s finished, it’s going to be a helluva motorcycle. From the time we dropped off Dan’s bike, I started working on mine. I drained the oil and took off the pan. To get to the pan I had to jack the bike up and balance it on jack stands. That made working on the bike much easier. I had to take off the exhaust pipes to get the pan off but I found that it’s really not as hard as I thought it would be. Just take off a few nuts and the pipes come right off. Anyway, I used J-B weld on the oil pan and let it sit over night.
I almost didn’t mention it because I found it a little embarrassing but hey, what are blogs for if not to tell the world about your stupid and embarassing moments eh? Anyway, As I was taking the oil pan off the bike, Dan pointed out the fact that I had a center stand on my bike and his bike didn’t. I looked real hard at where he was pointing and sure enough I had a center stand. I had owned that bike for a month and this was the first time I realized I could use something other than the awkward side stand to balance the bike. I didn’t even know the thing was there. Damn.
Sunday morning about 9am I called and woke Dan’s wife up. I really didn’t mean to do that but I just wanted her to know I was coming over to let my self in. The last thing I wanted was for her to think there was a burglar in the house and come at me with a baseball bat. (I’m using their garage since they’re nice enough to let me. Also, it sucks working on it in my parking lot because of the heat.) Anyway, I started working on the bike taking off the front brake caliper and replacing the piston and seal. Also, I put the oil pan back on and filled the motor with oil. I put the pipes back on, which proved to be much harder than taking them off, and then replaced the fuel tank.
Showtime….I rolled the bike out of the garage and started her up. There was a little oil coming from around the oil pan but that was to be expected. The seal has to get hot and cool a couple times before it’s 100%. Other than that, every thing looked and sounded good. I took her for a ride around the neighborhood and made sure she was able to run without stalling. Once I rode the bike home I walked back to Dan’s where I had left my car. I cleaned up my tools and put everything away. I felt so relieved to be going home knowing my bike was in better shape than it had been the day before. When I pulled into the parking lot at our apartments I took the motorcycle cover out of the trunk and walked over to the bike ready to cover it up. That’s when I noticed a HUGE puddle of dark grey oil under the front left fork. I followed the oil up the fork and saw that it was slowly pouring out of the fork where the seal should be.
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Now I had just spend the better part of the weekend trying to improve this motorcycle. I banged my knuckles a couple times and stretched my body in ways I haven’t in years trying to get under the bike. None of that made me mad. I simply smiled and thought, “it’s only going to make me a better mechanic.” Now seeing this large pool of oil bleeding out of the forks made me mad as hell. The anger didn’t last long because I was too tired to be angry. I needed a beer. I covered the bike after clamping the leaking fuel hose with a pair of Vice Grips and headed inside. (Yea, the fuel petcock doesn’t shut off all the way and alows fuel to seep into the carburators so I have to pinch the fuel line.) I’ll search the forums later to see if I can find out what to do about those forks. If I can’t find anything I’ll leave a message in the SOHC forum and someone out there will be more than happy to tell me what I need to do. In the mean time, I’m just going to sit on the couch and enjoy a few beers knowing that this weekend was anything but a waste. Though I found another problem with the bike, I take satisfaction in knowing that I was able to fix a couple others. It’s all a learning process, right?
