Category: motorcycle

Imagine having an itch you can’t scratch for 112 days.  Riding a motorcycle in Canada is an ongoing act of stoicism.

It was a long one this Canadian winter.  I’m usually able to get out for a cheeky February ride, but not this year in Ontario. Winter started later but when it came it clamped down on us like an angry professional wrestler and didn’t offer any breaks from Polar Vortexes and snow.  My last ride was mid-November, it’s now March.

T’was -22°C on Friday and tonight we’ve got freezing rain and snow into tomorrow, but it was a balmy 6 today so off I went.

The C14 started on the first touch and was bullet proof on a 30km ride up and down the Grand River:

The bisons were out at Black Powder.

It was mennonite o’clock as I shook the cobwebs out of the Connie.

The Tiger took a bit more convincing but that wasn’t its fault, I’d had the whole fuel injection system out for a cleaning and it needed to get represussurized.  Once it had fuel it took off like a rocket!

Leaning into a corner, finally!

The zipper replacement on the jacket is working like a charm!

The roads were thick with sand and salt so after a cleanup everyone is back under a blanket waiting for the next break.  I’d be a year rounder if I still lived in Norfolk (UK).

On the upside, the 750cc cylinder head for the 71 Bonnie project came in so I’ve got other things to do!

On bike photos were taken with a Ricoh Theta camera attached to the windshield and auto-shooting every 8 seconds.  If you’re curious, here’s a bit on how to make awesome on-bike 360 photos.  Here’s another published on Adventure Bike Rider Magazine in the UK:  How to capture 360-degree photos while riding your motorbike.

Looking forward to leaning into more corners in less than another 112 days!

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I’m going to get past my age related hipster-imposter-syndrome and commit to taking part in the The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride this year, complete with ascot and tweed.  I bet I have a pillion willing to dress up and join me.  I’m hoping I can channel my granddad’s riding style when I do it.

From my DGR Suggestion from the summer of 2020.

My ’03 Triumph Tiger also struggles with the idea of being a faux-classic hipster style icon (DGR likes classics or faux classics to fit the image – I’d argue the Tiger is a kind of, um, scrambler?).  Tigger’s too genuine for that kind of style police nonsense, but it’s an old warhorse with over 80k on it from another era so we’re both going to commit.  I wouldn’t take the C14, that’s missing the point, but the Tiger deserves the work.

The Concours is a fine thing and my wife and I are enjoying the rides together, but the old Tiger is still my two-wheeled spirit animal.

The question now is do we fight our way into the misery that is the GTA for an event in the Six with hundreds of riders or enjoy a similarly (time wise) ride through the country to London for a smaller event with far fewer riders but without the traffic?

There are many Canadian DGR events forming this spring to ride on Sunday, May 22nd:  Get out to one if you can, and don’t be anxious about not meeting the hipster bike style code (though do dress nicely).

This is last year’s poster – I’m sure they’ll come up with a 2022 one shortly (it’s on Sunday, May 22nd.)

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I’m up early on a Sunday morning out of a nightmare. It’s a recurring one where I’m forced to do nonsensical things at work designed to run me into the ground and make me feel like my presence is meaningless and I don’t matter. It’s your typical lack-of-control nightmare and I always wake up from it in despair, but relieved that it isn’t what’s actually happening (at least not that badly).

I’m in that space late in my career when I want to direct rather than act but don’t have the network around me that enables me to do that.  As I approach retirement I know more and more people who have crossed over into it.  I also know more people who are getting properly old and are struggling with the complications that brings.  Getting old is difficult and few people seem able to do it with any kind of grace.

Getting old and retiring from riding has come up before in TMD.  A few years ago Jeff and I rescued a BMW from a retired rider which led to For Whom The Bell Tolls.  This guy had ridden the BMW home from a conference fifteen years earlier, parked it in his shed and it then sat there.  He finally sold it on to Jeff when he honestly told himself he was never going to ride again.  I get all Dylan Thomas about that and think I’ll be riding to the end no matter what.  Twenty years of deterioration with no time in the wind at the end of life doesn’t sound like living at all. 

Another time the Canada Moto-Guide wrote a strange obituary on a rider who crashed at over twice the legal limit on a rural backroad, suggesting that he was a motorcycling martyr rather than reckless rider who caused his own demise.  There is a different kind of abstract fatalism here that has more in common with the stingy pensioner than it does with those rare elders that have found and express wisdom even in their weakness.  Being honest is a big part of growing old or riding well.  Understanding your limitations honestly allows you to be genuine in your being in whatever state it’s in.  There is an unfortunate arrogance around motorcycling (and aging) that often prevents us from thinking about either thing rationally and honestly.  If that’s all true, then if I ever get to the point where I can’t ride effectively I shouldn’t.  That guy who sold Jeff the BMW was wiser than I.

I’ve tried to apply some eastern philosophy to my riding (and aging) on a number of occasions in order to manage the challenges both things create without devolving into dick-swinging nonsense.  Machismo, or just plain old gender-free arrogance, might move you up in the world of management but it doesn’t make you a very nice human being.  I think I’d rather age honestly and retain my urge to mentor and support rather than force my way up the ladder in order to gain a fictional sense of control along with accompanying ego.  When it comes to directing, the only person I really want to direct is myself and I want to do it while enabling myself to act as genuinely and with as much fecundity as I’m able.  Perhaps then I can find myself old without finding myself frustrated and angry, hopefully while still riding.

Hasn’t happened yet in 2022 and I’m missing the Frostbite.

This is the kind of thing I don’t usually carry with me because I’d go out for a ride and ruminate on things until I found my quiet centre again, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance style, but I’m in another never-ending Canadian winter with COVID piled on top (and on the verge of WW3), and instead of being in the wind I’m stuck inside.  This is the only year in the past many where I haven’t managed a cheeky February ride on a clear day.  Riding and aging are both very difficult things and doing them well is more than many people can manage, for me it’s even worse when I can’t get out into the wind.

***

Nothing like a bit of poetry to create some perspective:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Tao Te Ching Chapter 4

Tao is empty (like a bowl). It may be used but its capacity is never exhausted

It is bottomless, perhaps the ancestor of all things.

It blunts its sharpness. It unties its tangles. It softens its light. It becomes one with the dusty world.

Deep and still, it appears to exist forever.

I do not know whose son it is. It seems to have existed before the Lord.

Tao Te Ching Chapter 5

Heaven and Earth are not humane. They regard all things a straw dogs.

The sage is not humane. He regards all people as straw dogs.

How Heaven and Earth are like a bellows. While vacuous, it is never exhausted. When active, it produces even more.

Much talk will of course come to a dead end. It is better to keep to the centre.

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Back in 2016 we did a winter family holiday to Las Vegas and then drove down to Phoenix.  While there my son and I rented a bike and rode the Superstition Mountains just east of the city.  Having done some research, I thought I’d try buying a leather bike jacket while down there as US prices tend to be much kinder than Canadian ones.  I ended up with a Bilt black leather bike jacket that I’ve used on cooler rides since.  It’s not high tech protection wise but the leather is thick and the jacket is a solid thing.  It was the last of the 2014 designs and I got it on sale ($159!) as they were wrapping up their Christmas shopping season at the CycleGear shop in Mesa.  Your typical excellent American sales service too.

Since then I’ve done thousands of miles with the thing and it has always done the job.  It isn’t well vented so it tends to do early spring/late fall duties.  This past fall on my last big ride of the year I was wearing it for the 270km ride up to Deerhurst Resort and then it handled a torrential downpour when I rode into Algonquin Park the next day.

It was all good until on the way home I undid the zipper and it came off in my hand when I stopped for a drink before heading back south.  I managed to get the zipper to reconnect so I wasn’t flapping all the way back, but a broken zipper meant the jacket couldn’t be used anymore, which made me sad.  What followed was a deep dive into zipper technology as I attempted to fix it.

A six year old leather jacket might not be my first choice when getting caught in a downpour, but it did the job!  The hotel room had a lot of drying leather hanging up in it when I got back.

Some online research had me filling my head with new zipper related vocabulary.  The retaining box on the jacket had come off when I pulled the zipper down.  Most of the online advice (which turned out to be right) suggested that you can’t fix a broken box, it requires a zipper replacement, but on a thick leather jacket that seemed like a bit much.  Of course, Amazon sells crap that insinuates that you can fix a broken retaining box, so I wasted money buying that and then found that it wouldn’t grip and simply didn’t work, even after multiple attempts.

Top Tip:  don’t waste your time trying to fix an old zipper.  It took some effort, but removing the old zipper and installing another is just some work and isn’t impossible.

I finally ended up buying a quality YKK replacement zipper (after learning an awful lot about YKK zippers).  My crafty wife has all the sewing kit so she gave me a seam ripper that made removing the old thread very easy.  If you’ve got an exacto knife or craft blades and steady hands you could probably remove the thread that way, but the seam ripper does it without damaging the material.  With the old zipper removed and the outer leather separated from the inner liner, the jacket ended up sitting under my work table for a couple of weeks because the thought of pushing a needle through the leather seemed like a bit much, but it’s no harder than other mechanical work (makes your hands ache though).

I got some heavy duty coat thread when I purchased the replacement zipper.  This stuff is nylon-rope strong which helped with the sewing, which I did by hand.  The stitching doesn’t look like it’s done by a machine but it’s consistently spaced and didn’t cause any pinch points up the zipper.

I came in through the back lining and out through the existing holes in the leather.  By separating the layers I was able to line up the needle with the holes and then it was just a matter of keeping everything straight as I worked my way up the zipper hole by hole.  Alanna suggested I start at the bottom and work up – that was good advice.

Using the existing holes on the thick hide is the trick.  You might be able to do this on a machine but I don’t know how you’d do that as the jacket material is thick and you’d need to align the holes the machine is punching with what is currently there.  Doing it by hand is a bit tedious but it works and means you’re not punching any new holes in anything.

When I got to the top I tucked the zipper (I couldn’t get one the exact length of the old one so got one about half an inch too long) into the collar which had been separated when I removed the zipper thread.  With the top of the zipper tucked into the collar, I sewed everything up using the existing holes in the leather.  Once again, separating the material let me align the needle with each hole one by one.

The final product zips up like new and has no pinching or clumping on the front of the jacket.  Sewing in the other side was easy.  I separated the zipper once one side was in and then  did the other just the same way.  By the time I was wrapping it up I’d gotten quick at it.

Alanna had a thick needle and that strong thread really helped the process.  With a leather jacket the trick is to use the existing holes in the material rather than trying to punch new ones, which in my case meant doing it by hand.  The end result is that my old leather jacket, which now has some nice patina on it, is back in service and ready for the 2022 riding season, should this never ending winter end.

If you lose a zipper on your favourite old motorbike jacket, don’t toss it out.  A replacement zipper is less than $15 (CAD) and with thread and other odds and ends you should be able to replace that tired zipper with something that’ll let you enjoy your well loved leather jacket for years to come.

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More 1971 Triumph Bonneville restoration project research (all prices courtesy of BritCycle):

High pipes:

721-T74X exhaust pipes – $304.51/pair.
711-709669/9670 mufflers – $486.00/pair.
2x 742-158 clamps – $16.61 ea.
70-9673 “H” connector – $72.28.
2x 742-112 clamps – $16.61 ea.

TOTAL:  $930

Plus associated bracketry and hardware, etc if needed. The one item we’ll have difficulty sourcing will be the ‘chip basket’ heatshield; our manufacturer of those long since retired.

Looking like Steve McQueen on a scrambler styled Bonneville costs extra!  Britcycle said they might have some scratched and dented options on sale, but those aren’t regular stock (obviously).

Stock(ish) exhaust system:

721-T79 exhaust pipes – $289.02/pair.

712-102 Dunstall decibel replica mufflers – $330.32/pair.
70-9888 balance tube – $29.09.
2x 742-138 clamps – $16.61 ea.

TOTAL:  $683

What I’d really like to do is form my own pipes, but I don’t have the space, equipment or time to do that.  For this project I think I’ll use it as a learning process and get this particular Bonneville cleaned up and mechanically sorted and leave the radical customizations to a future time when I’m loaded, have lots of free time and a much bigger workshop with a full range of tooling in it.

I think stock is the way I’ll go on exhausts…

As far as seats go, BritCycle has just the sort of thing I’m looking for: 

  

Custom Seat, 71on T120, Clip Type

Part Number 513-05

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I took the big SLR into the shop for some closeups.  These are photos from the 1971 Triumph Bonneville T120 project currently in process.

Call it patina, or scars, but the years on an old bike tell a story…

The ‘spare’ cylinder sleeves after some clean up.

Orange was the colour of panic in the early 80s.  The cylinder head was covered in this stuff in an attempt to seal a leaky motor during the aborted chopper phase of this bike’s life.

That’s the motor stamping (from Jan-Feb 1971).

Lucas! The Prince of Darkness™

My kind of still life.

Patina that tells a tale.

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Having never worked on this kind of motor before, I was lucky enough to get a spare head and cylinder sleeve when I got the bike, so rather than go in blind I disassembled the spare unit first to see how it all went together.

The right hand cylinder looked fantastic, but the left side was a mess with a thick layer of corrosion and an obviously seized-in-the-sleeve cylinder.  I’d expect to see something like this on a water cooled engine when the head gasket has failed allowing water and coolant into the cylinder, but this is an air cooled unit with no coolant in sight.  My best guess is someone left the spark plug out in a damp environment for an extended period of time letting moisture in to disastrous effect.  It’s amazing what a bit of laziness or stupidity can be amplified into over time.

Looking at the jammed cylinder, it looks heat seized with burn marks all over the inside and physical damage up the side.  If replacements aren’t crazy, I might use the spare head I’ve got to get things into motion, but if it’s going to cost a lot to the replace these bits I think I’m looking at a more aggressive customization option:  a 750cc big-bore kit.

Before: sleeves like that usually slide off.  Cylinders are snug but not stuck.

After: a couple of sweaty, intense hours later.  It was a satisfying win.

Some other photos from the work this past weekend:

Seized cylinder soaking in brake fluid overnight.

First look at the head gasket after getting the cylinder sleeve off.

A disappointing first look into the heart of the Triumph.

This is the head on the bike motor.  The other head must be from an earlier machine, or it’s missing parts.  Those risers with bolt holes in the top were on the ’71 top end but not on the other one, which looks to be an earlier unit (Triumph built the 650 twin for many years).

I get a great deal of satisfaction from cleaning up the old parts on the wheel in the shop.  This is an exhaust clamp, lovely patina!

This is the ‘practice’ top end on the bench.  Unlike other top ends I’ve been in (my ‘modern’ Triumph Tiger, the Fireblade, etc), this isn’t an overhead cam motor.  It uses push rods to operate the valves from down below (they’re dead centre in the photo).

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We’re seeing temperatures in the low -20s these days and waves of snow passing through creating banks that are hard to see over.  To quote the Penguins of Madagascar…

The roads themselves are sanded and snow covered too.  We’ve got a major storm rolling in tonight that looks like it’ll pitch another 48 hours of the white stuff at us.

At this time of year I tend to be in a mood as it’s been far too long since I’ve leaned into any corners.  Compounding the lack of riding is the tricky nature of trying to find parts for the old Triumph Bonneville in order to keep that project purring along.  What parts there are pretty damned expensive too.  I’ll get back into it soon enough, but in the meantime I thought I’d give the new (er) Triumph’s fuel injectors a cleaning.

I’ve been in and out of the Tiger so many times that it’s second nature.  The tank removal process (which is pretty complicated involving removing 4 panels and many awkward fasteners) can be done (blindfolded!) in about 10 minutes.

The second job was to remove the fuel rail.  This is easy on the 955i Tiger (two bolts), but one was threaded (having a 19 year old bike as my regular runner does produce some headaches).  A cunningly installed second nut on the back of the threaded one had it all back together tight though.

Once cleaned and sorted I press fitted the injectors back into the rail and reinstalled it back onto the bike.  The injectors press fit (there are thick rubber gaskets on each end) into the metal injector body on the bike too.  The only tricky bit was sorting out that threaded mounting bolt, but there is space behind the rail for a second nut and it did the trick.  While I was in there I cleaned all the electrical connections and put dielectric grease on the connectors to keep everything neat and dry.

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Owning a Fireblade checked a box, taught me many things and was a zero cost experience!

I always try to balance out bike projects so that I land in the black on them.  I’ve gotten pretty
good at this.  The Fireblade Project cost me about $2300 all in and then I got to ride it for a season before selling it for $2500, which I then put towards the Concours14.  Even with fancy seats, windshields and other gubbins, the Connie only owes me about $7000.  Older model, double the mileage bikes are going for eight grand, so I’m still ahead there too.

People who throw big money down on customization that they like seem to think other people will pay extra to adopt their choices and tastes, which never made a lot of sense to me.  This goes for houses or in vehicles – just because you’re willing to pay a premium to get a certain look, doesn’t mean anyone else is, and expecting them to shell out for your choices is a bit naive.

The Concours was a cagey purchase that still has me well in the black.

What does always sell is functionality.  As much as I’d like to get all romantic and throw money at the old Triumph I’m restoring, I’m more interested in making it work, and then riding it.  To that end, I’m not interested in creating a perfect replica of a 1971 Triumph Bonneville to put in shows, so modern touches (especially when they’re more cost effective than stock-at-all-cost options) are something I have no trouble with.  A bike that starts easily and runs sweetly sells itself much more quickly than a cantankerous but period correct trailer queen.  One’s a motorcycle, the other is art, and art is notoriously in the eye of the beholder.

One of the reasons I’ve always gravitated toward cheap and cheerful 80s and 90s Japanese restos was because the parts are usually easy to find, including hard parts from a breaker if needed, and they’re as cheap as chips to buy because people tended to use them rather than put them up on a pedestal.

My first brush with ‘vintage’ (I think a 51 year old air-cooled Triumph from before the collapse of the British bike industry qualifies as vintage) has me wondering if my approach still works.  The cost of parts is much higher than more recent Japanese bikes and this particular Bonneville was half taken apart by a muppet who wanted to be in Easy Rider, so I’m constantly finding parts missing or incorrect.  I’m also struggling with missing non-metric tools after having owned metric bikes my entire life.

When I’m reading Practical Sportbikes I enjoy the articles on DIY and the stories of scratchers who got a machine put together with their own hands.  When they run one of the ‘specials’ articles where it’s a rich guy with clean hands throwing money at a project, I lose interest quickly.  Classic Bike Magazine is similar.  When they’re talking about an owner keeping an old machine running on ingenuity and guile, I’m all in, but the minute it’s a millionaire adding to his collection with another bespoke machine put together by someone else, I’ve lost interest.

I just finished Guy Martin’s new book, Dead Men Don’t Tell Tales, and Guy ends the latest one
talking about trying to find what makes him happy.  This requires a fair bit of self awareness – something that most people don’t have.  Guy’s particularly difficult in that he will often act on an urge that turns out to be incorrect, but, as he says in the book, he’s evolving.

There’s a scene in Guy’s Garage where Cammy, his professional race mechanic mate, knows how to fix the car they’re working on but Guy has his own ideas and keeps bashing away at it wrong.  Rather than push the point, Cammy backs off and waits for Guy to realize he’s using the wrong tool for the job.

Guy is critical of Cammy for being slack in his approach to work in the book, but I’m left wondering if the truth isn’t somewhere in between:  what looks like a lack of effort from Guy’s point of view is actually a better use of his energy from the professional race mechanic’s point of view.  There’s more to all this than just jumping in to the physical labour, you need to be exercising the grey matter too.

What I’m taking from this latest round of Guy Martin media is that you’re more likely to stay engaged with and finish big projects if they make sense to you.  To that end, I spent yesterday working out why the kickstarter on the Bonneville wasn’t working (the muppet had put it in backwards).

The goal is still to have gone through the whole bike and have it back in working order without breaking the bank.  The amount spent on it matters less than whether or not the project is in the black.  If a functional ’71 Bonneville is worth about five grand, then that’s what I’ll work to on the budget, while keeping an eye on what engages me most about all this:  putting a sidelined bike back into service again… and then riding it!

This morning I’m looking at Motogadget’s mo.Unit Blue and considering how to best tackle a 51 year old wiring loom that looks to be in good shape but should probably get rebuilt if dependability is the goal.  An ignition powered by bluetooth on a smartphone is just the kind of steampunk anachronism that a riding focused buyer would dig.  That it’s also invisible means it won’t hurt the look of the bike (the only change is the ignition key isn’t there).

Got into rebuilding the Amal carbs only to discover the muppet who took them apart before didn’t install any of the air slider hardware for the choke, so now I’m hunting for hard parts for 51 year old carbs… in a pandemic.  Note my anemic imperial socket wrench set.

Ready to go and then stopped – neither carb has the air slider or hardware in it.  I’d normally call around to the local breakers, find a donor set of carbs and then keep them handy for situations like this.  That isn’t an option with a 51 year old British bike.

It’s coming along – slower than I’d like, but it’s coming along.  When it seems too much I remind myself why I’m doing it: one day soon that engine will turn over for the first time in decades and shortly after that I’ll be out riding the thing!

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 I’m busy in the garage these days with the on-going 50 year old Triumph Bonneville restoration project.  It’s a big project that will take some time to sort out, but it’s -20°C outside with snow squall warnings of 20cm of snow coming, which means it’s also regular maintenance time on the two running bikes in the stable.

Tiger’s back in hibernation after last week’s sprockets & chain maintenance, waiting for a break in another never-ending winter of COVID for a chance to ride.

Last week the Tiger got new chain and sprockets.  I hadn’t done the sprockets on it since getting it over 5 years and 40k ago, so I figured it was time when I noticed the latest chain had stretch in it that made it impossible to set the sag properly.  This week it’s all about the Concours.

I got the Connie last spring in the middle of the second lockdown.  My son and I rented a van and drove down to The Beaches in Toronto and picked it up from its second owner who hadn’t been riding it for several years.  It’s a very low mileage bike (under 30k when I picked it up), but I like to cover all the basic maintenance so I can set a ‘zero point’ for future work.

As you would expect from Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the brakes on the GTR1400/C14 Concours are superbly engineered Nissin calipers.  I’d picked up the pads last summer but they hung on the wall until now because I was putting miles on the thing.  I did find the brakes were squeaking a bit, suggesting the calipers weren’t releasing properly – something that can happen in a bike that sits for several seasons.  Like I said before, I don’t like riding a bike where I’m not sure of the maintenance, especially on brakes, so it was due.

Doing the pads on the Concours is remarkably easy.  You don’t need to remove any body panels and everything is very accessible.  Undo the pin that holds the pads and spring that holds them in and then everything comes apart in your hands.  The pins were rough and there was some odd gunk stuck in the front right caliper.  I cleaned everything up and lubed it and then slotted the new pads into place with the now lubed pins (I think it’s a #5 hex head that does the trick).  All very logical.

If you’re looking for torque settings for the brakes on a Kawasaki GTR1400/Concours C14, here they are.

The rears are just as easy and a similar design with the same pin and caliper bolt sizes (everything is hex metric).  The back was as mucky as the front and I went to lengths to clean up the pressurized caliper slider and lube the pins and areas where the pads move.  The action immediately felt better afterwards.

Last spring when I got the bike I had to sort out a leak in the hydraulic clutch which resulted in entirely new DOT 4 brake fluid (what the Connie uses in both clutch and brakes).  Changing up your brake fluid removes impurities and moisture that can eventually cause real corrosion headaches in your brake system, so after doing the pads I changed up the brakes fluid on both front and rear systems.  The only fluid change left now on the Concours is the antifreeze.  I’ll do that at the end of next season.  When I tested it the fluid it was still bright green, looked new and showed good temperature range.

Getting all the air out of the hydraulic clutch so that it felt tight and had positive action was a real pain in the ass last spring.  The good new is that this air-line powered vacuum system did the trick then (it’s not crazy expensive) and takes the headache out of bleeding anything with steady, controllable suction.

In the case of the brake system, I set up the vacuum bleeder and then kept adding fluid in the reservoir at the top until it came out clear (the used stuff was darker and cloudier – it looked almost like water once the new stuff made an appearance.

Just a note:  don’t keep brake fluid laying around open.  It collects moisture and goes off pretty quickly.  As with all brake fluid changes, I opened the bottle and then immediately used it this time.

The front brakes took less than 10 minutes to completely bleed of old fluid and the rears even less.  If you’re doing your own brake/hydraulic fluid maintenance with any kind of regularity, let that hand-pump go and get one of these things (assuming you have an air compressor of course).

With the brakes sorted on the Concours and the sprockets and chain on the Tiger, both are waiting for a break in the weather for a cheeky winter ride to kick off the 2022 season.  As long as I’m not trying to navigate ice on the road, I’m good to go.  An above zero day and some dry pavement is all I need

Now that the regular movers (I was going to call them new but the Tiger is almost 20 years old and the Connie turned ten last year) are sorted out maintenance wise, it’s back to the old Bonneville project.  Next up I’m rebuilding the two Amal carbs, then it’s rebuilding the ignition system and then (hopefully) hearing the old thing bark for the first time in decades.

Sometimes the Bonneville can feel like it’s too big to manage, it needs so much, but with two other working machines I’m never going to be angry with it not being ready, though I would love to have it running in time for The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride on May 22nd.  A ’71 Bonneville with some early 70s retro style would be a blast.

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