DIY Saturday!

I was free last weekend, so decided to give my bike a wash. She deserved a nice wash after the previous weekend's ride. So much muck and dust had got collected, i spent a good 2 plus hours in cleaning her up and ended up giving a good coat of Formula1 Wax polish. At the end of the ordeal, she was sparkling like a new babe :P Then the DIY (Do It Yourself) keeda bit me. I had got the ignition switch kit replaced after the previous ride, the connecting wires underneath the tank were not routed properly to my satisfaction, the two wire ends coming out from underneath the tank were protruding outside. I had thought of going to a local mech, get the tank removed and route the wire properly.But after the washing process, i was in no mood to ride in hot sun to mech and get the stuff done, so just armed with Zma's Company tool kit, i set out to dismantle the front faring and Tank and do the job myself!

I had observed mechs earlier removing the front faring and tank, so i knew that i could manage it myself. After struggling a bit to loosen the bolts holding the front faring, beneath the faring, i managed to unscrew the bolts and with a gentle nudge, the front faring was removed. I was happy with the progress so far, next i set out for the tank, I disconnected the fuel pipe connecting to carb and then unscrewed the bolt holding the tank to the chassis. I had filled in the previous night, almost to 90% of the tank's capacity, so that made the tank heavier and it was struggling to hold it, i found the float connector and removed it, but got stuck with another tube connected to the tank's underbelly. A quick call to my DIY friend Zahin, solved the mystery, it was the drain pipe for water collected at the fuel cap. So promptly disconnected it and the tank came loose. Placed it on a smooth surface and watched my achievement with glee :P


Found lot of taped wires were loosing their tape due to the weak adhesive, promptly retaped them with electrical duct tape, then found the ignition wire jetting out. Routed that wire in various combos in the chasis and checked if it was getting stressed by turning of the handle bars. Finally found one good spot in the chassis to route the ignition wire, where it was not getting pulled or stressed due to turning of handle bar. Rechecked everything, secured the joints of the wires and with great difficulty, mounted the fuel tank again on the bike! It was damn heavy due to almost 14 Litres of fuel in it, but managed some how. I noticed that the front faring had some vibes, on closer inspection found the both the sides of the plastics had broken notches inside, i unscrewed the Headlamp assembly from the faring and in a minute, i had the headlamp assembly in my hand! :P

Did some tightening of screws inside the faring and started the circus of mounting back the headlamp unit to the faring, found that the headlamp unit gets fixed to the faring in 6 screws, but couldn't get the alignment to fix all screws properly, dropped few screws in to the deep hollows spaces in the faring some times :( after struggling a lot, managed to fit back the headlamp assembly to the faring and the faring to the bike! In the process noticed that most of the rubber hinges near the fuel tank/front faring were worn out or missing. That's where the vibes creep in when i ride. Should go out this weekend and get those rubber hinges and fix them myself, another small DIY activity awaits this weekend.

So, what did i learn from last weekend's DIY activity? well, as a tourer, i must know to diagnise a problem in case my bike breaksdown in the middle of nowhere. Atleast, i should be able to do a first level check of things and fiddle with problem prone areas of the bike. Last weekend's DIY gave me a bit more confidence that i can fix minor things in my bike myself with out the mech's intervention, that too with company supplied basic tool kit! Kinda like first aid with basic first aid kit :P I should upgrade my toolkit now and take this DIY to more depths so that i can become a part time mech and tune my bike to my satisfaction and fix chota mota things.