Tech Weekend with Bustanut - Saturday
I took the opportunity of having the cam chain cover off to perform some preventative maintenance and change the cam chain tensioner (CCT) on my '06 AE. We had changed BikerGeek's CCT during the last Tech Day and as anyone who has done this task with the motor in situ can attest it is a PITA getting at the bolts that hold the CCT in place.
I bought a gear wrench set ...
and found that the 8mm gear wrench worked well for getting at the inside bolt. However it is the bolt closest to the frame that is the larger PITA. We took a cheap 8mm box end wrench and cut it down to allow a little more swing after we unbolted the idle adjuster screw bracket to allow better access. As others can tell you it is extremely easy to drop the bolts both during removal and assembly. It was when I was dreaming of sheep and manatees that we had our ureka moment. That morning I took a demel tool and cut a slot across the top of the bolt to allow the use of a thin blade standard screwdriver...
Using some long nose tweezers I was able to hold the bolt in position. We then inserted a long thin blade standard screwdriver through the CCT access port in the frame and was able to turn the modified bolts turning them all the way in. We then only had to use the wrenches to tighten up the bolts to the final torque value of 'righty-tighty'
There is just enough room that you can get the screwdrive in on an angle to do this and it worked very slick. No need to duct tape the access hole to stop bolts from falling inside the frame and a huge timesaver.
Useless Pickles was wasting no time and quickly had the valve cover off his '08 Gen II...
A measurement of all clearances showed everything to be well within tolerance. It wasn't long before he had the bike ready to be filled back up with coolant.
Tim (DesignFlaw06) was now well into the wiring of he speed control unit following UselessPickles writeup. The Owosso Traffic Copter did a flyover to check on the progress being made...
We were now well into Saturday and our tool bench was getting a little messy and being old some of us kept forgetting where we had put the tool we needed...
Pete rolled in for a rideby and check out the action...
Jason rolled in with his Gen I to perform a CCT change and a Throttle body sync (TBS)...
With our new CCT procedure we had the new CCT in the bike in less than an hour. It only would have taken 1/2 hour if Bustanut wasn't helping.
The TBS needed a tweek...
With some tutoring from Ray, Jason had the TBS in good shape and was good to go.
We now had Andy's valve cover off. This is what a Gen I looks like under the hood...
Andy's bike at 72000 miles needed shims. We tried moving the cams without removing them from the cam chain as per the FJR Tech article but unfortunately one of the cams did slip out and it was a bit of headscratching and going back to the FSM to make sure we had everything correct before buttoning up the bike. Due to some previous gorilla wrenching the fasteners holding the thermostat housing to the coolant pipe were not in great shape. We had some problems getting the housing to mate to the coolant pipe also.
When it came time to replace the coolant the sun had set and start the bike we had antifreeze steam rising from a leak past the thermostat housing o-ring. Ray was not happy.
We had to disassemble a bunch of stuff to remove the o-ring to find that we had pinched and cut the o-ring while trying to connect the housing to the pipe. Fortunately we had another o-ring and with great care we managed to correctly install everything on the second go round.
I was not as fortunate with my bike. When we removed the coolent pipe it unfortunaely must of somehow got bent and we were not able to reinstall the pipe. Close inspection found that the pipe was no longer aligned properly and we tried to McGiver a fix and was finally able to install the pipe but when it came time to fill the bike with coolant he had a massive leak from the pipe in the area that was 'repaired'. At this point it became obvious that new parts were going to be required. Fortunately I had trailered the bike and I just boxed things up and the bike will have to wait for a new coolant pipe to arrive.
Tim took his '08 Gen II for a test ride and was having issues with his speed control unit. Bustanut blamed it on the wiring which Tim did. Tim blamed it on the vacuum piping which Bustanut did. In the end it was a vacuum issue and the addition of a check valve and a resevoir fixed the issue.
We ended another long day with some drinks and a viewing of my DVD copy of the Copper Canyon trip last November.
- We laughed at Mr Stanley's hairy butt in the hot springs
- We laughed at Mr Stanley getting stuck in the river as the buzzards circled overhead
- We laughed at Mr Stanley drinking
- We laughed at Mr Stanley eating
Basically we laughed at Mr Stanley throughout the entire movie.
NEXT - The Wrap-Up
