I ride a Ducati. Not because I'm rich, but because after eight and a half years working for a tech company they fucking laid me off, offered me some cash if I kept my mouth shut, and I spent it on a Ducati. I also ride a Kawasaki dual sport because it was cheap. I'm not rich, I'm just irresponsible with my money. I'm also not much of a mechanic and my comfort zone is way over here in the "take a few days to ride a well maintained bike around" area even if I like watching the BBB on YouTube.
So my dear reader, do you see where this is going? Of course you do, because you probably are my friend or follower on Facebook or Instagram!
Some of my friends started putting together a trip to Glacier National Park. You see, Alex's wife was taking off for a girl's rally and he didn't have kids that weekend, so of course he was going for a trip. Bob is pretty free like an eagle for various reasons, and a third thought he was free. Well the third man ended up having some excuses and couldn't go. I'm in a group chat with these guys and the third guy literally has the nickname of "Mister Excuses" and I heard there was a trip.
Being that the mileage for this trip might literally kill me if I tried it on my SuperSport 950S, I joked about how I should just pick up one of the super cheap older touring bikes on Marketplace and go. They didn't say no... and an idea took hold. Once I started shopping I realized it was somewhat realistic, so I asked for the time off from work and most importantly asked the guys whether I could invite myself along. The plan was to leave on a Thursday and the Sunday before I showed up at a seller's house with cash to test ride his 2009 Concours 1400.
By the way for the non-French speakers in the audience, "Concours" is French for "Competition". Kind of like the "Concours d'Elegance" event in Forest Grove, Oregon would be the Competition of Elegance. A vintage car show where people who are total fucking hipster douches, new money assholes socialites, and closet coke addicts investment bankers put on suits and pretend to be anything but the warts on the ass of society non-contributing people that they are on a golf course surrounded by vintage cars.
This is where the fun part started. It was during a 100 degree heatwave. I showed up and started looking it over. At first glance it looks like it's in good shape. Then I take a look at the hard bags and realized they are crooked. While the owner is extolling the virtues of the bike I show him that he has the hard bags mounted backwards. Then I asked him where the oil filter is. "Oh, I don't know, I take it to the dealer for everything".
Disconcerting... Here's what the tires looked like.
Notice the completely screwed up wear and angle of the tread?
Now the fun part. Three days to get it somewhat sorted out before leaving on a two thousand mile trip with guys that are not going to "take it easy".
First priority, tires. Ordered some tires, arranged with Alex to get them swapped when they come in, and set about trying to get the wheels off. This is where the fun difficulty began because 1. its heavy 2. I'm a bad mechanic 3. I've never worked on a shaft drive bike before and most importantly 4. there were seized bolts. After rounding out three out of four of the brake caliper bolts I almost cried. I'm garbage at using a bolt extraction kit and the material is too hard to drill into anyways. But my friends suggested a heat gun and then using a hammer, torx bit, and a wrench.
Those are supposed to be Hex head! Oh and if you guessed it, the local Kawasaki dealer doesn't stock caliper bolts. Pro-Bolt would take a week and I couldn't find them on Amazon, but I probably searched for the wrong terms. I went to the local farm supply shop and got some tractor bolts which mostly fit, but since they were socket head I couldn't get them all the way into the caliper using a socket because of the caliper design! Stupid ABS! Using an open ended wrench I could get them tight, but no way to torque them. Guess I'll take a wrench with me and paint the caliper/bolt head to visually tell if they're backing out.
That's what it's supposed to look like. Used a car jack under the exhaust instead of the motorcycle lift because it was smaller and didn't trip the center stand.
Oh boy are these wheels heavy. Once we figured out how the rear is supposed to come off it was cake. Its really a good design, Kudos to Kawasaki. Now if only they used some kind of bolts on the front brake calipers that didn't instantly self-weld themselves into the holes in the calipers.
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "he's going to do an oil change and everything will go to absolute hell and he'll end up taking the Ducati on the long trip and die of discomfort". You should be right. That's probably what should have happened. But it didn't. Getting the port open to change the oil in the final drive? No problem. Draining the engine oil and removing the existing oil filter? Also no problem.
What the heck? I expected everything to go sideways but it didn't! Oh, except that once I had it all buttoned up I realized I'd forgotten the crush washer on the drain bolt. Anyone want to run the odds whether that'll leak on the trip? Because I'm not draining the oil to try and re-do that. Did I mentioned I'm a bad mechanic?
Oh and the oil filter that was installed on it was a K&N of the generation that had a bunch of failures back in 2016-2017ish when they changed their design and manufacturing. Meaning that 1. The previous owner never ever changed the oil and 2. neither did the dealer and 3. he never took it to the dealer for work ever because dealers don't use K&N filters. It's cool. Previous owners lie. I expect it. This guy didn't even know how to mount the hard bags right. Engine runs good, it has coolant that's nice and green, it has new tires, battery tests good.
Now the bad... I didn't have time to properly clean the calipers, change the brake pads, or flush the fluid. I ran out of time and I have to get packed and to bed because I'm getting up at 4 in the fucking morning to leave on this trip!
