Tool Abuse, Bike Maintenance, and Making Things Just a Little Better

Its no secret that I consider myself a disciple of Dave Moss. If you haven't heard of him, search youtube and facebook. He's a suspension tuner and racer, although his outreach goes beyond setting sag and twiddling knobs to trying to get all riders to take care of the basic ergonomic tuning and maintenance tasks that all too often get ignored.

The other day I was watching one of his videos and he was harping on brake fluid. So I paused the video and went to change the brake fluid in my special lady friend's 2012 CBR250r, which had probably never been changed.

Yucky.
Funny that after I changed that suddenly the brakes worked like they should. All this time I just assumed the brakes on it sucked (they felt sticky), but in fact the fluid was just awful!

I've bled the brakes on the VFR about four times this year trying to get the feel that I want. They were mushy as hell after I did a complete flush, I was thinking I was going to have to replace the lines. First though I removed the calipers and cleaned them thoroughly, then very carefully bled the brakes again, watching for tiny bubbles coming out. Voila, good firm brakes. Also my reservoir was weeping and as it turned out that happens when its over full, my fault.

I finally changed the coolant, which was a phenomenal pain in the ass due to the way Honda built the VFR fairings and where they placed the cooling system pieces. Two radiators and bits and pieces all over.

The fork oil on the VFR needs to be changed but that's a bigger job than I can do, and I don't have tools for it. So I'll let my guy do that for me before my big trip in August.

The baby CBR has much simpler forks where you can access the oil from the top, so I changed that tonight. I sucked out the 0W Honda fish oil and replaced it with 10W Repsol oil. Big difference, it no longer pogos.

Ironically Honda didn't see fit to put a place for spools on the swingarms. If you want spools you have to put on aftermarket pieces that go onto the chain adjusters, which ironically you need to lift the back end to do which you can't because you don't have spools. Using a paddle lift is a no go because it grabs onto the part of the swingarm that blocks the axle.

Tim the Tool Abuser Jensen to the rescue. Ladder plus rachet straps = motorcycle lift.

I also used this method to reassemble the forks.

While Dave would be happy that I'm taking care of my suspension and brakes, he'd probably be horrified at the way I improvise on things!