stuartb3502

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Aha! That would work. I guess must have loosened it with the other fasteners and then it fell off when I removed the hanger so I didn't spot this. Kind of a weird setup. Thanks so much for this. I NEVER would have figured it out on my own as I kept looking at that parts picture which is clearly wrong. Your bike in your gallery looks great by the way.

Hi all - I'm trying to refit the footrest hanger on the right hand side of the bike. I am stumped by the allen bolt at the lowest point on the footrest hanger. I kept all my parts for this piece together when I removed the hanger. It is an M6 x 12mm bolt indicated in the attached picture. I've checked the parts fiche and this is correct. The problem is that it is far too short to reach through the footrest hanger and into where it's supposed to thread. I also noticed that when I had the swingarm pivot nut loose, the footrest hanger on the left hand side was then loose with the equivalent bolt at the bottom of the hanger seemingly not holding it at all. This won't make any sense unless you've perhaps dismantled this yourself in the past and noticed this. Any ideas? I'll keep persevering because I must be missing something obvious or doing something stupid. Trouble is I'm really pushed for time so thought I'd post the question just in case anyone can help.

I had a valve clearance inspection plus oil change service done at 16k and it was 2 hours labour for the valve check +1 hour for oil change and checking head bearings (they’d replaced, but I’d reported issues). That said, I now do not have much confidence in the place that did it. I do at least know that they got the heads off as I have photos. 2 hours seems quite reasonable and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were quoted more. Price is not much use to you since this was in 2010.

I’d been thinking about trying one, but having read the doc linked below, I’m going to stick to my MotoBatt AGM lead acid. It’s not just the battery to think about but it’s place in a charging system not designed for Lithium-ion. You’ll find similar if you look at battery chargers; not all are suitable for Lithium-ion. The doc in the link is from UK based Electrex World who manufacture charge system components for bikes. Their guidance is in the context of their own reg/rects, but the points seem valid for any not “designed for” charging system. https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5ekhntoafnc693/Battery Types.pdf?dl=0

You need to be careful which LEDs you get. I tried this recently. The white LEDs changed the colour if all the warning lights. And not just slightly-completely different colours. Clearly the “white” actually contained a lot of blue. They were also very patchy so poor for dial illumination. I kept two blue ones behind the LCD which looked OK, went back to stock on the rest. May try others later. These are the ones I got. Avoid these... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/501-Led-Xenon-Super-White-High-Power-T10-W5w-194-Capless-Side-Light-Bulbs-12v-/132511877125?var=&hash=item64a0a2a2c8

This... I followed this recently and it worked. I had a vacuum bleeder, but found it of limited help. I also had an external one way valve (like a speed bleeder but external). This did seem to be very useful when flushing the new fluid through. Well worth grabbing one. Cheap and fairly readily available online. I syringed out old fluid from reservoirs and cleaned before starting. Then fill and follow the order in the thread/service manual (which is also available from this forum; so you DO have ;-)). I made a mistake in that when I moved the left front caliper, I didn’t put it back on the disc, so of course I had to push back the pistons. Good opportunity for a clean however.

Hi - in truth, I'm not sure. The last two oil changes were carried out by shops.

Thamks again for the tips. I think they will prove useful to others as well. I used the rubber handle of a hammer as a drift with my mallet and tapped on all the corners of the pan. Off it came. Actually very little of the mastic keeping it on. So what had happened is that the drain hole theads have definitely been damaged meaning that the bolt bound up as I undid it.that caused it to fail where it is hollow (above the magnet). The bit of bolt is still threaded in the hole and the magnet was in the pan (hence the oil pouring out). Pics show the hole with bit of bolt in place from inside the pan and the remnants of the bolt. Have to say I won’t risk magnetic bolt again unless perhaps there are some more solidly engineered variants out there. I’m taking it to a thread repair guy to see what he can do. Otherwise there’s a secondhand one I’ll buy. Good news is that headers look in reasonable shape. Just need to get the rear downpipes off so I can paint or whatever. Ceramic coating quoted about the same as Lextek stainless headers so need to weigh that up.

So headers are off. Anyone got any good methods of removing the oil pan since it's "glued" on with mastic? I'm doing taps with rubber mallet, but it's going to need some downward force. Thinking about leverage on the two tabs which stick out from the pan, but don't know how much abuse they can take. Service manual is silent on this.

Whoah - wait a second? If I pull the clutch cover can I reach the oil pan or is the oil pickup and other stuff going to be in teh way? If so, I could get the bit of drain bolt out without dropping the pan. Thanks Stuart

Well if accumulating problems doing simple jobs and then having to find solutions qualifies me, I’m your man! Or you may wish to find someone who gets it right from the start 🙂. I’m certainly learning a lot more about the bike than I expected at the moment. Happy to know things will be done right in the end even if it takes me ages. When I bled the brakes, I found that someone had applied copper anti seize rather than threadlock to the ALOC caliper mounting bolts....which was nice.

Good idea to drill the bigger hole and then fish out the other pieces (I didn’t have any luck with the existing M12 hole because I think the piece of bolt still has the magnet in it). Bigger issue for me is that drilling and tapping an M14 hole accurately with the pan in place is way beyond me. I could possibly get in a mobile thread repair service, but I’m not sure anyone would take that on and I’d also forever worry I’d left bits of bolt inside. So, it’s a bigger job, but once the exhaust is off, hopefully quite straightforward and I’ll know for sure everything is right afterwards. I may end up getting a thread repair, but I can take the pan somewhere (assuming I don’t buy a secondhand one). I was going to tackle the exhaust at some point anyway, so I’ll just see this as an opportunity :-).

Tell me about it! Mine was from Wemoto (I think), but seems to be the type commonly seen everywhere. It was installed 9 years and ~8k miles ago. Torque-wise? I torqued it correctly. I had a valve clearance check service done elsewhere a bit later so don't know whether it was over-torqued then. I did have other issues with the person who did the work (steering head bearings replaced and came loose!) so anything's possible. The Youtube video I found looked like a very similar bolt and failure. It did look like on that that it failed where the bolt is hollow. Until I get the other piece out I'm not sure. I don't know at this stage how the other part went inside the pan. I didn't spot any corrosion, but will need to have a closer look. Suggest spraying some penetrating oil on yours before next oil change as a precaution and take it steady - hopefully you won't have any issues. Leaving mine overnight soaked in Plusgas at the moment. I seem to have a little movement on the rear pipes connection to the collector so hopefully it will come off eventually. As well fixing the issue at hand, I need to think about what to do with the exhaust since it's coming off (and I won't want to be doing this again in a hurry!). Weighing up a DIY VHT paint job vs ceramic coating or stainless replacement. Big difference in cost obviously, but I'm intending to keep the bike so want something that I can hopefully forget about fro a long time (it will have a relatively easy life (no winter road salt etc) from here out).

Thanks. In the process of removing exhaust now. Stuck on the rear downpipe to collector joints. Waiting to see if release oil of any help. If anyone knows tricks to get those apart I'm all ears. Not much space to apply any leverage. Fingers crossed that the oil pan is not actually damaged - we'll see. There are a handful of sumps on ebay UK at the moment so as soon as I get this off I can figure out next steps.