Tag: Motorcycle maintenance

Steve Johnson of f650.com scheduled at tech day at his home. Four other riders showed up and I was one of them. Steve graciously allowed me to stay at his home and suggested I get there the day before so my engine would be cool for checking valves the next morning.

I had great weather for the ride down and arrived at Steve’s around 4:30. Another F650 owner, Michael ???? was there to leave his motorcycle overnight since he also needed to check his valves.

We were outside starting to disassemble the motorcycles by 8:00 the next morning. The F650 valves are a pain because of all you have to remove just to get too them. So much has to be taken off that I was a little nervous since I need to ride the thing home the next morning. All the plastic, the oil reservoir, snorkel, air filter, air box came off. This exposed the fuel injector so I stuffed a clean rag into the hold to keep dirt out while I worked. Then the  battery and battery compartment were removed. The coolant reservoir also needed to by pulled out. That got me down close to the top engine cover so after a bracket and the throttle cable came off I could start removing bolts on the cover.

In the process of doing this the oil reservoir, which was hanging to the side, broke loose because the hose was attached to a flimsy outlet molded into the top of the engine cover. The flimsy outlet snapped off. Groan…

Since I was down this far I removed the coils from the spark plugs and installed new iridium spark plugs.

The cover came off, the valve clearances were within spec, so everything had to go back together.

The guys had a great fix for the snapped off outlet and everyone pitched in on this repair. Steve had an old road bicycle tire inner tube with the small tire valve. I removed that from the inner tube and cleaned the rubber off the end so it wouldn’t melt off inside the engine. Michael helped with the cleaning. Mark ran to a bicycle store to get the nuts that screw on the valve. Michael drilled the hole in the engine cover just a little larger, installed the valve, sealed it with black silicone, screwed a couple of the nuts on from the outside, and then cut the valve down to a decent size. The hose was reattached with a clamp and the cover was good to go. I still need to be careful to not let the weight of the oil reservoir hang from the valve since there is not nut holding the valve on the inside and it could be pulled out.

Even the AGM battery went in without too much trouble. I replace the coolant reservoir, oil reservoir, snorkel, airbox, and air filter, but left the plastic off to work on the steering head bearings.

It took Michael and I four hours to do our valves — because of what we figured out Mark and Steve were able to do theirs in about an hour.

While I was working on valve clearances Sergio had started on his steering head bearings and figured out a lot of things. Michael had me put the races for the bearings in the freezer so they would shrink and go in more easily.

The front nose fender came off. The brakes and ABS sensor came off. The front tire was removed and then the clamps for the forks were loosened and removed. The horn had to come off since it’s attached to the bottom bracket on the steering head.

Now I moved to the top side — the handle bars had to be removed and tied out of the way. This exposed the top of the steering head. Michael was able to grab the collar with a large channel locks and remove the top. Once the assembly was out the top race had to be forced out and both bearing removed. Between tools that Sergio and Steve had devised and physical assistance from everyone (I am NOT good with a hammer) all of this was accomplished in a very short time.

The frozen races went in much easier than they had for Sergio. The steering head went back together and into the motorcycle fairly easily. Horn, forks, wheel, brakes, sensor all went back on.

I was just starting to clean up tools and found a part we had forgotten — the plastic bracket on the bottom of the steering head. Fortunately the only thing that had to be removed was the nose fender and the bracket when back in.

I replaced the plastic and started the engine. It ran great.

Wow — what a day. Two major projects — the valves and steering head bearings. And two smaller things — new spark plugs and Steve tightened my chain a little before we were done.

An absolutely great group of guys — very nice people and so much fun all day. And I got to learn so much about my motorcycle and ask so many questions. It was a great weekend.

While Steve, Michael, and I were talking at the end of the day a group of deer wandered down through the yards across the street. It was a nice little surprise at the end of the long day. I don’t have deer wandering around my yard.

It started just as I was leaving Big Bend to head back to Dallas in December — I started the engine and you could smell antifreeze from a slow drip coming out of the weep hole under the engine and dripping on the hot exhaust pipe.

I went back in the room and did a little research on f650.com and found out it’s an indicator of a failing water pump. Unsure I would make it back to Dallas I checked in with Paul Glaves and he told me to stop by on my way north to Alpine. The dripping had stopped and he said I had plenty of antifreeze so I should be fine to get back home. I ran into ice and snow on the way home, but the water pump did fine.

Due to the lovely winter in Dallas I wasn’t doing a whole lot of riding, but when I’d start the motorcycle to run it the drip would start again. Since I have solo trips planned I want it changed before them. I did more research and it was suggested that you should be able to insert a probe into the weep hole to about 38mm if everything is okay and hit the metal impeller shaft. If things are deteriorating you will hit rubber at about 30mm. I hit rubber at 29mm.

I talked again with Steve Johnson of f650.com — he thought I could make it down to the tech day in San Antonio, but I have so many other things to do that I wanted the water pump changed before going.

I asked Joel Watson and Randy Simoneau if they would help me since I had never gone into the engine before – whew, what a job.

The oil and coolant both have to be drained before. The “water pump cover” only exposed the impeller and the left engine cover has to be removed. The oil return line to the top oil reservoir is a hard metal pipe that will not allow the cover to be removed. BMW mechanics may know how to get to the screw holding the top bracket for this pipe, but we couldn’t see any way to get to it and ended up taking a hack saw and cutting the pipe.

I was quickly proved to be a needed repair when the impeller and shaft were finally removed. The were deep grooves worn into the shaft from the deteriorating seals.

In the meantime Joel had taken the new parts from me and put the new seals on a tool on the work table. When Randy and I went to install the new seals one of them was missing in action. I mean totally missing. Over an hour of searching — Randy and I full time and Joel and Ralph Swartz pitching in part time. We looked behind everything, under everything, crawled all over the garage floor. We figured a round, hard rubber seal could bounce and roll about anywhere. We even looked outside since the garage door had been open. It appeared the thing had grown legs and gone for a walk.

For the fourth or fifth time I decided to check the work table. I lifted up a magnetized bowl for holding screws to look under it and lo and behold the missing seal was attached to the bottom of the bowl. The seals have a metal spring ring embedded in them that was enough to hold to the magnet. It’s actually kind of funny in retrospect. It was NOT funny at the time.

Got the new impeller, shaft and seals in. Replaced the engine cover. Spliced the cut oil return pipe with a section of hose. Reassembled all the plastic and I was good to. It only took five hours. Okay, four hours if you don’t count the hour long hunt for a sneaky seal.

Important point to this repair. Steve Johnson said the reason the seal goes out around 40k is that the BMW coolant breaks down and become gritty and wears out the seals. This was accidentally confirmed for me when I was talking to another F650GS owner and she mentioned her husband changed her coolant and it was almost like there was sand in it. Steve Johnson says to use only Honda coolant in the blue bottle and with that coolant the new seals should last 80k. I think I can maybe face doing this project again at 120,000k…

A big thank you to Joel and Randy — they were a blast to work and spend the day with. And might I add not one swear word the entire day. Joel at one point called my motorcycle a pig to which I took great offense. His response “They’re all pigs — okay, yours is a piglet.” I can live with that.

I contacted Steve Johnson with the Chaingang (f650.com) since I’m desperately in need of a tech day. So happens one is scheduled in mid-March where we’re going to look at how to replace steering head bearings, do valve settings, and several other things. If time allows the group may do a ride to Luckenbach.

Steve is located in San Antonio so it will be an opportunity to make a ride down through south Texas. I just need to learn some serious maintenance items before leaving on any long trips. Very happy this is scheduled — it’s great timing.

I have had a lot of battery problems with my motorcycle. The hose came off the battery and dripped acid down the right side of the engine, ate through the coil covers and resulted in a new battery, coils, and spark plugs — under warranty. The service folks didn’t put a clamp on the hose to keep it on the battery and more acid spilled all over the battery compartment.

One of the caps came off a year old battery and the cell went dry. The motorcycle has had 3 wet batteries in 3 years.

Yesterday I went out to get on the bike to meet a friend for a ride and the battery was completely dead and wouldn’t even jump start — my fault since I’d left my GPS turned on. But  I officially gave up on wet batteries and researched how to get a AGM battery into it.

I love the forums where people say “no big deal — a 30 minute job.” Four hours later I was just putting the tools away. NOT a 30 minute job to remove all the plastic, the snorkel, the air filter, the battery, and the battery compartment. Nor a 30 minute job to figure out how to bend the metal on the battery compartment to accommodate a slightly larger battery.

The AGM is great and I’m glad I made the change. I bought the battery from a local Deka dealer and got it at a great price. They said it should be good for five years.

TEXAS INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT
1724 TRINITY VALLEY DRIVE
CARROLLTON, TX 75006
PAT MONTOUX/ JIMMY HILTON
Phone : 972-488-9600
Email : jimmy@batterypowered.com/pat@batterypowered.com

Both bikes had minor issues getting to Canada.

JF’s R1200 started hesitating and after research on Adventure Rider he changed out the spark plugs. The back 2 screws on the skid plate sheered off somewhere along the the Blue Ridge Parkway and had to be secured with wire.

The F650 stopped going into neutral with the kickstand down and the neutral light would never come on.

The BMW dealer in Sherbrooke worked both of our motorcycles into their service schedule and had them back to us in a day. Both motorcycles are now running great.

I had changed the oil right before leaving, but they said the oil was black so they changed it and the motorcycle now goes into neutral easily. Not sure why the oil would be black in 2400 miles, but they thought it may have happened  when we were stuck in the holiday traffic for such a long time on the 4th. It was almost 90 degrees that day and both motorcycles got very hot.  The neutral light was burned out, so they replaced it.

The sparkplugs did solve the problem, but needed to be tightened more.  Jean-Francois didn’t have a torque wrench and had been hesitant to over-tighten them. They tightened to correct spec and the motorcycle again accelerates smoothly.

Jamie, the mechanic at Evasion BWM in Sherbrooke, wants an update on how JF’s front tire does. He said all R1200’s in this area with the stock suspension have an issue here with the front tire cupping and he noticed JF’s tire wear was even. He’s been trying to convince people to try after market suspension, so we are going to call him and let him know how the tire does with the newly rebuilt Ohlin shock.

We’re talking about figuring out where we may need tires since they will most likely need to be ordered and we should do this in advance and have them waiting for us somewhere along the way. Trying to figure out where we’ll be around the 10,000 mile mark.