Day 2 of a weekend free to concentrate on Gretel.
Turned out to be a beautiful sunny day, but the temperature struggled to get to 6 deg C. Despite a cold, frosty start, I heard the occasional roar of Sunday riders passing on the nearby main road out for a spin on dry roads...and I envied them!
My head stock had spent the night in the freezer, along with the outer bearing races, and was ready for assembly this morning. The bearings went into the oven for a gentle warming while I got myself ready for the challenge over a steaming hot coffee. I put two electric heaters in the garage to try and warm Gretel up too - might as well have not bothered - after nearly an hour, the garage temperature (and everything in it) remained stubbornly at 2 deg C. In fact, even once the outside temperature had warmed to nearly 6 deg C, the garage stayed at a chilly 2 degrees., despite having the door wide open.
Anyway, job on - remembered (at the last minute) to put the spacer cup on the shaft before dropping the nice warm bearing onto it. The bearing slipped on easily and a couple of gentle taps with a wooden mallet had it sitting square at the base of the shaft. Next, the bearing outer races went into the frame - ideally the frame would be much warmer (expanded) and the bearing parts much colder (contracted) to allow for easy assembly with the minimum of kinetic persuasion - however, even with just a 20 deg c difference, I had little difficulty in first getting the bottom race set in place and then the top one. Dai's top tip of a few posts back - i.e. keeping the old outer races to use as a drift - was an absolutely top tip. Cheers Dai! Naturally being exactly the right size and suitably hard, it was an absolute breeze to knock both new outer races firmly and squarely home into the bearing recess in the frame. The old race outers have now been consigned to the "special tool kit" for future use. I had watched the Chris Harris video on doing the head bearings - he did the job without removing the upper fairing. Since my fairing was all off anyway, I didn't need to be doing all the fiddling about and, for a job that only needs doing once in a very long time, I reckon that doing it with all the fairing removed is by far the easiest way of doing it. Either way, I now have lovely smooth steering again and no nasty notchy-ness to ignore!!
Next job on the list was to replace the fork seals and fork oil in the newly acquired forks. I don't know if the old seals were good or not, they looked OK, but while the forks were out, it seemed to make sense to put in new seals and have a known starting point. It didn't take me long to complete the job - but I had to cannibalise my old forks for the filling screw sealing crush washers - neither filling screw at the top of each of the "new" forks had a crush washer, which was odd as they both still contained oil. Might explain why they were both oily to the touch when I got them.
With the fork seals fitted and the forks filled with the prescribed amount of oil, back onto the bike they went. With the steering all back together, it was now immediately apparent that all was not well with the handlebars. I couldn't tell if the bars had been bent in the crash when everything was smashed and crooked, but with it all back together, it was obvious that the right hand handlebar was clearly bent out of alignment. Fortunately I still had my spare bars from the donor bike. Even so, this was not a job I had been planning on doing so it was a bit of a pain. So, off with the aftermarket heated grips, off with the left and right controls and off with the bars. Again, with the bike stripped down as she was, actually the job was less hassle than it would normally be, so it was the right time to be doing it.
The bent bars: Donor bars at top - Gretel's bent bar at bottom.
If shove had come to shove harder, I am quite sure that I could have bent the misshapen bars back to their proper shape, but as I have a spare...I'll use that for now. Unfortunately, there were a few minor rusty patches on the donor bars, so I've had to rub them down and treat them to a fresh coat of black paint. Once the paint dries, I will be able to proceed.
The final job of the day was to fit new brake pads to the front callipers. Taking advantage of the mobility of Gretel on her trolley, I wheeled her to the front of the garage, so I could give the callipers a good clean once the old pads were out - without flooding the garage! It also meant I was sitting out in the marginally warmer sunshine!!
I really need to do something about tarting up the engine block - but the main intention remains to repair the crash damage and get Gretel back on the road again, not strip her right down and make her gleam like a new bike. I may treat the engine block to a little paint in due course, but right now, it is too cold and I think the effort would be wasted as it would probably chip off easily again. Now, if I could get the engine into the house.....
So that was pretty much it for today - apart from a little more time spent in the spray tent putting a coat of paint on the handle bars and a final coat on the upper fairing mounting bracket. I'll let them fully dry and harden through the week and may get round to refitting them next weekend.
This evening, I will be trying to glue/GRP repair the broken centre console piece back together (the trim piece that supports the radio speakers on a LT). This flimsy bit of brittle plastic was quite badly broken in the crash and I have been looking on eBay for a replacement, but without any luck. There are a couple on eBay, but they are cracked and are generally in very poor condition for the price being asked! I don't have a radio fitted to either of my LT's (I prefer to have the extra storage space and rely on my blue tooth headset for my radio and MP3 entertainment), so the speakers are totally redundant. As I see it, the speakers are now just unnecessary weight, but I don't want to leave gaping holes either so I will probably remove the speakers and insert a blank in their place underneath the speaker grill. Similarly, whilst I don't need it, I will refit the aerial so I'm not left with a hole in the top fairing.
Onwards and upwards!