1 What a pig of a job!! Sun Oct 17, 2010 8:00 pm
Yamaha
active member
I've just recently aquired a 1996 K75RT Ultima.
The previous owner had not ridden it a lot, due to work commitments - but neitheer had he cleaned it much, either!!
So into my workshop it went to try to inprove it's appearence - and to do a service, including spline lube.
The guy was actually very nice - and offered to actually deliver the bike to me, as he was coming down to my neck of the woods for a "final ride" on it!!
Unfortunately he chose a day when the heavens opened, and there were storms and generally bad weather forecast. The forcast was right for a change!!
Anyway - the upshot of all this riding in the rain was that the neutral light and gear indicator had started playing up - neutral light on with every other gear selected - and gear indicator only showing 0 or 1 in any gear - a classic sign of water in the switch, which you will know is tucked in behind the swing arm - well out of reach. He was very genuine about it - and we agreed a new price to reflect this fault - and he even insisted on paying his own trainfare home!!
So - off came the final drive and drive shaft - not a bad job at all, really. However, I was a little leary about removing the swing arm - but by this time the bike was no longer rideable - so I decided to give it a whirl. Piece of cake job, actually - and at least it gave me a chance to clean all around the transmission, and spray the complete final drive unit before putting it all back again. This now looked like a million dollars compared to when I got the bike - and I decided it showed up the pitted front forks and calipers, so I decided to rejuvinate them also. Obviously, to do the job half decent required the front split mudguard to come off - and thus the nightmare began!!
I assume nobody had removed the mudguard since the bike was new - only 26,000 miles and 14 years ago - but it would not budge. Every single bolt was seized!! The is a long bolt on the top which connects the two halves together - accessed by a little fold-down plastic flap on the fork brace. Brilliant - but if you were designing this arrangement, would you put the bolt head in the dry behind this plastic cover - and the nut UNDER the mudguard to catch all the crud from the elements? No - neither would I - but somebody decided that was how it should be - no way would that nut undo - I had to resort to cutting through the fork brace and bolt to be able to part the mudguards!! Lickily I had managed to source a nearly perfect s/h brace on fleabay, as the top of mine had started to corrode, and looked a mess - so I was intending to dump the old one anyway.
OK - the mudguards were now able to be removed - BUT - there are two bolts that go through each fork leg that hold the lugs of the front mudguard that were manky, and I wanted to replace with stainless - once again, no way would they move - turning - hammering -heating - they wouldn't budge!!
You could see that they had been assembled dry - and the years of wet weather had badly corroded them into their drilled spigots on each fork leg.
So - in for a penny, in for a pound, I reached for my electric drill - and carefully drilled them out!! One hole started to go off-centre a bit - but the heat from the drill has started to loosen them, so I was able to punch them out without really damaging a fork leg!! What a nightmare of a job - sufficient to say, the new bolts went in covered in anti-sieze paste - and that long top bolt now has the nut safely behind the little plastic cover, out of the elements!!
Mike
The previous owner had not ridden it a lot, due to work commitments - but neitheer had he cleaned it much, either!!
So into my workshop it went to try to inprove it's appearence - and to do a service, including spline lube.
The guy was actually very nice - and offered to actually deliver the bike to me, as he was coming down to my neck of the woods for a "final ride" on it!!
Unfortunately he chose a day when the heavens opened, and there were storms and generally bad weather forecast. The forcast was right for a change!!
Anyway - the upshot of all this riding in the rain was that the neutral light and gear indicator had started playing up - neutral light on with every other gear selected - and gear indicator only showing 0 or 1 in any gear - a classic sign of water in the switch, which you will know is tucked in behind the swing arm - well out of reach. He was very genuine about it - and we agreed a new price to reflect this fault - and he even insisted on paying his own trainfare home!!
So - off came the final drive and drive shaft - not a bad job at all, really. However, I was a little leary about removing the swing arm - but by this time the bike was no longer rideable - so I decided to give it a whirl. Piece of cake job, actually - and at least it gave me a chance to clean all around the transmission, and spray the complete final drive unit before putting it all back again. This now looked like a million dollars compared to when I got the bike - and I decided it showed up the pitted front forks and calipers, so I decided to rejuvinate them also. Obviously, to do the job half decent required the front split mudguard to come off - and thus the nightmare began!!
I assume nobody had removed the mudguard since the bike was new - only 26,000 miles and 14 years ago - but it would not budge. Every single bolt was seized!! The is a long bolt on the top which connects the two halves together - accessed by a little fold-down plastic flap on the fork brace. Brilliant - but if you were designing this arrangement, would you put the bolt head in the dry behind this plastic cover - and the nut UNDER the mudguard to catch all the crud from the elements? No - neither would I - but somebody decided that was how it should be - no way would that nut undo - I had to resort to cutting through the fork brace and bolt to be able to part the mudguards!! Lickily I had managed to source a nearly perfect s/h brace on fleabay, as the top of mine had started to corrode, and looked a mess - so I was intending to dump the old one anyway.
OK - the mudguards were now able to be removed - BUT - there are two bolts that go through each fork leg that hold the lugs of the front mudguard that were manky, and I wanted to replace with stainless - once again, no way would they move - turning - hammering -heating - they wouldn't budge!!
You could see that they had been assembled dry - and the years of wet weather had badly corroded them into their drilled spigots on each fork leg.
So - in for a penny, in for a pound, I reached for my electric drill - and carefully drilled them out!! One hole started to go off-centre a bit - but the heat from the drill has started to loosen them, so I was able to punch them out without really damaging a fork leg!! What a nightmare of a job - sufficient to say, the new bolts went in covered in anti-sieze paste - and that long top bolt now has the nut safely behind the little plastic cover, out of the elements!!
Mike