My Ramblings

Okay, I've been to halfords and bought a small bottle of brake fluid, so now I can get the pistons out of the front caliper, and start cleaning them up. first thing is to fill up the fluid resevoir and bleed the new fluid through. as the front has two calipers, bleeding the new fluid through is being a pan, so i had a brainwave! attach the front caliper to the rear system, as that is a lot less brake hose and no second caliper to make things harder. of course bleeding the brakes with the caliper off the bike is not something i would recommend. I had one hand holding the caliper still so that i could turn the spanner on the bleed nipple. my other hand was on the spanner to loosen and tighten the bleed nipple, which left my foot to press on the the brake pedal whilst trying to synchronise all three limbs. okay, this isn't working, so I've ordered a brake bleed helper (which will make the final refit easier) and i'll try again when that arrives. while I'm

So, I thought loosening bolts ready to take things off would be a good idea? Right, So now i look down and realise that I've loosened the front brake caliper bolts a little too much and I'm standing in a small pool of brake fluid. bugger. is there enough left to push the pistons out? guess i'll find out soon enough. so i take the right hand caliper off the bike, remove the pad pin r-clip and pad pin. the pad come out and i press the brake lever. yes the pistons are moving out. now i know what your thinking, but no I didn't just push them all the way out. i put a small piece of wood in to keep the pistons in and moved onto the left hand caliper. same thing here, remove the pad pin r-clip, pad pin and pads. then pump the lever. oh fiddlesticks, not enough fluid left to move these pistons at all. great, not i have to get some brake fluid, fill it a bit just to get the pistons out. I don't want to use any other fluid as it might contaminate the brake system, and I

So what can I do whilst I wait for the polish to arrive? I know I thought, why don't I loosen all of the bolts on things that i'm going to be removing? that way I know what's loose and what's seized. So round the right side of the bike I go, and loosen the fork head bolts, the front brake reservoir screws, oh here we go, the screws for the reservoir are gonnas. as soon as I tried turning the screwdriver, it turned and the screw didn't. scratch one screw head. okay, dremel out and cut a groove (without going into the surround too much). okay slot created. flat screwdriver inserted and turned. yep you guessed it, the head gave way again and I'm left to drill a small hole for my screw extractor (which I had never successfully used before, but finally my luck is beginning to hold). the screw extractor worked and the reservoir cap is finally free. Think that's it for this time. Not much but still moving forward.

with the rear caliper removed I got it on the bench and worked out how to remove the brake pad pin, there is an r clip on the inside edge to stop it falling out. so after removing what was left of the r clip (I didn't see it at first as it was covered in goop and the pin has a hex head which made me think it was screwed in, so I turned it and turned it, and then noticed a bit of metal sticking out, which made me look a little closer and then I spotted the pin), the pad pin came out easily then, and I took the brake pads out. this was when I remembered that I was supposed to get the piston out using the hydraulics, which doesn't happen after you've disconnected them (strangely enough). I got lucky though and the banjo bolt was placed directly in the middle back of the piston, so I removed the banjo bolt, found a hex key of just the right size to fit the hole, and gently tapped the piston out. the piston came out and was very shiny. except for the end which had about 3 mm

I have found a writing competition that is open to anyone [ http://seat14c.com/ ] I thought that I would share my first couple of paragraphs with everyone, so here goes: ==================== I was dozing when we went through the turbulence, I've been through a lot worse before. I hardly notice it any more. it's just part of air travel. I did wake up though, so I asked for a cup of tea and went back to reading my book. This was the last leg of my round the world trip. I had started in London, traveled around europe, then on to asia and australia. Now I'm off to travel across America for a few weeks, then back home and back to my final year of college. it was night as we approached our destination. I was surprised that I couldn't see many lights on the ground. It was a little after that that the captain announced that he had been told to descend quickly and warned us make sure we were seated and had our seat belts on. While the flight attendants were  walking th

So now the engine has started, and sounds fine, it's time to look at what else needs to be done to get the bike back on the road. With a working engine, it's now worth spending some time and a little money fixing it. Really I want to do as little as possible to get the bike safe to ride and through the MOT. so I will have a look at what the MOT checks are and make sure that it will pass all of those and check the brakes and suspension to make sure it's all safe. okay,  maybe i want didn't want to look too closely. guess I need to make a (long) list of the things to do and not think about the entire job. okay, here is the simplest list I think I can get away with: all of the brake calipers need a complete strip and refurbish. the fork stanchions are really badly pitted, so need to be sorted and new fork oil seals and oil. the chain has rusted into its current shape, so i'm thinking that it will need replacing along with the sprockets. that's the