Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
In a big fat hurrah for me, my new ignition switch arrived last night. The reality of doing the work hit me, and I made a pilgrimmage up to my house to collect tools. (Brief history: on July 4th, I discovered some moron had tried to steal my Ninja 250 by jamming a screwdriver in the lock and twisting -- he failed, but left the lock unuseable.)
So, I went up and collected all the tools I thought I'd need. I knew I'd forget something, but I didn't know what.
I got the bike apart with surprising speed. The Kawasaki tech I'd talked to apparently didn't have much clue about how to do this -- he said I'd need to take apart most of the bike's front-end, which just wasn't true.
Then, I was presented with the problem: Kawasaki uses "security bolts" where the grippable part of the bolt's head breaks off. It makes them harder to remove, but not impossible. For instance, I removed mine by drilling the heads off. I didn't do it well, but that was my attempt.
It turns out that although I was able to drill off the heads of the bolts, I also drilled too far into the bolt shafts. When I got the switch off, I discovered that there was essentially no shaft sticking up, which pretty much nixed my clever idea of just unscrewing the shafts with vice-grips. sigh.
So, it was trip number 2 up to my house, to get the drill and the screw extractor. As I'm sure you can imagine, there were a few impolite words uttered as part of this whole process. I stopped by the hardware store to get a propane torch (something I've been vaguely wanting for a while), since the bolts were held in with red thread locker, which is a really effective glue. Heat softens it, and increases the chances of success when removing things that have been threadlocked in.
Fortunately, I already had a screw extractor, this clever little gizmo that you drill into the broken-off bolt, and it seats and expands while turning counter-clockwise, until the bolt comes right out. Well, that's the way it should work, but naturally it didn't.
Due to the thread locker, I managed to damage the screw extractor. Not enough to destroy it, but enough to reduce its effectiveness. I had, perhaps foolishly, decided to see if I could get the bolt out without heat (thinking I could return the torch if it wasn't necessary). That obviously wasn't happening, so I re-drilled the extractor's hole, and played the torch over the area for 20 seconds. This time, it came out, although still reluctantly. The second one went easier, since I'd figured out the process on the first one.
Then it was back to the apartment, to install the new ignition switch. Putting it all back together was actually very straightforward. The only hard part was remembering the order in which the fairing screws go into the gas tank -- there's a particular order, and I got it wrong 3 or 4 times. I finally pulled all the bolts out and "reset" myself, and got it done. For some reason, the fairing never quite matches up to the gas tank, which was true on both Ninja 250s I've had.
Anyway, I was done by 10:30, and had the cover back on the bike, and a stout steel cable running to a nearby railing. I suppose someone might still come along and mess up the new lock, but if they did, it'd have to be out of pure malice.
Posted at 11:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater