Christmas'ing up the bike.

Trying for the festive touch this year with the SV as you can see. Still a few more things to do. So thanks to Lissa and Pete for tin part donations, and thanks to Jax for your help at the weekend.

Swapping a loom.

Not a job that I had been looking forward to this, but something I had to get done as the electrics on this bike where just getting worse and worse. Only the week before I went to get to work and found that the battery was dead as the bike wasn't getting enough charge due to the 'corroded' charging circuit. This was also affecting my lights and indicators with bulb's blowing, lights dimming, and everything flashing when I indicated.
So it had to be fixed, a big job, as all the plastics and tank need to come off to get everything out. As you can see by the first and second photos, which in reality took the longest amount of time.
I put the new loom in and got the bike going, but had a few small problem with he rad fan constantly going. Sorted this all out but then I think I shorted something, and in further discoveries today after not having the bike for a week I think I have found the problem. A dead signal generator, this with the help of Alternator control the timing of the spare to the spark plugs. So with out this I have not ignition.

Odometer of the beast

My SV I call Helga has finally made it, sixty six thousand six hundred and sixty six miles.

Whiney Clutch

On the way to work I noticed that my clutch basket whine was getting audible over my exhaust noise, which is rather impressive considering I have a un-baffled can at the moment (its on loan). I carried on to work but I was getting little worried, but so put it down to the low oil and purchased some more at lunch time. This was not the case as I could still hear the noise from the bike, and it was clearly coming from the basket.
So after much umming and erring I took the cover off, cap off again and had a look, noticing what looked like a grove in the cover on its inside. Time to take the cover off, to which I found the damage to the right, clear groves out of the plastic cover. Got job it is plastic to, else it could have been much worse.
Turns out that the problem is one of the clutch springs had worked is way loose and was in the process of rubbing my clutch cover away, so after a good tighten I got it back together again. Surprisingly enough the noise was gone!

Flipped bike Hidden damage

As you might have read I flipped my bike a little while ago. It's been said the bike 'Helga' got off rather lightly. Well it appears I found a little bit of hidden damage...

Shocking change...

Over the weekend I swapped my standard SV650 shock for a model from a Kawasaki ZX636, shock model B1H. Though the C1H, from the later models should also fit in a similar way.

Now as you are going to remove the shock you need to remove the load from it, so you will need to either suspend the bike in some way. Or in my case get a Abba Stand and hold the bike up via the swing arm pivot points.

First of all you have to take the rear wheel off, while not strictly necessary it makes the whole job much easier.
Once the back wheel was off and the brake loosen off I could get under back and start removing things that might get in my way, such as chain guard and 'krap' flap. Unfortunately for me my bolt sheered off leaving things in rather a mess

Once I was over that little disaster it was time to try to remove the suspension linkages, in this case a breaker bar and a decent spanner is you friend.

It gets bloody filthy down there, so while I had the shock out its a good opportunity to grease all the bearing. They needed it too as it was just a brown dirty mess down there.

Bike building

Over this last week I have be trying to rebuild my other SV, the one that was written off when a bloke dropped it on me off his recovery truck. Now the bike hasn't been on the road for 3 years, so this has been a ongoing job, but has had as much time as I could spare put towards it.
This week I put on the chain, greased up the swing arm and shock bushes, bled, rebuilt and serviced the front brakes, put on the choke cables (not a easy job), tidied up the electrics and have fabricated a custom undertray.
Tomorrow there is more to do, which is finish the undertray with a number plate and indicator hanger, then rebuild the rear brakes, twice as this needs doing on the other SV (Helga) too. Plus lots more after that.

Bike Crash!

Yesterday I was travelling up Battersea Park Road (joining Nine Elms Lane) when a car/van in front of a van I was following slowed, so as there was room I went to move round them. He pulled over to the left more so I thought he was going to pull over, but no. He pulled a U-turn in front of me, I grabbed a handfull, but way too much, the bike flipped over and threw me into the road head first and then it landed on my back. I had my Knox back protector on, but it still compressed my chest, so while I lay in the road shouting ARGH! and people who stopped looked disturbed he came over and said "I'm really sorry". A guy on a mopped turned the bike off and asked if I was OK. At which point a passing fire engine stopped, they blocked the traffic and called a ambulance. Told me not to move and just checked I could talk and stuff, to which I pointed out I could see the 'courier' van parked up so they went and got his details. Ambulance and Police then arrived and they put me on a spine board cus I'd been squashed. The police took statements off the driver, the scooter guy who was behind me and have got all the details (Pompy lass she was). The paramedics then cut off my fleece (Sob!), but not my Jacket (theew!), and then off to St Thomas we went.
At the A&E they were nice enough not to cut my gear off, and said that I all looked well but had to check me with some x-rays, which turned out fine. Basicly saying to me the reason I had no major injuries was because I had all the stuff on. Had some pain killers given to me for the bruising and told to rest up. Back home now and just taking it easy and looking at my stuff plus sorting the insurance, so keeping busy.

Bike Crash

A bit of bike time...

Well managed to get some time on the bike today, and just time on the bike, so thought I'd be try to figure out where the electrical problems I'd been getting had come from.
First something I made last week, my new rear brake leaver, nuts, bolts and some rubber tube, much better.



Argh who stole all my plastic and tank? The stuff you need to take off to get a look at the electrics.



Maybe this could be the source of some of my problems.



Thats the live feed too, so looks like I'm going to have to re-wire it now as it just fell apart when I tried to clean it up.

Kicked the Bike...

Yep that's right, I kicked my bike... Oh the anger inside of me at the time was great, but lets explain why. I had a few jobs to do on the bike, what with all the travelling I do I seem to always have things to do on the bike. These where, clean the brakes and swap the pads, change the clutch cable and worm drive, fix the broken rear brake leaver, swap the exhausts over, get the headed grips working, adjust the throttle cables.
So thought I'd get started on the most important job of them all, the brakes, as my pads where getting low and they where in need of a good clean. Looking at the black 'glue' that was on the pistons it was something I'd put off to long. Now the right hand caliper was easy enough, with it cleaning up well and the pads coming out, though the pin to hold them in was a little stiff. Not that it could be said the same for the left caliper, I tried everything, but the pin would not move. Freezing, whacking on smaller sockets on the pin head, mole grips, blind anger. Which is now the bike got kicked, mainly at the frustration at the fact that no matter what I do something turns out to be a bastard. In the end I drilled the back of the caliper and then smacked the pin from behind, but even then it took some serious force to get it out, I was working on this bit a good hour. When I did get the pin out I had to swap it with a pin from another bike as it was so screwed up.
After all that stress I got on with replacing the worm drive and clutch cable, which now feels lovely and light again. Then sorted out and repaired the rear brake pedal, which was drilling a hole, threading it and then placing a bolt through it so that I had something to press. I also wrapped some rubber and plastic round the bolt to make a nice leaver.
The other jobs have to wait till next time, maybe I'll find some time this week now that its lighter in the evening to get it done.

Oh and just to piss me off this morning, I stalled the bike, no biggy really. Apart from the fact that it wounldn't start, I had to push it down the road wait five minutes and pray it would fire up. It did, just, so I hope there was enough charge on the rest of the journey for it to start later. Its all very odd as me and Sarj checked the charging circuits the last time the bike was playing up and it all was correct as per the manual.

SV in the snow.

Snow in Portsmouth in April, what ever next.

Carb's and Choke

Well I finally got round to working on the bike and pulling the carbs off, that was after I gave Alex a hand with his bike and looked at this clutch. He has a Aprilia Caponard, which has a hydrolic clutch and judging by the colour of the fluid we took out it hadn't been serviced in rather a while. So just run some more fluid through the system until it ran clean and made sure that we got the expected resistance from the leaver. We did the rear brake as well as the front looked and felt just fine.

Then on to the carbs on the SV650, why I am I sorting them? Simple, bike it running so, rough almost like its being starved of fuel on the rear. Which when we last looked at it with the top off it look like it did as the rear jet seemed to be blowing out almost no fuel compared to the front. After taking them off my other SV in the back garden we found out the reason. Removing the carbs and then the carb choke cables showed the choke to the rear had rusted and snapped. Which rather explains the problem, choke did nothing and probably didn't help the rest off the running, including the noticed increase fuel cost.
No of this was a real problem compared to the weather, which was the most changeable I've ever seen... Kind of went like this. Work on bike, rain, go indoors. Work on bike, hail, go indoors. Work on bike, snow, go indoors. Work on bike freezing rain and wind, give up and go indoors. I never got the carbs back on due to the weather, so this will get done Monday.

9000 miles.

That's how many miles my Continental Road Attack did, and in the process the tyre now does what you can see on the left. Yes that's right stand up on its own. As the images demonstrate these tyres are a little square.
So as I haven't any spare cash due to it being a rather tight 3 months I have had to swap it with the wheel off my other SV. Which means it all looks rather odd now, as the dirty wheel is on the clean bike and the clean wheel on the dirty bike. Almost makes you want to clean it, note I say almost. lol.

Paneling

Well here you are a few pics from the weekend testing, still a bit unsure as I might need to trim the front below the lights, and air scoop a bit more to make the lines flow better.
The design is a mix of 2 things really, I was looking to do something different and I had this idea. Though I found out that a fellow forum member at www.sv650.org had beaten me to it, so got some advice off him. Then obtained some panels of someone off this forum for free, this was because they had been mashed up. Its taken me a long time to get it sorted as sometime I need rather allot of motivation to get going, though I have been busy with a lot of other things on this bike. The battery tray for example, I'm still not sure if I'm happy with its position as it obscures the nice shock rather a lot. But I'm sure this will come with more time.

Mixed weekend of maintenance

Well the sun was out for a little bit on Sunday so I got on with somethings that needed doing, namely maintenance on the bike. First was to try to find out why the new controller on the heated grips didn't work, now after lots of testing it looks as though one of the micro chips took a bashing in the post. So will have to send that back again, just hope to get this sorted before it gets cold.
Next was the clutch cable, which was replaced with a 'part worn' one I picked up for a few quid, nice and easy that one. Then put loctite on the thread for the foot pet bolt as it keeps trying to escape, then last cleaned the minging chain (paraffin) and bike up. Something PJ helped me with, as he was still minging himself from helping Jax do the same with her bike.

After all that it promptly rained, as is the tradition it seems once you have given your bike a good wash.

While PJ went down for his nap after a good bath I sorted the panels on the other bike and cut them to shape. Just need to clean up the edges and get them to match as much as possible ready for spraying and fitting, as you can see in the attached pic.

Mr Angry

I hate, hate, hate, bloody hate that bloody bike and stupid arse electrics. (the bike in the back garden I'm repairing) Now the stupid bloody spark plugs won't spark and in a moody angery I've gone and damaged the fuse box. After all that it still won't spark, and do I know why? Do I not, stupid feckin' thing, I start one thing and get it all sweet and something else comes along and screws up my day. Well I've given up now else I'll end up braking it some more.

Extending the fuse box.

As I have fitted the ZX 636 shock to my SV this has meant that I have had to move my battery up, due to this there is not much room for my fuse box. So in order to get it to fit under the rear seat rather then the front I've had to extend it, which as you can see is no quick task. So after I finished making my battery tray I got started with the wiring, with first cut of the current wiring being a bit scary but it was done. I know that all wire I have used is of mixed colour, but the most important thing is to ensure that a little bit of the existing wire as clear at each end. That way you can match the colours up and but sure not to mix any up.
A few of the wires where hard to join up as they had rusted and would not hold the solder, so I had to clean them up with a wire brush. Once this was done the wiring was heat shrink wrapped and prepped to wire back up to the fuse box, which I was also adding in the wiring for my new alarm.
As you can see by the final picture the whole lot was wrapped in electrical insulation tape, so it looks all nice and tidy now
All play has stopped now as it decided to start raining again, but next I need to finish off the alarm wiring and then test.
I have tested that bike fires up still so hopefully I have not screwed any of it up with a bad solder.

An SV rebuild

Well its going well, and the rebuild of the forks was easier then I first thought. Though silly me has realise that I put the seals in upsidedown so I'm going to have to strip them out again. Lesson learnt that one, don't see me making that mistake now.

An SV rebuild

Though I will say that the cleaning up of the exhaust went well, used some wire brushes on the drill and it was a couple of hours work. Its a million times better than the brown thing it was, though I think I will have to go at it again to get it the way really I want. It was making my wrist sore so I had to stop and the sound of the drill was driving me mental (probably the neighbours too).

I've put all the back-end on and ripped my old acumen alarm/immobiliser out, which on testing still worked. The movement sensor is stuffed, so it could be used on Helga just need to note down where the wiring is for later.

in with it to help clean the engine/ Did have some problems getting her to start at first which took most of yesterday to figure out. In the end wiring the starter relay and ignition to Helga for testing seems to have worked out what ever it was. She didn't fire up on the first push of the button, more like the 10th. Then she has been stood for 2 years and I have changed the oil plus replace the fuel, sticking some Redex in with it to help clean the engine/carbs out.

Now she has been fired up, and seems to run just lovely. Need to adjust the idle for the tick over when the engine has warmed up.

Next is tidy up the electrics, wire in the new horn and 12v socket, then sort out the rear end plastics and work on home made undertray.

Busy Day...

That it has, been working on both bikes today... Even cleaned Helga's chain and sprockets, completely forgot that it was gold. Looks ten million times better now, though it may need a run and then another light clean as there was a lot of dirt and crud ingrained into the chain.
Then after that I pulled Anastasia apart, stripping down the front end ready for the forks to be serviced and to change one of the front disc's. Then I put the Renthal handle bars on to see how they fit and what cables I'm going to need to change/extend, so not a bad day.

Working on the SV

As some of you may have notice I've spent rather lot of time working on me bike, from which I have learn't a few important things that had never occured to me.

1. Getting a bike through the house into the back garden is not a one person job.
2. You never have the tools you need to do the jobs you want, many trips to the shop will stop play.
3. Sometimes you'll even have to manufacture your own, namely a 5 quid 27mm socket cut down to fit a castle nut.
4. The job is never easy as you would hope.
5. After 4 years riding and 2 years layed up, lots of bolts will need to be cut off and replaced.
6. A big hammer is your friend, but two are a god send.

So here's a few pic's for your enjoyment.
First up the step and in to the house with the help of the yellow pages (to help bump the bike up the front step), and into the dinning room.
Then Jax helped me into the kitchen and down our huge rear step into the garden.
After which a few days destruction ensued, and we now have the bike in this state.