{"id":2881,"date":"2009-10-19T19:23:48","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T02:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2009-11-29T15:20:39","modified_gmt":"2009-11-29T22:20:39","slug":"motorcycle-maintenance-log-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=2881","title":{"rendered":"Motorcycle Maintenance Log, Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Read
Read on for the whole sad story . . .<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I bought a used motorcycle wheel chock at a friend’s garage sale on Friday.\u00a0 It’s the kind you can ride into, but I decided to wait until Donna could be in the garage with me before trying it, just in case.\u00a0 Saturday I rode the motorcycle to a car show<\/a>.\u00a0 When I got home, I thought “What the heck, I don’t need to bother Donna, I’ll just nose into the wheel chock a little to see how it feels.”\u00a0 When the front tire contacted the chock, though, the chock slid forward on the garage floor, so I put the sidestand down and parked the bike.\u00a0 Obviously I was going to need Donna after all.<\/p>\n

\"The
The wheel chock (photo from the manufacturer's website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later that night Donna saw a puddle of fluid under the motorcycle.\u00a0 When she told me, my first thought was, “That can’t be . . . it’s a Honda!”\u00a0 But I went out to look, and there was a puddle under my bike.\u00a0 I dipped my finger in it and smelled it.\u00a0 It wasn’t motor oil but it wasn’t coolant either.\u00a0 Hydraulic fluid?\u00a0 Then I noticed that one of the front disc brake calipers was shiny and wet.\u00a0 Brake fluid!<\/p>\n

You can imagine my reaction: “Oh my God, I broke my bike messing around with that wheel chock!\u00a0 I must have hit something and knocked a brake line loose.\u00a0 How could I have been so stupid?”<\/p>\n

Logically, looking at the wheel chock (and the manufacturer’s photo of a Goldwing just like mine sitting in an identical chock), it didn’t seem possible that merely trying to nose into the chock could have damaged a brake caliper, but when you do a thing for the first time and a bad thing immediately ensues, it’s natural to connect the dots.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t do anything about it Saturday night, and we were busy with the bicycle hash<\/a> all the next day, but Sunday night I called my Goldwing buddy Ed and made a wrenching date at his garage.\u00a0 Which was today, and oh by the way, Ed and I are still on the date<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"Left
Left fork rebuilt & installed, right fork out for maintenance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well, I can now feel better about myself, at least.\u00a0 The new thing (wheel chock) and the bad thing (puddle of fluid) had nothing to do with each other . . . it was just a coincidence.\u00a0 A seal on one of my forks had gone bad, and the fluid was fork oil.\u00a0 Ed had all the parts, so we removed, disassembled, rebuilt, and reinstalled both fork tubes.\u00a0 While we were at it we replaced my front disc pads.\u00a0 This is easily the most major wrenching I’ve done on my bike to date, or it would be if in fact Ed hadn’t done it all (I helped hold things in place, mostly, and mop up spilled oil).<\/p>\n

We called it a day late in the afternoon when we couldn’t get the front wheel and disc brake rotors to line up with the brake calipers.\u00a0 We were tired and frustrated by that point, and that’s when you tend to make mistakes, so Ed told me to take his bike (the black Wing in the photo) home and come back in the morning.\u00a0 The wheel should slide right in once we’re rested and refreshed.<\/p>\n

Update (later that evening):<\/em><\/span> Ed just called to say he figured out what was misaligned and has the front wheel back on the bike.\u00a0 I’ll ride Ed’s bike back in the morning (we live within three miles of each other), pick mine up, and order new parts to replace the ones Ed used today.\u00a0 Looks like I’ll be able to make the motorcycle hash<\/a> next Saturday!<\/p>\n

If you do your own maintenance but you’re not 100% confident with your wrenching skills, you need to find a wrenching buddy.\u00a0 Sorry, you can’t share mine . . . go find your own!\u00a0 Ed, I owe you many beers.<\/p>\n

Update (10\/20\/09):<\/em><\/span> No leaks, no drips, good brakes, stiff forks . . . all fixed!\u00a0 Ed, you’re the shit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought a used motorcycle wheel chock at a friend’s garage sale on Friday.\u00a0 It’s the kind you can ride into, but I decided to wait until Donna could be in the garage with me before trying it, just in case.\u00a0 Saturday I rode the motorcycle to a car show.\u00a0 When I got home, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}