I'm a terrible mechanic and I don't even know it. | S1E66

So we're going to check the valve clearances. Oh, that one still fits too. Yeah. That one doesn't go through. Okay, good. We're good. Hey editor, Eric here. As it turns out, we were not good. My journey begins at North America's most Northern drivable point. The plan is to ride through Canada and America before crossing over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way across Asia and down to Australia. New Zealand's Southern most drivable point will mark the end of my journey. I'm calling it the big spiral and this is act three across North America. Good morning from Bathurst in New Brunswick. As you can see, I'm in a garage. I'm at my friend Andre's house and I've got my bike behind me. I've ordered a whole bunch of stuff to kind of, well, the bike needs a little bit of love. So yeah. So in today's video, we're gonna kind of give the bike a little bit of a, not a makeover, but just a tune up, I would say. So yeah. So maybe we'll get started. So the first thing we're gonna do is work on the whole kind of drive train. So this chain, that's the slack. It was tight yesterday. That's how much slack it had after about 500 kilometers of riding. And yeah, it's not good. And the other thing is, is the chain has already been replaced once, but these sprockets are still original. So I need to replace those. So we're gonna replace the chain and both sprockets, front and rear. Nice. Perfect. Easy peasy. So this is the original, obviously. You can see how kind of sharp each of these teeth are. And then if you look at this one, much more rounded. The rear one isn't as bad. So that's the new one there. And then that's the original. Well, maybe it's not great either. All right, I figure since the wheel is off the bike and I do have a tire to put on it as well, I should probably just clean it and make my life a little easier and cleaner. All right, so now we can put the new chain ring on. It's a perfect fit, which I'm quite happy about. I'm gonna Loctite these with blue Loctite. This prevents the bolts from backing out. Don't want to strip it. All right, it is on. All right, so before we put the wheel back on the bike, I've got a new tire to put on. And well, it's not my favorite job, but I've done it a few times out in the trail and it'll be much nicer to do it in a garage. So, all right, let's put the tire on. Shhh. Whoa. Okay. All right, time to put the new one on, I guess. So it's the Dunlop 606 again. I've been pretty happy with it, actually. There's still a little bit of life in the old one, but I just want to put a new one on before I go across the pond. But anyways, I'm just gonna pop this on. Easy. Just lube up the edge because it'll make it slide over the rim easier. Oh yeah. So this is the bit I have to be careful with. It's the part where you can easily pinch a tube when you put this tool in. So, slipping right on now, to be honest. Oops. Okay. Come on. One more bite. Oh yeah. Now I just hope I didn't pinch the tube. It seems like it should be... Oh, there it goes. Oh God, I was so worried. All right, 40 PSI. Now we can get back to the sprocket chain. I never said I was an expert. But every time I do it, I get probably a little better, I hope. Okay, time to put that sprocket on. All right, so I got a sealed chain, 108 link. But anyways, I'm just gonna put it on the bike, wrap it around the sprocket, and then just remove the links that need to be removed. All right, so you can see there's that much overlap. So I think that's right, 108 link chain, and stock is 106. So if I just remove these two, it should be good to go. So a chain is made up of these end plates and pins, and the pins kind of keep everything held together. So to shorten a chain, you actually have to push through one of these pins. And I have a special tool for that. So basically this tool has a thing here that's gonna push through the pins. It requires a bit of force, but it should be good. It's not going as easy as I thought. Oh, I missed it. Yeah, you can see it was pushing there and not actually to the pin. All right, I made a bit of a mistake with my chain break. The pin wasn't exactly on the right spot on the chain, and I started cranking on reefing on it, because you really have to reef on it to push the pin through. Well, I reefed on it too hard, and I erected the threads on my chain break. So, well, the chain break's garbage now, but we have another solution. We're gonna grind the end of the pins off, and we should be able to push the pin through once the end of the pin is off. So hopefully. Oh, there it goes. There it is. Sweet. All right, successfully got the pin out. Now I have to connect the chain back together. Okay. All right, so with a bit of movie magic, we got the master link on. I had to compress it a fair bit to get that clip on. But now I'm going to torque up the sprocket, the front sprocket. It's about 80 foot pounds. Okay. Good. I didn't miss it yet. Thank you very much. No problem. All right, so the next change I wanna make is this windshield. I think this is from another model, Kawasaki. This windshield is basically the one that came with the kit. It's fine, but it's not been, it's been getting less and less clear as I clean it. And I was thinking, well, I'm gonna try like a higher end windshield because it's really important that you can see through the windshield while riding. And so that's why I'm gonna try the factory one. And hopefully it stays more clear as it ages. Take the opportunity to clean under the windshield while I can. All right. I'm quite happy with this. It actually looks like really, well, it's new, so it's clear. But there's also like a bit of a lip here that mine didn't have. And I think that's gonna help a bit with wind on the highway just to get it to go over my head a bit more. Looking forward to see how this is, but I think this is a good upgrade. So the next task is front tire. I just, I need a new front tire. It's actually, I should show you, it's the original one wears really oddly. So you can see there's a high knob here, but then down here, they're just so flat. And I don't know why that is. It's so odd. But yeah, this tire did not hold up nearly as well on the highway than the back tire did. But anyways, let's take the wheel off and put a new tire on. Another one, fun. Okay, so the next bit of work I need to do is, for one, I need to do a valve check. Two, I need to troubleshoot this fan to see what's going on, because it's not been working. And three, I need to replace the clutch cable. So to do all these jobs, especially the first one, I need to take the gas tanks off. So let's do it. All right, so Andre's come to help me take the gas tanks off. Awesome. Yeah? Give that a try. All right, hopefully I don't spill too much gas. Do not piss. All right. Oh, well, that's not great. There's some bolts that were here that aren't here anymore. Well, I made it all the way here from Colorado like that, so it should be all right. Yeah. All right, so I got that off. And then I need, I don't know what size that is. There's also these ones on the radiator. Here's an eight mil if you want it. Oh, I have to take the seat off too. There's a bolt under the seat as well. So the last one is right up here. This quick connector is not so quick. Come on. Yeah, look at this, this thing. I have to try to glue that back on. So we got the fan off and we just want to check to see if it actually works. So we're just going to connect it to the battery. So this thing runs in 12 volts and the battery is 12 volts. So we just go to this side. We can just pull this cover off and we have access to the battery. Yeah. And so I can just hold the positive and you hold it to the negative. Oh yeah, it's working. It's working good. So there's another problem then. Yeah. So the fan is not the problem. I don't know how to troubleshoot it now because the bike has to be hot enough for the fan to turn on. And it's clearly not the case. Yeah. So could there be some, a fuse relay somewhere in between? Yeah, so I checked the fuses already and it was not broken. I even swapped it out. So the only thing I can think of is some wire is shorted or maybe they have heated somewhere on the engine Yeah, maybe. So this is the connector for the fan and it goes straight into the harness. And I can't imagine there's any damage to the harness, but I guess the other option is I can hardwire it. So there's a switch on the bars. So I just turn it on when it needs it, but we'll keep it off for now. And then we'll just do either the clutch cable or the valve check. Sounds good. Yeah. Okay. Let's try that. All right. So we've got the gas tanks off. We've cleaned out the top of the valve cover. So now we have to put the engine at top dead center. So basically that means the piston is all the way at the top. So to do that, we have to take this little, Oh, that was easy. I thought that was going to be really on there. Oh God. All right. So we just turned the crank and in here, you can see that it says T, which stands for top dead center. So now we can get in here and take the valve cover off. It looks like it's four bolts. Oh, it's coming off. Okay, good. So we're going to check the valve clearances. So basically that's the distance between the top of the valve cap and the camshaft. And basically it's a very small distance. So my normal range is between 0.02 millimeters and 0.06. And so I use basically these little pieces of metal and they all have different thicknesses. For example, this one is 0.05. It's snug, I think, right? Yeah, it should fit snug. So we'll see. It does go in, but it's fitting snug. So I might try a smaller one. And then this one is, that one goes all the way through. Okay, and then there's two more cams on this side. Oh yeah, here. Okay, that one fits through pretty easy actually. So the upper limit is 0.15. I don't have to do any adjustments until I go out of that upper limit. Maybe we should do 0.08 and then we'll have an idea of how much. Oh, that one still fits too. Oh, geez. It feels a lot tighter, huh? Yeah, I can feel it kind of chunking around. And this one, that one fits too. Geez, what's going on? I don't want to adjust it. I don't want to change these. That one fits as well. Geez, are we doing this right? In the elevator. Yeah, that one fits as well. So then I had one that was 0.15 in here. So if it's over this one, then we need to put in new caps, which we're not going to do here. No. Okay, I hope it doesn't go through. All right, here we go. Okay, it's not going through. All right, that one's not going through. That one doesn't go through. Okay, good. So we're good. That's a positive sign. Hey, Editor Eric here. As it turns out, we were not good. As you may have gathered, I was reading the wrong line in the manual. I was reading the wrong clearances. And now that I'm watching it back and watching myself using the feeler gauges, actually the exhaust valves are too tight and possibly the intake valves. So basically I thought the bike was okay, but it was not. Anyways, back to the video. Thank God, I don't want to take this apart again. I think next time I do this, I'm just going to get a shop to do it. Cause I'm just like, it's been, what are we at? Like 12 hours now? Something like that? Definitely, definitely. Long day. So now that we've done that, we have one thing left to do before we put it all back together. So I want to replace the clutch cable. And that's because when I modified the bike, I put these bar risers on and it actually raised the bars up and it put tension on the clutch cable. That's the cable for the clutch. And if I turn the bars, it's actually pulling on the clutch a little bit. We're going to fix that now. I got a slightly longer clutch cable and all I have to do is remove this one and put the new one on. Oh, that's way better. All right, good. So it looks like we have to thread it through this way. All right, tell me when you're going to push. One, two, three. Oh yeah, it's in. Wow, that was a long day of working on the bike. I should have woken up earlier this morning, but I am super happy that I got all this stuff done. I should have checked the valves 8,000 kilometers ago or more, but I'm being taught a bad lesson because I checked them today and they were fine. So I didn't really need to check them. So in another 20,000 kilometers, I don't know. But anyways, yeah, got all this stuff done for the bike. It should be mostly good to go to ship over to Europe. So yeah, wow, it's getting close now, isn't it? But anyways, yeah, if you want to follow along with my journey, there is a subscribe button down below. If you're interested, but as always, thank you for watching the video and hopefully I'll see you in the next one. Bye.