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Crisis management
1st March 2006, 10:55
Just to keep some of the more sadistic of you happy, I though i should share my misadventures with you.
In explanation, the reason I like the GSXR is that it is able to be maintained by myself, no secret tools required, just a crescent & hammer.
It was tune up time (all fairy stories start like this) so off with cam cover to re torque head (torgue wrench frozen with rust so guess appropriate torque & carry on) and adjust valves.
adjust valves??? 3mm AF spanner required! Not in my tool box, crescent wont fit so make spanner...... find piece of thin steel, file 3mm groove and set to on valves. Must be brilliant it actually works! That is, it did work, until I dropped it down the hole in the engine where the cam chain runs. This slot in the engine is about 30mm wide and about 2 km deep! I can see the bloody thing sitting quietly wedged between the two strands of chain and the crankshaft but no way I can get to it.
Several minutes wasted screaming and trying to blame someone else.
Tried the magnet on a piece of string, the magnet taped to long stick, tried blu tack taped to long stick, tried welding wire with loops on end, tried kicking crankcase.
Contemplate stripping engine, contemplate suicide. The high commander (she who must be obeyed, sometimes) suggests tipping bike upside down and shaking - not bad but I cant lift 190 kg of bike and its late at night.
Finally I tried kebab sticks, obscure but wonderfull, tape two sticks together on long stick (to reach 2km's into crankcase) ferret round in crankcase until the "spanner" wedges between the kebab sticks and carefully extract!
Immediate awarding of hero status and several beers.
Tie string to "spanner" before going near engine again.

Fishy
1st March 2006, 11:02
Oh my goodness, so I take it your not a mechanic by trade then :bleh:

onearmedbandit
1st March 2006, 11:31
Fucking brilliant, laughed the whole way through!

Sniper
1st March 2006, 11:36
Farking marvellous, I could learn a thing or 2 from ya :laugh:

imdying
1st March 2006, 11:36
Tie string to "spanner" before going near engine again.Fear not! Unlike many others before you, you learnt from your mistake and applied a solution. Bling for you!

phoenixgtr
1st March 2006, 11:40
Thats kiwi ingenuity for ya

Fishy
1st March 2006, 12:11
Look out Burt Munro!.

erik
1st March 2006, 12:12
:laugh:
When I was doing the valve clearances on my brother's zzr250, I didn't notice a stone that was wedged between the cam cover and part of the frame, so when I removed the cover, it fell in. :slap:
I ended up getting a stick and putting some 5 minute epoxy on the end, then gluing it carefully to the stone so I could lift it out. :sweatdrop

loosebruce
1st March 2006, 12:15
LOL, nice one bro. Glad you got it out finally.............

Lazy7
1st March 2006, 12:19
omg. hahaha.

*sic
1st March 2006, 12:22
classic, brilliant commentry.

Crisis management
1st March 2006, 12:53
Oh my goodness, so I take it your not a mechanic by trade then :bleh:
Do you mean someone would pay me to do this? Any volunteers, I'll be gentle....

Fishy
1st March 2006, 12:54
You can work on my Honda, its a piece of garbage anyway :laugh:

Crisis management
1st March 2006, 12:58
You can work on my Honda, its a piece of garbage anyway :laugh:
No, sorry, only work on motorbikes...

Fishy
1st March 2006, 13:02
Good call too!. Its ok I will leave it to rott in the shed where it belongs. :done:

beyond
1st March 2006, 13:22
Well, that's one of the reasons I no longer service my own vehicles.

An easy job always seems to end up being a major disaster that takes five times longer to do than it should.

Murphies law again I suppose. :(

DMNTD
1st March 2006, 13:35
Awesome and congrads as you've just made Legend :yes:
Bling awarded o'Master

Coyote
1st March 2006, 14:00
Tried the magnet on a piece of string, the magnet taped to long stick, tried blu tack taped to long stick, tried welding wire with loops on end, tried kicking crankcase.
This sounds all to familiar. On my old CBR we had lost the clutch pushrod when we took the crankcase sidecover off to get repaired, and we assumed it was lost in the garage, so we got a new one and the bike ran trouble free.

Then when we were about to replace the crappy, welded together crankcase sidecover with a flash second hand one from Australia, I dropped a screw in the crankcase. Looking for it with the torch, I see it and next to it was the old pushrod. This large loose chunk of metal was rolling around the sump with the crank often going at 300 revolutions a second for the last 2 months, yay!

Anyway, I did the whole magnet and blue tach thing for 2 hours with no luck. Then I remember seeing a claw thingy at Repco once. Go off to see if it was still there, sure enough they had a 'Pick up Claw', a long metal coil with a claw that opened up when you pushed a rod down the coil, for 10 bucks. Got it and got both the pushrod and screw out in a minute.

I reccomend getting a Pick up Claw, it's even good to pick things up from the coffee table when you can't be arsed reaching over for something :niceone:

Korea
1st March 2006, 14:20
Boohahah~ I love reading stories of mechanical f#@kwittery.

Great idea on the glue-pickup and the kebab sticks.
Myself, I would have had them out in seconds with a pair of chopsticks.
Did you know the Koreans use metal chopsticks?

slob
1st March 2006, 14:44
Heh heh, CM, your title is very apt!

Kornholio
1st March 2006, 14:58
Bahaha funny shit :D

Ixion
1st March 2006, 15:50
It is a good idea, when working on anything, to block any inviting holes and such like with a clean piece of cloth. Those holes act as irrestible gravitational wells for any vital and irreplaceable part. Take your eye off it for 2 seconds and it will perfrom a suicide jump into the hole.

It is a better idea still to remove all those pieces of (probably not now clean) cloth, before reassembly.

It is a still better idea to either count the pieces of cloth before beginning, or note what holes have blocked.

Stopper Dan
1st March 2006, 17:01
Had a shit day but your story made it all better (fucken halarious) cheers mate
:laugh:

Wonko
1st March 2006, 22:32
LOL

Now to add my tail to this growing list.

How to change your Oil the hard way.

Quick bit of mainentance before going out for a ride to Piha. have seat off bike and the battery on charge over night. Take off the oil bung with pliers, top up the oil and get distracted by the phone ringing inside. 10 minutes later I returned outside, toped up water in the battery, put the seat back on and went for my ride.

20 kms later I stop at a red light and almost slip over on my right foot. I look down and my jeans from the knee downwards and right boot are covered in oil that has been spurting out for the last 20 kms. yeah you guessed it, I forgot to put the oil cap back on :doh: After a quite ride home I find the oil cap beside the pliers where I had left them.

1.5 liters of oil, 1 pair of new jeans oil stained, and boots smelling like a petrol staion for days. Leason learned, always double check that the lid is on.

scumdog
2nd March 2006, 00:00
Alarumba is right - one of those flex-claw things is just the cats vagina - that and a magnetic telescopic rod thingy - oh and an 'adapter' to fit the lux so's you can suck something out.

Sounds like you have been attending the same SchoolofMechanicalIneptitude and the FrankSpencerPreventablebutInevitableCatastrophes courses as myself.

But you learned Grashopper, you learned:woohoo:

kneescraper
14th November 2007, 15:52
MAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA thats gotta be one of the stupidest (no offence) things Ive heard a biker do...mind you I shouldnt really say that because it is something I would do too. Hahahahahhaha



LOL

Now to add my tail to this growing list.

How to change your Oil the hard way.

Quick bit of mainentance before going out for a ride to Piha. have seat off bike and the battery on charge over night. Take off the oil bung with pliers, top up the oil and get distracted by the phone ringing inside. 10 minutes later I returned outside, toped up water in the battery, put the seat back on and went for my ride.

20 kms later I stop at a red light and almost slip over on my right foot. I look down and my jeans from the knee downwards and right boot are covered in oil that has been spurting out for the last 20 kms. yeah you guessed it, I forgot to put the oil cap back on :doh: After a quite ride home I find the oil cap beside the pliers where I had left them.

1.5 liters of oil, 1 pair of new jeans oil stained, and boots smelling like a petrol staion for days. Leason learned, always double check that the lid is on.

darkwolf
14th November 2007, 16:26
LOL

Now to add my tail to this growing list.

How to change your Oil the hard way.

Quick bit of mainentance before going out for a ride to Piha. have seat off bike and the battery on charge over night. Take off the oil bung with pliers, top up the oil and get distracted by the phone ringing inside. 10 minutes later I returned outside, toped up water in the battery, put the seat back on and went for my ride.

20 kms later I stop at a red light and almost slip over on my right foot. I look down and my jeans from the knee downwards and right boot are covered in oil that has been spurting out for the last 20 kms. yeah you guessed it, I forgot to put the oil cap back on :doh: After a quite ride home I find the oil cap beside the pliers where I had left them.

1.5 liters of oil, 1 pair of new jeans oil stained, and boots smelling like a petrol staion for days. Leason learned, always double check that the lid is on.

I've had a similar thing happen. Remove sump plug, remove oil filter remove oil cap, talk on phone (big no no), check other fluid, vacuum inside of car, replace oil filter, start pouring. Suddenly hit me when I saw my driveway covered in oil I'd forgotten the sump plug - luckily didn't start her up. 4L of castrol allover driveway. Good for engine flush :)

Also as a thought there should be a mechanical cock-ups thread. I think I'd take it home.

doc
14th November 2007, 16:36
I've had a similar thing happen. Remove sump plug, remove oil filter remove oil cap, talk on phone (big no no), check other fluid, vacuum inside of car, replace oil filter, start pouring. Suddenly hit me when I saw my driveway covered in oil I'd forgotten the sump plug - luckily didn't start her up. 4L of castrol allover driveway. Good for engine flush :)

Also as a thought there should be a mechanical cock-ups thread. I think I'd take it home.
I'd beat you there. After persistant nagging about doing the oil change on her car. Storm out drain oil. and put plug back in, pour whole container of oil, hmmmm oil level seems high buggar it back inside. No problem. Next day 100k return trip shopping, Why does my auto sound funny changing gear. Woopsey just fix it. Admit nothing

darkwolf
14th November 2007, 17:24
Best one I've done is loosing my 18mm socket. Found it 3 months later by taking of the sump. Turns out that's what had been making the random clicking sound.

nudedaytona
28th November 2007, 10:21
I'm new to motorcycling - here's a couple of the gumby mistakes I've made when maintaining the bike.

I put coolant in the oil tank (the two tanks are right next to each other). Luckily the oil tank was full otherwise I might not have noticed. I was using a funnel, and wondering why the coolant in the funnel wasn't emptying into the tank and the coolant was turning oily. Then realised what I was doing, yanked the funnel out of the tank, spilt glycol everywhere.

Cleaned that up, then had to bleed the coolant out of the engine. Getting the bleeder screw out wasn't too much trouble, all this green coolant came out before the nice brown oil started coming out. Sticking the bleeder screw back in was a bit of a problem. I tried to reach through the drive chain but couldn't, luckily the screwdriver was magnetic and held it there, but I did drop the very small, very hard to see screw a few times then couldn't see where it went, down by the side stand somewhere, cause it wasn't on the ground anywhere. Tried poking around with the magnetic screwdriver hoping it would pick it up. That didn't work, had to get a very bright desk lamp from upstairs, and finally found the screw and got it in.

The next silly thing I did was when I changed the transmission oil. Drained the old stuff out, put the new stuff in, no problems. Then I took out the level plug and pulled the bike upright to check that oil leaked out and I had enough in. I shouldn't have bothered because I measured exactly the 700ml of new oil I needed, but I guess I thought I'd check to be safe. Anyway, oil came out, so I put the level screw back in and tightened it up, but put too much torque on it and snapped the head off the screw. It's well tight in there, there's no way that screw will be coming out in a hurry, so I guess I won't be checking the oil level much in the future, might as well just change it.

gwigs
6th June 2009, 09:57
This happened to me as well just the other week ...first time I,ve done the valve clearances on my gsx......dropped my ring spanner down the same cam chain hole ...managed to rescue it with a magnet.....so your not on your own:doh:

AllanB
6th June 2009, 10:33
Ha ha - great story.

Can you not cover the cam space with a clean cloth when working on the head?

I wonder how many workshops have done the same and charged an extra hour for fishing the bugger out of a engine............

xwhatsit
6th June 2009, 16:40
Yeah... been there too :(

p.dath
6th June 2009, 20:26
You should try being a stand up comedian.