Originally Posted by
OddDuck
Yesterday I gave the bike a post purchase clean (finally), there were a few bugs I wanted off the fairings and a lot of brake dust on the front rim but the main reason was the old chain lube. It's sprayed right over most of the left rear quarter of the bike. It's a black, tarry, sticky, spreads everywhere and gets on everything horror. It's a hassle cleaning it off but it's much nicer working on a bike once it's been cleaned up, I'm sick of getting this stuff all over my hands and arms every time I do a small job.
Getting in close and looking at things underneath meant I noticed a couple of things.
The buffer for the centerstand, a rubber stop plug which pushes into a bracket on the left hand muffler, is missing. There's been a horrible clunk every time I've taken the bike off the centerstand. I'd been thinking that the stop was the steel bracket itself. Nope. It's a small thing, but clean up and examination of the centerstand has shown that the stand's enamel is breaking off on the contact point between stand and muffler. The muffler bracket hasn't started to get chewed up yet but it's just a matter of time. I don't have any photos for this yet.
The side stand was a bit more serious. Both mounting screws had loosened. The lower screw had got to the point where it wasn't even finger tight.
The issue here isn't turning up somewhere at the end of the day, going to put the stand down and finding that it fell off somewhere back on the road. It's having the stand look OK but then failing once the bike's weight is on it. The damage bill could be surprisingly high... carved up or broken fairings, bashed hard bag, knocked handlebars and / or damaged tank, possibly even damage to the engine case itself if the stand ripped the last few turns out of the threads during failure. It all depends how hard it goes over and what the bike lands on.
Such a simple thing. I found gunked-on chain lube under screw heads, between the bracket to engine case contact points etc - simply tightening it up again would be easy but wouldn't hold long term. Lots of scrubbing with paintbrush and rag, an old tin of kero, water based degreaser and a noodle sponge got it sorted out. I used Loctite 222 on the screws for reassembly.
Riding today, took the bike out to Castlepoint.
I had the exact same issue on my Street Triple when I first got it! Both the bolts holding the sidestand bracket to the frame were loose.
What I have failed to understand with your issue with the front sprocket: how can it be put together wrong like that? was the sprocket on backwards? was there a spacer missing?
I thought elections were decided by angry posts on social media. - F5 Dave
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