How not too... tune a GSXR

[beyond]

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:Me]

Awesome and congrads as you've just made Legend
Bling awarded o'Master

[Coyote]

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

[Korea]

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]

Heh heh, CM, your title is very apt!

[Kornholio]

Bahaha funny shit

[Ixion]

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]

Had a shit day but your story made it all better (fucken halarious) cheers mate

[Wonko]

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 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]

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

[kneescraper]

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 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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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.