1700 Maintenance

[Robert Fox]

i will add all of the motorcycle control points. clutch,front brake,shifter,rear brake. these points get overlooked untill there is a problem. on my vaquero the clutch lever had become quite noisy,gritty feeling. i disassembled inspected and cleaned. before i reassembled i noted that the bolt shoulder that holds the clutch lever on was worn silver on one side and not on the other. i taped up the threads and chucked it into my cordless drill. (be careful not to tighten the chuck to much as it will damage the threads.) i then cut a piece of 320grit sand paper the same width as the bolt shoulder approx. 2" long. then holding the trigger on the drill i also held the shoulder of the bolt with the sand paper. this only takes a few secs. (approx. 20 secs.) to polish the bolt shoulder. then i reassembled everything with a light coating of bel-ray chain lube. now it operates smooth and quite as it should.

[bouson]

Originally Posted by fntmwlf

I downloaded the manual, but when I tried to open it I got password protected. What is the password. Does anyone know? Or did I overlook it in a thread?

Update your Adobe Reader, I had the same problem on my android phone till I installed adobe reader.

[smokey]

One other part that is often overlooked is the calipers, they get quite dirty with brake dust and road debris, that can often cause the pads to "stick", there is also a pin that hold the pads in place that should be cleaned with an SOS pad of other mild abrasive, this is what the pad slides on and can often get packed with dust. Check the side of the pads as well, especially new ones, I just replaced mine and had to take a file to the end of one of the pads as there was a slight "burr" on the metal that was interfering with the movement. A tooth brush works well to clean up the caliper, or a dremel with the plastic brush attachment, don't use the metal wire brush as it can scratch the pistons and you don't want to do that.

[RACNRAY]

Got a Vaquero in and here's some pics of the work in progress. I caught Mark gettin down and dirty checking the fasteners on the skoot, makes it alot easier when we have it disassembled...



Mark using a flashlite to find those hidden fasteners...



On the Vaquero with it in it's disassemble state it takes Mark 50 minutes to check fasteners and he keeps a count on how many he checks. The cruisers typically have more fasteners to check than a sportbike. Fasteners include nuts, bolts, screws, hose clamps, oil line fittings, everything we can get a tool on. The Vaquero gets 377 of all types of fasteners checked!! The only ones he found loose were the saddlebag hinge bolts and a few exhaust system fasteners. Not bad but at least we now know those items will not be falling off!!

This is how it's supposed to be done and the way i was taught over three decades ago, and as good ole dad said..."son,do it right the first time or don't do it at all".

RACNRAY

[wgash1]

l'm not sure if this relates to the later baggers but when l bought my 07 nomad (l bought it second hand with 5000ks on it) l stripped it down to the frame and motor which l always do for any second hand bike l get, then put it back together again just to check everything, and to my amazement found that there was no grease at all on the swingarm bearings or the headstem bearings not only that there was only about 20ml of oil in the diff, after talking to the previous owner, who had the nomad serviced by the dealer he bought the bike from we sort of come to the conclusion that if ever we bought another new bike (kawa) the first thing we'd do is strip it and check for grease ect before we had too many ks up