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VFR Maintenance Day Mar. 8th 2003

Tourmeister

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Scott
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Friday
Howdy,

We had a pretty good showing at the maintenance get together!

It was kind of gloomy looking most of the day, but it never rained and the temperature outside was perfect for working on bikes. Jim showed up a little after 9:00am followed by Ed. We got right down to business.

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Jim and Ed started by replacing their bleeder screws with SpeedBleeders. I just pulled out the old screws and stuck in the new ones when I did all of my bikes and never had a problem. Apparently, Jim and Ed's bikes decided to spew a little more fluid than mine :wink:

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Here's Ed wrestling with the LBS slave master cylinder on the front left rotor. He seemed to like laying on the concrete, he did it most of the morning :lol: Ask him how his thumbs are doing :bigokay: Oh yeah, also be sure to ask him about how much smoke brake fluid makes when your headers heat up :shock:

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It was not long before Mike G. and Mark showed up. Mike on his turbo VFR750 :huh: and Mark on his VF1000R.

It is a good thing that Mike and Mark arrived when they did. Getting Jim's back tire off the rim took some serious grunting and groaning. After getting both tires changed, Jim set to bleeding his brakes as well.

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Mike lends his astute instruction reading skills to the cause. It was not long before everyone was cursing Honda for their design of the linked brakes :headbang:

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Jim gets the hang of bleeding the brakes. Mark (left) and Mike C. (right) provide the ever important supervisorial support.

I was planning on flushing the cooling system on both our VFR's and bleeding the brakes as well. However, I wound up being the Tool slave most of the morning, hehe. So my bikes had to wait. However, as Ed and Jim got things figured out, I set to working on our bikes. With fairings removed, I pulled the drain plugs and let the coolant flow.
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I highly recommend having a good bucket under the plug BEFORE you remove the radiator cap. The stuff will shoot out about a foot and a half. After draning the system completely, I buttoned everything back up and filled it with distilled water. Then I let the engine run up to about 220F for a few minutes and drained the water.

Let me just go on record as saying the stupid little crush washer on the drain plug IS NOT magnetic :headbang: But I was able to get the plug itself out of the bucket with a magnetic wand, hehe. Let the fluid cool before you go fishing for the washer! But I got both bikes done pretty quick. We took a lunch break when Beth got back with BBQ from the local meat masters.

Jim's friend Mike C., a local to Huntsville, showed up on his massive Suzuki Intruder.
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You don't want to get in his way! With tires like that, he'd squash you to a pulp! Did that come off a car?? Can you see the other two bikes in this picture :huh:

Sometime around 2:30pm or so, Andrew made it in from North Dallas. He had run down through East Texas and taken the scenic route to get here. At about the same time, Mike G. had to hit the road and head for home. And Mark and Mike C. soon had to leave as well. Paul never made it up so we missed meeting him.

We did manage to get all the bikes back together. After a quick group shot, we took of for a short ride down to King's Cafe in Montgomery to bed the new brake pads and test the bleeding jobs. What a colorful posse!
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After dinner and Ice Cream, Jim and Ed head South back to Houston. Andrew is coming back up to spend the night with us. The ride down to King's and back convinces me that my front tire has really given up the ghost. When we get back, Andrew and I change out his brake pads, replace some of the pads on both of my VFR's and the front tire on my 01 VFR.

All in all, it was a great day. Everyone had a great time visiting and messing with the bikes. There is nothing like that satisfying feeling when you get everything just right on your bike and then take it for a ride. Andrew and I then stayed up into the wee hours of the morning shoveling the B.S. and goofing off.

We had hoped to watch some of the Daytona racing Sunday morning. However, the weather in Daytona had other plans, so we opted to go riding. The weather Sunday was spectacular. It was 75 and sunny with little wind and almost no humidity. We had lunch at King's and then headed East toward Coldsprings on Hwy 150 and some other backroads. In all we knocked out about 180 miles and had a great time.

I got a shot of Andrew's bike and forced him to pose before saddling up and heading home about 4:00pm.
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I was really nice to get to meet some of the these guys and share the fun of cranking on the bikes. I just wish we had all been able to do more riding together. But heck, now all of our bikes are ready to rock now, so no excuses!! :twisted:

Until next time...
 
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