what have you done in the shed today

Similar design to Givi.

Hope it came out without too many issues Ian . Some Himalayan owners had the same problem , the factory had smeared a lot of threadlock on the bolts too which didn't help .

Got the bottom yoke back from the engineer's yesterday, he'd managed to drill out the seized bolt & clean up the thread ok. Saved me a few bob, and I got it back just in time - pi55ed down all day today, so it gave me something to do in the shed   It was hard work though. I had the forks off one of my SDs a few weeks ago & it was a doddle compared with this. Forks are much heavier and there's extra bits like the clip-on clamps & headlight brackets to try & feed into the heavy sods on the way up. Some of the allen bolts had bits in the way making it tricky to get a tool into them - hex heads & a spanner would have been easier. And don't mention the wheel & ABS sensor! (Superdreams are great, Mark!). Anyway, all back together now & ready for a test ride if it ever stops raining.

Well it looks like the job I did on the 250NB starter solenoid I did a couple of pages back in this thread didn't fix the problem, 7 trouble free months & then the problem recurred. Managed to bump start down the same hill as last time. Next suspect is the starter motor, so off it came & pulled apart



The brushes didn't look as bad as the GB250 I did a while back,( honda-superdream.co.uk/thread/14033/starter-troubles  ) but were worn so I fitted a new set from Silvers.



It was a fiddley job putting it back together, but got there in the end



and tested ok on the bench (I learned not to test the motor while holding it my hand a few years back  )



Back on the bike & still working ok. I guess it'll be at least 7 months before I can say it's fixed.

Fitted some heated grips to Gill's Z400 today. On other bikes, including my 250NB, I've connected them to the horn - a handy 12v source as one terminal is connected to 12v via the ignition switch. No such luck on the Z though. I did find an unused connector under the seat, which give 4.7v when the ignition is on. No idea what it's used for, but I've temporarily connected the grips to the battery for now & ordered a 4.7v relay from ebay & I'll put that in the circuit when it arrives





Another thing I have no idea about is what this is - there seems to be few of them scattered about the wiring loom Looks like a tiny heater element in a bulb, anybody know what they are?

It's that time of year again - time to service the old bikes. I've done the SDs and now it's time for the CB250RSD. Should be easier as there's only one cylinder, but that didn't turn out to be the case.




First job was to drain the oil so I could remove the right hand crankcase side cover to get access to the balance chain adjustment. This is easy - the spring is quite strong, so you release the locknut, then back it off one mark on the index. It's also handy to clean the oil strainer gauze in there at this stage.





The valve clearances should be easier, there's no fiddly valve cover removal, just a couple of hatches over each pair of valves.




Trouble is,  the clearances are quite tight & the feeler gauge access tricky. The left hand engine cover has a couple of removable covers, a large one for access with a socket to turn the rotor & a small one to watch for the TDC mark, like the SDs 




Trouble is you can't see the camshaft & it's tricky trying to watch for the valves opening & closing while looking out for TDC coming round, so I thought I'd drop some sort of rod down the plug hole so I could spot TDC, and that's where I screwed up - I used a pencil! Of course it slid to one side of the piston on the downstroke but didn't slide back on the way up, it broke in half instead! So the head had to come off and this means releasing the cam chain tensioner. There's two wedges at the top of the tensioner arm, with the one at the rear sticking out when the chain is under tension



The idea is, you pull the front wedge up & push the rear wedge down to release the tension. There's a small hole on the front wedge to poke a pin through & lock it in place. According to Haynes you can do this without unbolting the tensioner arm, but I couldn't do it so I looked in the Honda manual - no, they tell you to release the lower fixing bolt & that made it much easier



Now the head could be taken off & the bits of pencil removed













All back together now & the engine's running ok