The Bike

Let this be a lesson to you.

I bought the bike on Ebay, sight unseen. To be fair i had done a fair amount of research and narrowed it down to three possibilities:

Kawasaki KLR650, preferably a Tengai model
Suzuki DR650
Yamaha XT600Z Tenere

I had been looking for a while without much success, trying all the usual places like MCN and Biketrader. I'd also been nosing around various bike shops, but whenever i found something half suitable the salesman wanted a fortune for it, so i declined. During this search i also realised that buying a bike that needed some work would be ok as i could learn how to strip it and put it back together again.

In the end i bought the bike i did mostly because it had a saltire on the front of it in the Ebay advert. It had no tax or MOT and it was in Birmingham. Originally the bike was on a normal auction but at some point the seller changed it to a buy it now sale so i just bought it outright. I then hired a van and set off for Birmingham to collect it. I did start it and make sure it ran, but that was about the limit of my checks at the time. The seller also said that since listing the bike the indicators had stopped working, oh and the neutral light. I figured it was more to learn with since i'd never really worked on a bike before, so i stuck it in the van, paid up and drove home.

To get it MOT'd i knew i had to fix the indicators, and the neutral switch, but when i took it out i also found that the speedometer didn't work, nor did the lights on the dashboard, oh and the tachometer (rev counter) was connected to anything.

Since the bulbs were the most obvious culprit for the non working lights, i stripped off the fairing to get in at the dashboard. What i discovered was weird. It turned out that the neutral light was the only light that had a bulb, and further testing told me that the bulb was working, so the problem lay elsewhere. For the other four dashboard lights there were no bulbs at all. That meant that someone had gone to the trouble of taking the fairing apart and then not replaced 4 x 50p bulbs. I've never worked out why, unless the guy liked running in stealth mode. The neutral light problem turned out to be the switch down in the gearbox which is easy enough to change.

Oh, at this point i should point out that since this was later November/early December that i was doing all this work i moved the bike into the kitchen to strip it since the garage was too cold. This did lead to some spilled oil on the kitchen tiles, but as ever the worst was yet to come.

It's my birthday in December, which unfortunately also coincided with my brother needing something to be downloaded for work, and picked up during the day. Now my Father volunteered to pick the usb key up and since it was my birthday my Mother decided to go up also, partly to leave my birthday presents, but mostly so she could inspect my house when i was out. I didn't know any of this, i'd left instructions to pick up the usb stick from the front door, but true to form my parents go to the back door. While my dad is unlocking the back door, my mother starts screaming about the bike that my dad hasn't noticed yet, despite it being two feet from his nose. I had obviously not gotten around to mentioning the bike to my parents at that point.

Anyway, even that didn't turn out to be the worst part. The indicator problem was due to a fault in the switch on the handlebar. I had to take it apart a couple of times until i figured out how it worked, then i found a worn copper contact which i filled in with solder to make the connection. That was really all i needed for the MOT as bizarrely the speedometer isn't part of the test. Another odd thing i should point out is that bikes of that type and vintage didn't always have a fuel guage, again i've no idea why as there are fairly useful. The bike has a 23 litre fuel tank, but 3 of those litres are the "reserve", so you'll be trundling along when suddenly the bike cuts out, so you then move the fuel taps into the reserve position to access the final 3 litres, which should allow you to get to a petrol station. What most folk do is work out how many miles their full tank will give them and then fill up before that, but since my speedo didn't work i couldn't.

Despite the speedo not working i decided to give the bike a run on January 2nd since most of the public transport was off and i needed to get to work. It got me there fine, but wouldn't start to take me home and i flattened the battery trying. I then ran around the office asking if anyone had a car and jump leads, but unfortunately while some folk did have a car, no-one had leads. i then remembered that i have RAC membership with my bank account so i called them and a van duly turned up. Thinking my problem was just a flat battery we jumped the bike and i set off again, but didn't make it to the end of the street before the bike cut out. I tried to run back to the RAC van before he left but didn't make it, so i had to call them again. This time the guy diagnosed a faulty regulator, the equivalent of the cars alternator, so jumping it didn't help as it couldn't generate enough power to run the lights and ancillaries to get me home. In the end we strapped a car battery to the rear rack on the bike, wired it to my bike battery and the guy followed me home like that.

By this time i had obtained an owners and service manual, and even a dealers parts microfiche which i'd printed off in the National Library of Scotland and then scanned to a pc, well Intelligent Office did (thanks by the way).

From the workshop schematics i now had i'd worked out that the speedo had only three working parts, the drive in the front wheel, the cable and the clock itself. Being ever prudent i bought a new cable and a second hand set of clocks on Ebay, so naturally the problem turned out to be in the front wheel assembly. I also discovered that the cable wouldn't come out of the clock so i'm glad it wasn't the cable that was broken. This meant the front wheel would have to come off, which meant i needed a new jack since my others wouldn't lift the bike high enough off the grounf due to the crazy suspension travel on the bike. Once i has that it should all have been fairly simple, but by now i'm sure you can guess where this is going.

With the new jack raising the bike was easy enough and loosening everything was fine, except when i got to taking out the front spindle. This is a metal bar which goes through the wheel and basically holds it onto the bike. One side came off fine, but the other wouldn't move so i thought i had to hit it with a hammer. I decided to call a friend and book it into his garage so he could do the work with me watching, that way i'd know how to do it properly if i had to repair a puncture on the trip.

The bike was booked in on a Saturday and in hindsight i never should have gone out on it, since it was very cold but more importantly icy. As it was a almost made it to the main road which had been gritted, but on the second last bend the wheels washed away and the bike went straight onto it's side with me still attached. Adrenalin kicked in, i picked the bike up, noticed the broken indicators on the right hand side, but figured what the hell and rode it the remaining 10 miles to the garage.

Peter, the guy who owns the garage has mostly been working on the bike for free, which means that if anything else has been booked in the bike waits. This usually works out to be fun as i get to learn new things and being in the garage is like being in a soap opera as you get all caught up on the village gossip.

Anyway, when we try to jack the bike up to get the wheel off it turns out now of the jacks can lift the bike high enough, so in the end the handlebars get tied to the car ramp and the whole htings gets hoisted off the ground. We get to the part i stopped at with the spindle when Peter grabs a big hammer and just hits it. It dawns on me i could have done all this myself, and by now my arm is really starting to throb. However, when we try to fit the new speedo drive it turns out that it won't match up, so after all the hassle and pain the speedo doesn't get fixed and i now need to figure out why the part isn't correct. I take the part back to the dealer in Bathagte and say it doesn't seem to fit, which is odd because eveything else has been fine. They send me to the workshop in Falkirkm, where the mechanics have a good look at the bike, and after ,uch discussion, faxes from some mysterious supplier and scratching of heads, the guys figure out that the front end of the bike isn't a Yamaha at all, but a Kawasaki KLE500.

If i was puzzled by the bulbs on the dashboard thing my mind completely boggled at the new Kawasaki element to the bike. The frame is straight so the bike hasn't been in an accident as far as i can tell, but someone somewhere must have decided to swap the front end for some reason.

Anyway, at least i knew, and with that i ordered the correct part and fitted it so i now had a working speedo again. This only left the rev counter not working, which i thought would be an easy fix. Um, no. This one almost became fatal.

The tacho drive is at the top of the engine and i could see the old cable which had been cut rather than changed, and i could also see why. The screw which holds the cable in had been stripped, so without any purchase on the head you couldn't get it out to change the cable. By this time i'd become fairly good at drilling out stripped and broken bolts but i couldn't get that screw out whatever i tried. I was also kinda puzzled because i couldn't figure out what was holding the tacho unit on to the bike, so figured it had to be internal through the cam. It wasn't. In fact it wasn't being held on at all.

At this point i thought well i don't really need the rev counter so i put the bike back together again. i had a morning off to start the vaccination process, so i thought it would be a good chance to take the bike into work in the afternoon. I got onto the motorway and was caning the bike away from the junction, excited that i could finally work out what speed i was doing, so i was looking at the clocks more than normal. I did notice however a people car in front becoming a bit erratic and swerving in front of me. This isn't that unusual so i didn't think much of it, until his hazards came on. I thought at first i'd left an indicator on, but when i checked all was clear. The guy pulled out into the fast lane and slowed down, so i cruised up his inside, as he rolled down the window and shouted "Oil". I looked down to see billowing white smoke coming off the bike as the engine was dumping all it's oil out. I had a second of clarity where i knew the oil that made it past the exhaust was now all over my back tyre so if i tried toi swerve onto the hard shoulder the chances were the tyres would wash away again like they had on the ice, but this time i was doing 70mph instead of 10mph. I made it to the hard shoulder as gently as i could, then gradually brought the bike to a halt beforei could switch off the engine. I didn't want to switch it off as i was coasting in, but i was also concerned the engine would seize and i'd go over the handlebars.

All i could do then was call the RAC and get them to recover me home. Again. While waiting for the second wagon to arrive which would cart me home, a police traffic car stopped. The passenger got out and walked along the oil trail to the back tyre whistling low all the way. He asked if i realised how lucky i'd been. I already knew. With that much oil on the tyre the chances of staying upright are very slim, if you do fall, the chances are the fall and the subsequent slide won't kill you, assuming you have decent gear on as something is going to tear as the friction slows you down, but the following traffic probably will.

When i got home i discovered that tha tacho unit had simply fallen off the engine, it turned out it wasn't being held in with anything at all, so i ordered the correct bolt from the dealers. When it arrived i tried to fit it, but it wouldn't bite. At this point i also needed to add more oil since all of the bikes was on the rear tyre or the M8. I also changed the filter and when tightening up the casing i felt it give and figured out i'd just stripped it, which also set off light bulbs off in my head as to why the tacho unit bolt wouldn't bite. Since the engine casing is aluminium you can't just tighten something until it won't tighten any more, but unfortunately i and someone else had. I phone Peter to book the bike in again. To get it there i fit the parts, then ratchet strap them down, then tape kitchen cloth to the leaking parts so the oil won't get onto the tyre again. In the end it all gets fixed.

With the bike now working vaguely properly i need to fit a pannier rack which will hold the luggage on the bike. Only one company in the world makes a rack for this bike, Hepco & Becker in Germany. Having cornered the world market you would think they'd make an effort to market the thing, but no, they only have instructions in German. Well there is a small part in English which says, if this doesn't fit your bike perfectly then your bike has been made incorrectly. All i can say is German precision engineering my arse.




I eventually translate the instructions and fit the luggage, so all set now, well until the speedo cable stops working. This is the cable that's stuck remember. Since my little blow torch seemed to have stopped working i had to sit the speedo unit from the dashboard over my petrol camping stove to heat it up to free the cable. Then my spare cable didn't fit, so i ordered two more, one of which is still waiting collection from a dealer in Uphall.

Since all of this hasn't been a good example of how to buy a bike, consider it a horrible warning instead.