MarkW

Was it a Mod who deleted my post, or should I be taking this sign sent to me by a friend a bit more seriously?

Just something that occured to me as I was on my way home from work, when a fire engine racing through town got caught at the railway crossing and had to sit there for well over five minutes as the crappy little local commuter train trundled past. Surely in the 21st century we can stop a train before it gets to the crossing and let the emergency services through, no? The railway line here cuts Starbeck in half, with the fire station and hospital on the Harrogate side and a train going through every 30 minutes. If I were a fireman having to sit there for five minutes I'd be livid!

I've just liked that: I'm not getting caught out a second time.

Just as an addendum to this old thread, along with several other people I have just been deleted by a FB friend for not liking enough of his posts. Tricky stuff, this...

So, I'm in a hotel in Nancy, which according to Google Maps is 600 miles from Harrogate, or 239 miles according to my trip meter. No sooner did I get off the train in Calais than my speedo stopped working completely. I pulled over and had a quick look, but all I could really determine without any dismantling was that the cable seemed firmly attached at both ends. I guess it could have come disconnected whilst still being held in place behind the instrument panel, so there's probably not much I can do until I get it home later in the week. At least I can use the satnav speedo, which should hopefully avoid any unpleasant surprises...

I found front and rear seal kits for around £60 from David Silver Spares. Honda prices are crazy!

Yup - £450 for a full set for the ST1300. I do have one of their key rings though...

Right... This morning I dismantled the calipers: the left one was no trouble, but the right one has some ABS sensor thing on it that refuses to budge, and is effectively tethering it to the bike. I persevered for a while before going completely Joe Pesci on it, but still no joy. The pistons on the left side look more or less OK. There was a tiny bit of corrosion around the rims, most of which came off with some 1500 grit wet & dry paper and brake cleaner. They certainly weren't bad enough to justify £20+ each to replace! The seals were also OK, but they're dirt cheap so i'll order a full set. Next i need to figure out how to get the right caliper off. The brake lines look really rough though, and i'm sorely tempted to replace them. I upgraded to braided hoses on the ZZR, but a full front set for the Honda will be well over £400. The OEM versions aren't much cheaper. Anyway, the upshot is that i have resigned myself to the fact that the Honda won't be going anywhere for a while, so i'll be loading up the trusty ZZR on Saturday for the trip to Basel. Hey ho..

Yeah, I know - I was hoping to get it all sorted for Saturday when I head off to Basel though, and I'm running out of time now with work commitments.

Hi folks. Several of the pistons are seized in my front callipers, so I'm guessing a strip and rebuild is needed. Do I need a new set of seals or can I pull the pistons out, give them a clean and shove them back in? Ta!

Now I like the look of that method! One big syringe ordered, and I'll be giving it a go in the week when my new brake pads arrive.

Brilliant - thanks Stu!

Evening all! I'm going to have my first ever crack at replacing brake fluid. Should I completely drain the old stuff out and refill it, or add new stuff to the old and flush it through? I guess it's a toss up between bleeding loads of air out of the system or slightly contaminating the new fluid with the old. Brake bleeding on the ST1300 looks like a bit of a performance with its linked system, proportioning valve, and having to remove one of the front callipers to tilt the secondary master cylinder back. How much fluid do you reckon I'll need, and had I may as well do the clutch fluid at the same time? Cheers peeps!

It's been a nice bit of evening tinkering to be honest, although so far it's only been things I've done on cars a million times. The next challenge is the brakes, which isn't something I've ever tackled before. I might try to do a fluid change before I go, although it seems to have some linked-brake arrangement that is supposed to be a bit of a pain to bleed. I'll investigate further tomorrow, but I'm leaving the pads and rotors until I get back. Taking it to Basel might seem a bit daft (especially since I have a bike in the garage that would definitely make it there and back) but it'll be fun, and part of me thinks that if it's done 100,000 miles already then another 1,500 shouldn't be a problem. It sounds OK, and the ride back from Doncaster didn't give any cause for concern. Assuming it doesn't disintegrate beneath me on the motorway the worst that can happen is that I don't make it to the conference. Given that I've been threatening to stop going for the last few years, that might not be such a bad thing!

Well, we're getting there... The dealer I bought the bike from told me they'd give it a service before I collected it, but I didn't believe them and paid little enough for it not to care. Sure enough the oil was sludge, the filter hadn't been changed in years, the plugs were shot, the radiator cap was seized shut and the air filter was both filthy and housed in a box that obviously hadn't been opened in a very, very long time. I've attended to all of that and also changed the final drive oil, which just leaves the brakes. I haven't got time for that before heading off to Basel a week on Saturday, so it'll have to wait until I get back. There's enough life left in them to get me there and back, I reckon. Uncovering all the hopeless attempts at making it look like a younger bike has kept me entertained, like the suspiciously pristine forks (seals aren't usually sprayed silver) or the front of the sump, which sports a set of clumsy silver stripes where a paintbrush has been poked through the plastic grille under the radiator. I don't know why they bothered really, because a quick glance at the state of the metalwork under the seat told me I wasn't about to buy a minter. Anyway, I've probably spent a little over £100 in parts, oil and antifreeze so far, and then there's a seat re-cover to factor in as well. I'll get that done next week. Assuming it survives the Swiss trip it'll get stripped again over winter and re-sprayed. All good fun!

Top tip! I'll start with that and see how I go.

I thought about that, and then wondered if gluing a bit of rod to the screw with some of that 'almost as strong as welding' metal adhesive would do the trick. It's only a few quid for a tube, so I may as well give it a go. Does anyone have any experience with it?

The head is completely rounded off, so there's nothing to get any bite on at all. I'll try the screwdriver and hammer approach and see if that does the trick. I've got a small enough screw extractor, but there's no room to get a Dremmel in there to drill the pilot hole, even with a flexishaft.

Stage one of the Honda Pan project done: getting all the fairings off. Every one was screwed on with non-matching bolts, several of which had stripped out heads and had to be drilled and extracted. I've also never seen so many spiders in one place in my life! There were at least three egg sacks behind every panel. I managed to squeeze in a radiator flush and refill and an oil and filter change yesterday after work. The only way I could get the old filter to budge was to bang a screwdriver through it, at which point I also succeeded in fusing melted latex glove into melted flesh when I got a bit too intimate with the exhaust. Ouch! Next I need to get at the air filter, but one of the screw heads is stripped out: predictably, it's the one between the front of the air box and the frame. I haven't got a drill bit small and long enough to get down there, so unless I can rig some kind of extension I'm stuck. If anyone has any suggestions for getting it out I'd be really grateful!

Sounds good to me - I'm all for taking the easy route! The decals are all under several coats of original lacquer, and in some cases also a thickness of DIY rattle-can re-sprays, so I reckoned the only way to get a decent finish would be to strip it all off and start again. From what I've heard elsewhere the only chance I stand of successfully re-spraying the top box will be to start from scratch, so I guess I may as well do the lot.

Evening all. The time has come to think about tackling the once-candy-apple-red paintwork on my recently acquired budget Pan European. It is completely knackered: sun-faded to pink in parts, with the remains of several clumsy DIY re-sprays clearly visible. Some of these have been applied over decals and other stickers, and the paint has also been blown over exposed frame parts. It's a mess. My first plan was to remove all the panels and send them up the road to be professionally re-sprayed, but then I thought that for considerably less money I could buy a decent compressor and have a crack at it myself. Frankly even if I turn out to be a complete cack-hand I can't make it much worse than it already is, and the cost of a professional job seems a bit OTT on a bike that cost less than £2K. Also, as I'll need to spray the Dalek model I'm about to start building with my eldest son I thought I may as well get to grips with spraying now. A compressor would also come in handy for other things around the workshop too. Anyway, having scoured the internet for literally minutes, I have the outline of a plan. 1. Paint stripper (plastic-safe-stuff for fairings, ordinary stuff for tank). 2. Clean / sand / degrease. 3. Primer / base paint. 4. Colour coats. 5. Stick decals back on. 6. Lacquer. According to RS Bike Paint, the ST1300 uses a two-stage paint that needs a base paint, a colour coat and a lacquer. I'm not fussed about reproducing the exact Honda colour, so any candy apple red will do if anyone has better or cheaper suggestions. And if anyone has any suggestions for suitable paint strippers for the metal and plastic bits that would be great, and any other advice on tarting the old girl up would also be much appreciated. I also have an eBay bargain top box, which is in mint condition but silver. I'm guessing the only way to re-spray it is going to be to strip the existing paint off first, which is going to feel like vandalism.

"'Ere Tom - I've had a brilliant idea for a game show. It's called 'Celebrity Bumhole' and it's a winner."

Anyone else read that as celebrity gynecology? Now that's a program idea Roger Mellie would have been proud of!

I have had rather a lot of very good news by email this month, the upshot of which is that I am about to join the ranks of the super-rich. Inevitably this will lead, in due course, to my forced participation in the usual farago of celebrity asininity, such as Masterchef, Come Dancing with Bruce Forsyth, and finally that celebrity genealogy program. This latter activity should be particularly interesting, as I had always understood the essentials of my family tree to be mill-workers on my mothers side and engineers on my fathers. But clearly at some point several of my illustrious forebears had the gumption to decamp to various far-flung and exotic locations, and to become minor functionaries in the financial services industry. The Bank of America, the Bank of Nigeria, the Central Bank of the Democratic Republic of Congo - all staffed by descendants of those early pioneers, and all eager to offload truly obscene amounts of cash: a quick tally puts the total at around €240 million so far. Unfortunately, if their grammar and spelling are anything to go by I'm not going to want them opening their mouths as they stand next to me on the telly, not least because the prospect of being addressed as 'Dearly Beloved One' in front of millions of viewers is not one that I relish. Still, I suppose I could make the effort to smile at them indulgently in that way other celebrities do when some long-ignored and piss-stained geriatric brings out the family photo album. Anyway, I'm afraid you poor people are all going to have to fack orf now - I've got tweeds and a monocle to buy.

I have a Kawasaki, and I've just bought a Honda. This is looking very promising!