Put new brake pads and SS hoses on my KLR650. Flushed out the OEM brake fluid and refilled with ATE Blue. Discovered that bikes are a *bitch* to bleed the brakes on when the system is dry! So I made a new front reservoir cover from 1/4" aluminum plate, added a schraeder valve to it, hooked up my bicycle pump and voila!...my own pressure bleeder. Two pumps were enough to drain the entire reservoir! (oops!) 

Refilled the reservoir, and 30 seconds later the system was bled. Sure easier than spending 15 minutes pumping the brake lever.

Man, i've bleed and bleed and bleed the front brakes on my bike, and still can't get all the damn air out!

 Helped my son get his Ranger working.  We finished swapping distributors, what a pain in the ass. The dizzy is located in the back of the crappy 2.9 V6 up against the firewall, under the intake manifold.  You can't see a damn thing. Then we tested all the TFI modules we had sitting around.  Not one out of 4 tested good.  Had to go buy a module.  Got that back on the dizzy and fired it up.  Reset the timing and away he went.  We had pulled the hood off to make it easier to get to the dizzy, and thankfully scribed the hinge locations.  So it went back together and fit pretty easy. 

Spent Sunday working on the SVO, cleaned a bunch of the interior pieces, getting ready to install them.  Also finally checked to see if the PO (who hacked the shit out of the car) had removed the thermostat.  I had thought that the water temp gauge was dead, but with it heating up, the gauge finally moved. If the engine coolant stays cold, the car always stays in a fuel enrichment warm up mode. Which would explain the lousy fuel mileage i was getting.  Sure enough, no thermostat. Always an easy fix.  I filed the mating surface of the housing flat and installed the new thermostat. Then checked the timing, I'd retarded it a couple of degrees when i was having trouble with the knock sensor pulling the timing, and hadn't fixed it after i installed the new fuel pump.  

Also started to clean out the garage. It needs an enema.  Crap everywhere, So i need to move a bunch of stuff to the storage shed and just throw out a bunch of things.  

Posted By spdracerut on 06-20-2010 08:11 PM

Man, i've bleed and bleed and bleed the front brakes on my bike, and still can't get all the damn air out!

Try the pressure bleeder method, it worked awesome (too good in fact!). Like I said, I completely emptied the front M/C in two pumps, I had to learn to just go slower. Still, took me less than three minutes to completely purge ALL the air from the front brake lines once I figured that out.

Posted By RallyBob on 06-21-2010 09:13 AM

Posted By spdracerut on 06-20-2010 08:11 PM

Man, i've bleed and bleed and bleed the front brakes on my bike, and still can't get all the damn air out!

 

Try the pressure bleeder method, it worked awesome (too good in fact!). Like I said, I completely emptied the front M/C in two pumps, I had to learn to just go slower. Still, took me less than three minutes to completely purge ALL the air from the front brake lines once I figured that out.

Yeah... i might have to try to fab something up.  My CBR is a 2005, and has the stupid rectangular brake fluid resevoir instead of a normal cylindrical one with a screw-on top.
 

I've though about building my own pressure pump along the same lines as Rallybob, only use a 1 gallon bug sprayer that you can buy for cheap from HD or Lowe's and then attach an air hose fitting to the outlet hose. I think I could put one together real cheap. It's advantage is that you could fill it with brake fluid.  I think...I'll have to try to build one. 

It would be a lot like Coleman's hot coolant injecton pump. 

Posted By Horsewidower on 06-21-2010 01:57 PM

I've though about building my own pressure pump along the same lines as Rallybob, only use a 1 gallon bug sprayer that you can buy for cheap from HD or Lowe's and then attach an air hose fitting to the outlet hose. I think I could put one together real cheap. It's advantage is that you could fill it with brake fluid.  I think...I'll have to try to build one. 

It would be a lot like Coleman's hot coolant injecton pump. 

I use one of those to prime engines with engine oil after rebuilding and to fill difficult to reach differentials.

Posted By Horsewidower on 06-21-2010 01:57 PM

I've though about building my own pressure pump along the same lines as Rallybob, only use a 1 gallon bug sprayer that you can buy for cheap from HD or Lowe's and then attach an air hose fitting to the outlet hose. I think I could put one together real cheap. It's advantage is that you could fill it with brake fluid.  I think...I'll have to try to build one. 

It would be a lot like Coleman's hot coolant injecton pump. 

I have been using one for a few years it works great! It cost about $14 bucks to make. Some vinyl tubing a cheap metal tire pressure gauge and the bug sprayer pump.

I am always finding more uses for it too.

Finally found the time to download some of the lastest pics of my friend's  Camaro. Here's the undercarriage reinforcement I built for it, and the car itself.

Did you fabricate that entire assembly? The cross bracing is great but the subframe connectors are bitchin' fully boxed and all! Every time I see your work I am impressed!

The last thing I fixed.... well errr... I got a nice new toolbox for fathers day and I have been re-doing the garage....

Posted By Wes Dumalski on 06-24-2010 08:06 PM

Did you fabricate that entire assembly? The cross bracing is great but the subframe connectors are bitchin' fully boxed and all! 

 

Yup, I wasn't too impressed with all the aftermarket frame connectors out there, so I built everything from scratch. It truly drives like a different car now.

damn dp.

Posted By Horsewidower on 06-25-2010 09:41 AM
I've always been surprised about how few import builds include subframe connectors, well just about any unibody car. I wouldn't think of tracking a fox body Mustang without SFCs. I'm just about ready to weld a set to the beater SVO daily driver. I'm going to cut a set of Maximum Motorsports full length SFCs off another project, add some additonal bracing, much like you have, and then weld them to the beater. It makes a stunning difference in the rigidity and consistency of the car. I always recommend SFCs as a first mod.

Its like a house, if the foundation isn't built right, everything else suffers.

 You ever look at your car and think," damn I better fix that before it bites me in the ass".  But something more interesting gets fixed, or more immediate, or more fun, or makes the car faster or... and then it bites you in the ass. 

Yep, happened to me on the way home from work.  I was chasing a much newer, better tired, less worn out car over my favorite road on the way home, and the squeeling started, thought it was the damn AC again.  Shut the AC off and kept trying to flog the beater SVO to keep up (time to replace the blown front shocks, worn out lower control arm bushing and ball joints (but the BJs aren't replaceable!!)). Its a 55mph road that you can't go 55 on unless you're superman or driving a super car.  Well we get to the stop sign, and he turns left, I turn right, flippin on the AC.  Half mile down the road in BFE the power steering quits.  Crap, turn off the AC...wait a minute those belts connect the alternator, power steering pump and spins the...water pump. Damn, look down at the gauges and sure enough, the water temp is pegging the hot. DAMN.  DAmmmmnnnnnn. 

Its 90, I'm in BFE, and far too far from home to try limp it there one cool down period after another. All because I was too negligent to replace a set of belts that should have been replaced immediately after I took the car. 

So I got to replace them by waiting for a buddy to come home from Tahoe, stop at a McAutopartstore in Cameron Park and pull up 2.5 hours later and save my idiot butt (great buds are priceless).  So instead of taking 5 minutes to replace the belts at home, I got to take 2.5hours and 5 minutes to replace them on the side of the road in BFE. 

Maybe some day I'll learn.