Kaw Seals

The following work actually occured over a week ago but we had so much going on with the Water4Life ride I decided to wait before posting the work done on the Kaw.  As mentioned previously, there was some leakage occuring around the gear shift lever that had to be dealt with.  I ordered the seals and they arrived promptly.  The chain cover portion of the tranny was already off so I still had to take the outer transmission cover off to get to the seals.  Using an impact wrench, I was easily able to remove the chain sprocket and then take out the multitude of allen bolts to get the cover off.

I performed a visual inspection of the componants on the tranny and everything looked great.

Upon inspection of the cover, I found the leaking culprit!  All along I had assumed it was the shift lever seal.  That seal was actually in very good condition.  It was the main seal instead! And oh how bad it was.  Fortunately I had ordered seals to replace all of them.  If your gonna tear it down, replace them all while your at it.   Below is a visual of the torn main seal and the clutch seal too.  The bad ones are on the left, the new ones are on the right.

I cleaned the covers well and put in the new seals.  Put the new transmission cover gasket on and reinstalled everything.

Once it was all back together I put the oil back in, adjusted the clutch and took it for a ride.  I got about a half mile down the road, pulled the clutch in to shift into 3rd......and......SNAP!  NO CLUTCH!!!  The cable broke right at the clutch lever.  So I idled it back into the garage, removed the outer cover AGAIN, and removed the cable.  I was able to order a new one from Old Bike Barn for $17.  Not bad at all.  Until the cable broke, the bike ran well.  Until the cable arrives I wont be doing anything else to the Kaw.  I still have to replace the fork seals but want to finish this work completely first.

Water for Life Charity Ride 2012

Today was the 3rd Water for Life charity ride sponsored by Fort Worth Harley Davidson.

There was so much going on it was difficult to capture with pictures to even begin to understand the enormity of todays event.  The charity focuses on providing clean safe drinking water to people who have none.  For each rider that participated Fort Worth Harley donated $50.00 to the charity.  There was also a raffle for a 2012 road king and the proceedings from that were also donated to the charity.  What more could you want! A great ride that benefits a fantastic cause!

The event started at Fort Worth Harley at 9am with pancakes for all and a poker walk.  Registration was also open and you recieved a raffle ticket for goodies from that as well.

My wife rode with me on this one so as count as another rider for the charity contribution since passengers also counted.  We arrived about 10am and was surprised at what we saw!  WOW, there were already over 100 bikes there at the staging area!



First thing, REGISTER!!!

Then we spent some time wandering around taking everything in, seeing friends, having a good time with everyone.  The Water for Life group had a tent where you could get detailed information about their organization. While we were there my wife bought some riding glasses and doo-rag.  I got one as well, since she was buying.



I wanted to try and capture the enormity of the event so we went back to the road so I could get some pics of the line of bikes.  In the short time we had been up at the dealership the amount of bikes had doubled! Literally, the final count when the ride began was 225 bikes!  I took a bunch of pics but the line of bikes was so long and went so far back it was impossible to capture them all unless you were airborn.  So what I did was take 3 pictures and stuck them together to form a landscape kind of pic to get an idea of it all.

The Honda dealership wasnt doing anything with their parking lot, they never do, and the line of bikes was getting so long we began staging in their parking lot as well. This ride was open to all bikes so it was considerate of Honda to let us use their parking lot.  Their sales team doesnt care about anyone (I know this firsthand from experience) but at least they were willing to do this small favor.

Then came the word to saddle up and get ready to go!  Everyone began making their way to the bikes.  It took over 30 minutes just to get everyone ready and bikes started for the procession to begin.



The ride route is 22 miles total which starts at the dealership, goes right through the Fort Worth Stockyards, and ends at Billy Bobs Honky Tonk.  Our road captains completely blocked off all crossroads and highway entrances so the ride could stay together parade style.  When we got closer off the freeway a Fort Worth Police Department escort was provided to insure everyone could stay together safely.  I would like to give a big THANKS to our road captains and the fort worth PD for helping to make this ride go so smoothly.

I dont know how far back the line of bikes trailed from start to finish as it was impossible to get a picture of the entire procession at once.  Someone from our chapter took this one from a bridge over the freeway and it gives a small idea of how big this event was.  There are 3 separate pictures taken at different intervals of the procession.

Hehe we made it in one of the pictures!

Once we got closer the Fort Worth PD took over escorting the procession.

When we got just outside of the Stockyards there was a staging area set up so that everyone could get back together from any separations that might have occured during the 22 mile ride.  Again, I tried to capture the essence of the event and kind of stuck 2 pictures together.  The line of bikes was so long we didnt fit on one section of street so they had us parking around a corner.  The picture is taken from the corner pointing both directions and merged together.

My wife just had to take my picture! BLEH!!! HAHAHA!!!

We stayed here for about 10 minutes while the Fort Worth PD went in and around the stockyards to begin blocking the streets for our ride through COWTOWN!!!  It was great, 225 bikes rumbling through the stockyards.  It certainly gave everyone a great deviation from the usual site seeing.



Once we got to Billy Bobs everyone was guided into parking formations.  I was able to get a pretty decent picture by standing on some cattle guards close to the parking lot.  Unfortunatly the picture only covers a few of the bikes but its still pretty kewl.

We got inside and the bull riding arena had been reserved for the grand finale event.

After a short video about Water for Life and a Harley Davidson Road King raffle ticket give away, a check was presented for $69,500 to the charity!  What a great feeling to know you were part of saving lives.  This end result was what the event was all about and for my wife and myself it was personally fullfilling and rewarding to have been a part of.

Thanks to everyone who rode, gave their time, organized, and contributed to this wonderful cause.

9/11 Firefighter Memorial Ride 2012

Today the Fort Worth Harley Chapter organized a 9/11 Memorial Ride in honor of the firefighters that lost their lives and all firefighters that have and/or currently serve.  The day was perfect.  It was cool and quiet.  The ride was organized so that we visited 4 fire stations and personally thanked the firefighters for their continual service to the community.  We also presented them with gifts of appreciation.  It was quite emotional when you begin to consider that it is very rare, if ever, that anyone ever shows up to thank our firefighters for their service.  So often we simply see their job as just that, a job, and forget these people often put their lives at risk to save us.

Our first stop was just around the corner from the dealership at firestation No. 23.  We were fortunate on this one because part of the crew had been out grocery shopping and came back just as we arrived.  They were very appreciative and surprised.  It was awesome!  They pulled one of the trucks out and let us honk the horn and take pictures with the firefighters and chapter members.  Since I was in the pictures taken by the chapter photographer I dont have any of those.  Ill add them later if I can get a copy.

The next stop was at firestation No. 16 I think it was.  This station had a Lab as the firehouse dog!  A big beautiful one at that.  I wasnt able to get a pic of it unfortunately but it was the star of the visit once it wasnt scared of us anymore.  Remember to "Shake Paw" at this station!

The third stop was at the historic fire station headquarters in downtown fort worth.  Its a big brick firehouse and its HUGE.

Our last firehouse stop was on the other side of downtown.

The ride ended at the Police and Firefighters Memorial on 7th street just outside of downtown.  This is a tribute to fallen officers throughout Fort Worth history. There is a walk to the memorial that has historical accounts of how officers lost their lives.



Once you arrive at the memorial all the names and dates are shown.  I was able to find one that went all the way back to 1879!

Thank You to all of you that serve.



Kaw Repairs

After doing the carbs and getting excited about how well it ran, I decided to get down to some serious stuff.  The shifter rod seal is going out and it leaks oil, slowly but still leaks.  The fork seals also leak.  I was able to find diagrams of every componant of the bike and how its assembled along with part numbers for everything.  This site kawasakipartshouse was a super find.  For under $150 I was able to order all the seals and gaskets for both the transmission and front forks.  Can't beat that for an old bike!  I started pulling the transmission chain cover off to get an idea of how bad things were underneath.  OMG it was awful, awful, awful.

So I got all that buildup cleaned out and parts ordered and decided to proceed with some pretty stuff.  The bike will stay torn down now for a few weeks until the parts arrive and I have time to replace them so I might as well find something else to do.

The tank and side panels had been sent off by Russell to a body shop to be painted a few years ago.  The shop painted it in the dead of winter and apparently did something incorrectly as the paint had HUGE cracks where it had split and began peeling away from the original paint underneath. When he took it back to have the paint redone the shop had gone out of business. I began pulling the body parts off the bike and stripping them down of any accessories so I could remove the old paint that was chipped and cracking.  I got a can of aircraft paint remover, sprayed it on and let it do its thing.

After getting the old layers of paint off I sanded the parts well and primed them.  I had taken pics of them before priming but didnt realize the memory card wasnt in the camera until later :(  So you only get to see the primed result and not the whole process.  The tank was pretty difficult as there was some body damage and I had to smooth out some dings and dents with Bondo.  Someone had also filled the Kawasaki emblem area with Bondo.  You can kind of see how the logo area is solid without the emblem on the above picture. I wanted to put the emblem back on so I had to dig for over an hour to get down to the mounts for the logo.  The sanding, smoothing, priming, all took the better part of an entire day.  Bottom line.....it wasnt easy!

And Presto! All painted! I used polishing compound with a polishing wheel attached to a drill, and waxed it deep the same way.  It came out wonderful considering it was spray primer and paint bought at OReilys autoparts.  All for under $50 and a bit of work.

While I had the gas cap off I took the chance to rebuild it as well.  The key mechanism was sticking badly from carbon buildup over the years.  The key wouldnt even snap back into place by itself and you couldnt shut the cap without using the key to unlatch it.

After cleaning all the parts I lightly oiled all the moving parts and when I got it put back together it works perfectly again.  You can just lightly push down on it to close it and it snaps softly into place with a secure seal.

Over all this phase went very well.  The parts for the leaks have been shipped and should be here by the middle of next week.  The goal will be to get some of the seal work done next weekend.