Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Replacing throttle cables takes how long?
To my dismay, I felt the "return" throttle cable (the one which closes the throttle, and is mostly redundant) break on the Goldwing as I was headed up to Jesse's house on Saturday. I was going up to help him with maintenance on his CBR600. It's been his commute vehicle since he moved up to Shoreline last year, and hasn't really had the maintenance it needs for a while.
In any case, about 5 minutes out from my house, I felt the cable snap. It took me a moment to decipher what exactly had happened, because the only change that I could feel was that the throttle suddenly had a lot more play. By the time I arrived at Jesse's, I knew that the return cable (also called a "push" cable, since a system like this is referred to as a "push-pull" system) had snapped, and judging by the amount of pressure it'd taken to break, there must have been one strand left.
I got to Jesse's house, and we replaced his tires, chain and sprockets. That's easy to say, but it ended up taking us nearly 5 hours to do all that, and we didn't even fit in balancing the wheels with the new tires on them. His old tires were pretty worn out, with the rear somewhere beyond the wear bars, and the front nearly bald as well. Jesse said even on dry pavement, the rear tire would slip -- eek!
He ended up buying Continental Road Attack tires, both based on my (review-based) recommendation, and on the fact that they were the cheapest set he could get. I'm looking forward to hearing how they work, since they came very highly reviewed.
So, yesterday, I sat down after the obligatory Mother's Day brunch to replace the defective cable (and the complementary "pull" cable, as long as I was in there). Fortunately, the previous owner had a set of throttle cables in among the spare parts included. Although they were a trifle crusty looking, they also looked like they'd never been in service, and so were a better choice than the busted up ones on the bike.
I got ready to actually replace the cables (fortunately, the garage was clean from earlier, when I'd prepared it for changing the front tire on the Z), and took off all the bits I figured I'd have to remove. Then, as I got down and got a good look at the cable attachment point, I realized this was going to be way more work than I'd thought.
I pulled down the manual, but it didn't describe any procedure for changing the cables. I realized with slowly mounting horror that I would have to remove the carburetors from the bike before I could get at the cable attachment points. D'oh! Those carbs are huge, and it looked like a massive pain to get them out.
And, in fact, I was right. It was a huge pain. Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to remove the carbs as a unit -- the four carburetors are bolted to an intake manifold. The whole thing is bigger than any of the openings out of which it could come. The manual seemed to be saying it was possible, but I'm not entirely sure they were referring to the model of bike I have.
In any case, after two hours, feeling beaten into submission, I had the cables replaced and the bike about half reassembled. It shouldn't take more than another half hour to get it finished up, but what a huge pain. At least it'll be done, and another thing I don't have to worry about for a while.
Posted at 11:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater