Loose Two Stroke Oil Tank Cap

A few months ago I crashed my dirtbike on the trails while I was lazily enjoying the view. My bike's oil cap flew several meters away. I was riding on a small stream and the rocks gave me a hard time finding the oil cap. Most of my two stroke oil was dumped on the dirt but was enough for me to ride it back for a re-fill. I knew that my bike has a lose oil cap but was too lazy to get a replacement. I was lucky to have brought a pocket tissue paper with me and used it's plastic wrapper for the cap. Months have passed and I am still using plastic wrapper and it never failed me. I know that I should get a new replacement but since the plastic wrapper works perfectly, I think that I'll just keep it as is... hahaha!
This is a no-brainer fix for lose two stroke oil tank caps. The photos says it all...

My Off-Roading Tools

I hate bringing tools when I ride off-road (Trials or off-road). Tools are heavy and since I always have my truck loaded with real tools (hand tools, bearing pullers, drill, bike stand, air compressor, etc.) I often ride without my toolpack before but I have learned my lesson from my experiences and can't leave without them now...

Kawasaki Estrella 250 Lever Repair, etc...

This bike was a goner when it first came to me. The engine wont start and had several missing and damaged parts. Most of the parts are good and all it needed was a bit of work and some TLC. 

I think that this is one of the most easiest bikes to do a frame swap. No special skills and special tools needed. I also did a frame swap on the ZZR on the background (have done 20+ ZZR frame swaps...) but I'd rather do Estrellas than ZZRs any day :)

Because I am too cheap to to buy a lever, I heated it and slowly bashed it using a plastic hammer  to make it straight again. I learned this technique riding Trials bikes because my levers often get bent when I fall off a boulder or hit a tree. The problem with non-racing bikes are that the materials used are crap compared to "for competition use only", and hammering the lever on a normal bike can cause it to break. The technique here is to use heat and slowly bash it with a plastic hammer. Unlike Trials race levers that you can bash them without using heat and they still wont break.

Here is the photo of the lever after bashing it several times. I still could straighten it a bit more but I didn't want it to break it so best for me to stop here. The funny thing is after straightening the lever, I found two new levers in my desk that I forgot about. I didn't use the new ones and still have them somewhere...

The sad thing about working on gravel is searching for parts that accidentally fell down. Here I lost three steering head bearing and had to steal the bearings from my other Estrella just to get this done. 

The tail pipe was covered with rust and I'm too cheap to buy a new one so I just painted it with heat resistant paint and it looked sexy again.

My son stole the headlight from my dead Honda Steed to replace it's damaged headlight and also overhauled the carburetor himself because he was very eager to test the bike that afternoon, and waiting for me to overhaul the carb will take ages... He got the engine to run, then he bled the brakes, changed the engine oil and took it for a spin. Notice how happy he is with his work :) 

retro Suzuki Colleda rear pipe repair

There are mainly two types of two stroke mufflers found on motorbikes, one type is welded shut and cannot be cleaned easily without cutting open the muffler with a disc grinder or by using a cutting torch. cleaning this type of two stroke muffler can also be done by tossing it in a furnace or by blow torching to melt the oil sludge inside the pipe.

seat shoe shine

The back seat has been polished with shoe wax. Notice and compare the front and back seat.

My bike's seat turned pale and white from the sun and rain. I've tried many ways to get some shine back and based on my experience, the best and easiest way to do this is to shine it with shoe wax/polish. I know this sounds crazy but I have tried more stupid stuffs like leather wax spray and WD-40 but the shine is only very temporary and it is like sitting on a slide. Using shoe wax holds the longest shine but this too is very slippery and can be very dangerous and only a looney (like me) will prefer to sit on a slippery seat. I don't advice shining your bike's seat like a shoe but if you are putting your bike for display or in a museum, your seat will look very nice. 

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UPDATE: I changed the seat because I really hated those tiny holes which make my bike less sexy (see pic.) Also gave it a good shoe shine :)

temporary quick oil leak fix

This is a Suzuki Djebel 250 that a good riding buddy gave me. My friend rides like a looney and couldn't control himself riding on boulders pretending that this off-roader is a Trials bike. He rode over a boulder and hit the engine hard and cracked the engine. I was looking for a donor engine but I wanted to take it for a spin before the repairs. The oil leak was bad but it didn't stop me from riding it. 

ZZR headlight repair

This repair is very simple and straight forward. The bike crashed and one of the headlight bracket broke. I was able to salvage the main piece of the broken bracket but a piece of the puzzle was missing. To rebuild the missing piece my tool for the job was a normal soldering iron. Before I glued the broken piece I inserted two small metal rods for strength and support inside the bracket and melt plastic that I got from my pile of parts rubbish using my soldering iron. I filed and sand papered the excess plastic and touched painted the repaired area and it's good as new :)

water damaged engines

The green van is a swimmer and the blue van is a smacker. I combined both cars to make one. Notice the parts scattered all over the ground...  

The first thing to do if your engine was submerged in water is to:

First you want to remove the water inside the piston cylinder and you can do this by removing the spark plugs (all) and suck the water by using a small hose and by attaching it to a sucker then force the remaining water out by blowing in air using an air gun. If you dont have the gadget, I have used normal drinking straw to suck out the water and believe me that you must do it after eating lunch or else... yucks! I did that when my dirtbike went for a swim. I also did this to a water damaged car that I bought years ago...

car jacks for lifting bikes

Unless you are a pro mechanic or a racer, I don't really think that you need to buy expensive motorcycle lifts especially if you are only doing small repairs or Sunday maintenance on your bikes. I had several hundreds of bikes but I never bought a proper bike lift. I do have a portable bike lift for off-road bikes but it can't be used on road bikes. I sometime use car jacks to lift bikes but I personally prefer hanging bikes on a chain block, makes lifting easier and safer. You can always get car jacks cheap or for free at scrap yards near you. Just work slowly and best if you have somebody to hold your bike for you while you do your repairs.

I don't have anybody to hold bikes for me so I use bike tie-downs. Bike tie-downs are very handy and can be used in many ways. Try to keep at least two bike tie-downs in your garage because you never know when you will be needing one. 

fork oil replacement and overhaul tips

It is best to dismantle the forks if you are planning to do a fork oil change on your bike. There are forks with drain plugs found at the bottom and some people will just drain the oil over night and measure the amount of oil that came out and add the same amount of new fork oil to the fork. Some people will not even dismantle the forks from their bikes when they do this kind of oil change.