Friday, April 16, 2010

About the spring cleaning...

My friend and I finally had some time so we did some maintenance on the Bandit. Well, he did it and I watched and learned. Anyway, the tank came off with no problems but we found that the back fairings have a small tab that is bolted onto the frame under the tank. Who ever took the tank off before us didn't think enough to take the bolts off, so he just snapped the fairings at the tabs....not a good sign for mechanical competance. is it? I started to get a little worried, I was hoping whoever did that hadn't gone too far into the engine.

We checked the plugs, NGK, and they were fine. We took a look at the air filter, and I was happy to see the K&N Sticker on the outside of the box. This means I get 10 extra horsepower, right?

We moved on and got the carbs off without any trouble. They had never been touched, apparently. We inspected them and the number one carb has a huge speck of sand in it. The second carb had a little gunk and we got that out, as well. Three and four carbs were clean.

So we got everything back together and I took it for a ride. It seemed to run a little better, a little smoother and maybe a little better acceleration. But honestly, it might have just been the psychological 'We worked on the bike so it must run better'.

Either way, it's nice to find out that the $200 bike is in good shape.

1 comment:

irondad said...

Those kind of mechanical "surprises" make me shudder.

By the way, I was only able to milk the "watch and learn" thing so far!