Inconsequential ramblings of an Old Git

[Yorick]

It seems to me that their is more variance with KTMs than most bikes in this respect. Andy at BSD reckons that every KTM is different, and he's seen plenty.

They ALL look the same to me

I feel much the same about inline four cylinder bikes...

At least they come in different colours

[mangocrazy]

They ALL look the same to me

I feel much the same about inline four cylinder bikes...

At least they come in different colours

So do KTMs

There's white and orange, black and orange, grey, black and vermillion.

Ok, I made the last one up...

[mangocrazy]

So for the last couple of days I've managed to finish off the Falco's winter servicing. Since November last year it's had the Ohlins shock serviced at Revs Racng in Brum, I've overhauled the Showa forks (new seals, bushes, complete stripdown/clean and new oil). I also had the outers re-anodised as they were showing signs of the old anodising starting to fail. I also replaced all the bearings and bushes in the swingarm and cleaned and lubricated the suspension linkages. It's also had a new chain and front sprocket.

In order to get at the suspension linkages and shock the pipes had to come off, and while they were off I handed the complete system over to a local polishing company for a satin finish polish. They did a cracking job and it really gives the bike a visual lift. Pipes are stainless and cans are titanium oval Akrapovic but de-badged. I prefer stealth. Here's the old girl in the back yard in a rare dry spell.

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I spent most of yesterday chasing my tail regarding the battery. The Yuasa that's fitted seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time coming up to charge on the Accumate so I assumed it was duff and bought a Motobatt as a replacement. The Motobatt is fractionally larger than the Yuasa and the top plate arrangement is different, meaning that the battery clamp no longer fits correctly. Even more annoyingly, having bodged it to make the Motobatt fit, when I hooked the battery up to the charger, it too took ages to come up to charge. It was last charged, off the bike, about 2 weeks ago so should have given me the green light after a couple of minutes.

Conclusion? It's the battery charger that's fecked, not the Yuasa and I've bought a battery I didn't need and that doesn't fit properly. Bollocks

Anyway the Yuasa has gone back in and everthing fits again. The Motobatt will be gracing eBay before long. The bike still needs the Givi plate reattaching and last years flies washing off (weeksy, cover your ears) but apart from that and needing an MoT the old girl is ready for 2021, even if I'm not sure if I am... Lastly, a gratuitous shot of the front end. Showa forks with DLC coating, PFM ductile iron discs, Mille R 4 pad calipers and Mille R Oz forged aluminium wheel. And Michelin Power RS tyres.

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[Supermofo]

I've always liked Falco's. If I'd have found a good one local to me I'd have got one over the Firestorm I actually did buy.

[mangocrazy]

I think the looks of it have aged very well, better than the Mille if I'm honest. They are a cracking bike and the beauty is that so many of the go-faster goodies fitted to the Mille R and Factory bolt straight on. Mine has Ohlins shock, 4 pad Bembos and Oz wheels off the Mille R. Some people fit Ohlins forks and even the banana Mille swingarm, but I actually prefer the stock Falco swingarm.

It's comfortable enough to take me and the missus to the South of France and back, and sporty enough to mix it with most bikes you encounter.

[mangocrazy]

The softer fork springs I ordered over a month ago have finally arrived, so today saw me trying to rebuild the KTM Duke forks with new oil and springs.

And failing, for the most part...

I'd already filled the forks with the required amount of oil, and when I came to fit the springs and their internal plastic sleeves I realised the error of my ways. KTM build their forks differently to most other manufacturers, and while this means you don't need a special tool to hold a fork sleeve down while undoing the top nut to damper rod joint, it does mean that reassembly is - well - different.

The only way I can see to reassemble the forks is to bolt the cartridge and damper rod assembly to the base of the fork, and (without filling it with oil) invert the fork so that the damper rod is at full extent. Then the fork spring and sleeve can be fitted (working upside down) and gravity will keep the damper rod fully extended and the whole assembly can be bolted up. That's the theory, anyway. Tomorrow will see whether this cunning plan works or not.

For now the forks are sitting upside down in a tray, draining all the oil out. And I'm getting stuck into preparing Lamb Rogan Josh for tonight's scoff...

[Supermofo]

You just know that an Austrian engineer had a little chuckle to himself after devising that!

[mangocrazy]

You just know that an Austrian engineer had a little chuckle to himself after devising that!

Definitely an exercise in 'Catch-22'...

Photos tomorrow (if I'm successful). An unhinged rant if I'm not...

[Skub]

You just know that an Austrian engineer had a little chuckle to himself after devising that!

Definitely an exercise in 'Catch-22'...

Photos tomorrow (if I'm successful). An unhinged rant if I'm not...

Look forward to either.

[mangocrazy]

Well it's been a day of qualified success, I guess. My cunning plan worked, inasmuch as I was able to reassemble the forks, but the way KTM have designed the forks means that it's impossible to adjust the oil height/air gap using the conventional tool for the job. You have to assemble the fork completely dry, then add a measured amount of oil. If you want to (say) reduce the oil level/increase the air gap, all you can do is pour some oil out of the fork, then add back a smaller amount. I can't think of any way of accurately measuring the air gap.

Reassembling the forks upside down (so we have here upside down, upside down forks) allowed me to fit the springs and sleeves to the damper rod, and then fit the fork tops to the projecting part of the damper rod and thus reassemble the forks. But it's a decidedly pants way of designing a fork. The 20 year old Showas on my Falco are a much, much better design.

Having said all this, I think I have just thought of a way to get round the 'wrong way up' reassembly. The damper rod that runs through the centre of the fork has an M20 x 1.0 external thread and is hollow, to allow the adjuster rod to sit inside it. If I were to tap an internal thread in the damper rod (something like an M6 thread, at a guess), then that would enable me to retrieve the damper rod from the bowels of the fork with a piece of M6 threaded rod and set up the air gap in the conventional manner.

But I've just fitted the forks back in the bike and unless my meddlings have made it worse, it's time to ride the sucker. You've had the rant, here's the pictures. First off, a close up of the part of the forks that gave me grief. The damper rod is inside the hex nut, but not visible.

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Next up, a view of the complete fork leg and the general wasteland that is my work bench.

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Lastly, a close up of a buttoned up fork leg and one awaiting final assembly, showing the rather nasty plastic fork spring sleeve/guide that KTM fit to their forks, and the damper rod connected to the fork top.

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[mangocrazy]

While I'm waiting for April 1st and LC tax and MoT exempt status to arrive, I thought I'd better get on with fixing the outstanding stuff on the bike. Before I got the bike on the road in September I'd sent the fuel tank off to have it de-rusted and coated internally. It's never seen ethanol and as I'd like it to stay hole-free I felt that was the best solution. I fitted the tank and it and the bike had done around 200-250 running in miles when I noticed something amiss when filling up. Basically the tank lining was peeling off...

So I took it back to the dealer who straight way said 'I've never seen that happen before', but also promised to completely re-do the lining at my convenience. When the bike came off the road in November I took the tank back to the dealer and left it with them for as long as it took. I got a call in mid-Feb to say the tank was ready but was advised to leave filling it with fuel for a couple of weeks. So for the last month it's been sat curing in front of the radiator in the front room. If it's not ready now, it never will be...

Today it dawned on me that I needed to fix the seal between tank and fuel tap, as it had been a bit 'drippy' in that area. When I took the tap off to clean it, it had taken some of the tank paint with it and the surface needed flatting down, priming and respraying. Today was the day, as it was dry, I had the necessary rattle cans and time was marching on. Lots of epoxy primer and several coats of Halfords finest generic white spray paint and this was the result. Time will tell if it's done the job or not...

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The tank (and the cat) get the best seat in the house...

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[mangocrazy]

The Duke now has its MoT and on the short ride to Armando's Scooters and back, it was enough to prove that low speed fuelling is MUCH better than before. And I didn't even notice or think about the front fork, so I reckon that must be working unobtrusively.

Which is nice...

[Skub]

Guard cat haz defending Elsie tank.

[mangocrazy]

I finally got round to/plucked up the courage to do the long-threatened caustic soda treatment on my LC's exhausts today. I've been a bit put off by the reputation that CS has but took a bravery pill, manned up and got thr fuck on with it. It's messy, time consuming and you really wouldn't do it anywhere but outside, but it all passed off without any major alarms. We have what looks like a washing line but isn't in the back yard (garden is far too grand a term) and so the exhausts were strung up to that, as level as I could manage (one at a time).

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I then mixed up approximately 5 litres of solution (working on a ratio of 1kg CS per 5 litres of warm/hot tap water. Always add CS to water, not the other way about. I wore a face mask and eye protection while doing this, as well as tribal size black marigolds. The addition of CS to water generates an exothermic reaction, further increasing the heat of the solution. This is a Good Thing. As it turned out my guess of 5 litres wasn't too far out. The LC exausts swallowed about 4 and a half litres of solution before dribbling out of the end. I put a tray down to ry and catch any overflow. This worked, partially...

Once the zorst was full I then decided to agitate the angry CS pixies by playing a blow torch over the pipe, mainly because I could. I also dimly remember my old Chemistry teacher stressing that heat speeded up reactions, and I'm impatient. I gave each pipe about 2 hours soak time, with intermittent blow torch attacks, and then emptied the contents into a 25 litre bucket. The fluid that drained out was impressively black/dark brown with lots of lumpy bits of carbon. I've no idea how much old carbon is left inside but I simply CBA to do it again. After that, copious flushing with hot water into a nearby street drain ensued, until the water started to run a lighter shade of brown.

So that's about it really. The picture below shows the kit I used, but the bucket of CS powder and the blowtorch are missing. I'm very glad it's done and the next step is to get them ceramic coated satin black.

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[Taipan]

Never found CS to be that successful when I used it on my 2t exhausts. We used to put petrol in them and then set them alight!! When they were out, we'd then hit them with a rubber mallet and shake the bits out!

[mangocrazy]

Yeah, if I didn't live in a row of terraces I'd probably try something similar. I guess you need some out of the way waste ground for stunts like that...

[mangocrazy]

Falco went for its MoT today and passed, with an advisory for a noisy exhaust.

Thanks, but I was already aware of that, and it's intentional. You should hear it without the db killers fitted...

Shame that we're heading back to winter by the end of the week...

[mangocrazy]

LC exhausts have come back from being ceramic coated and look Da Biz. I'd normally put a pic up to provide documentary evidence of this statement, but by the time I'd finished today it was getting a bit dark. And cold. So the LC is now ready for the remainder of its running-in sequence, but the little bastid fought me all the way. I've had no less than three fluid leaks to contend with (coolant, petrol and 2T oil), plus a RH exhaust that was waggling about even after the exhaust flange nuts had been tightened up as far as they would go. In order of appearance we had:

1. Petrol leak from the fuel tap when tank filled. The sealing o-ring between tank and fuel tap was OK, but fuel was getting past the bolts securing tap to tank. Fitting o-rings between washer and fuel tap fixed that little issue, although I think that is only a temporary fix and I have some Viton o-rings of the required size on order.

2. A few days ago I remembered that the temperature sender terminal lug had snapped off, meaning I had no indication of coolant temperature. The OE Yamaha part has been unavailable for years, and the only replacement part available has a tapered thread (OE Yam was parallel thread and relied on a crush washer to seal). Being a tapered thread I'm never sure how much tightening torque to apply. The last thing I wanted to do was to fuck the thread in the cylinder head. So of course it leaked. Partially drain the system and apply copious amounts of PTFE tape to the thread and do up proper F tight. Sorted.

3. Fill the autolube tank up with Silkolene Comp2 2T oil with the bike in the shed and think nothing of it. Wheel the bike out of the shed and up the incline that is my back garden and oil starts to pool on the floor. The difference in camber meant that oil was now dripping out of the overflow pipe (located at the back of the oil tank), FFS.

4. I'd diligently ordered all new exhaust washers over the winter and even splashed out on some Wurth exhaust sealing paste. Fitted the pipe to the LH cylinder, along with both gaskets, liberally smeared with goo-goo muck and tightened everything up. Job's a good 'un. Did the same to the RH pipe and even when everything is tightened up, the exhaust is still waggling about like a bastard. Head back into the shed and dig out the previous inner exhaust gasket I'd saved (like you do), smeared that with g-gm and popped that into the exhaust flange, meaning I now had two inner exhaust gaskets. Tightened everything up good and tight (by this time I was in no mood for any subtleties) and the RH pipe was now solid as a very solid thing.

Fired the bike up and was pleased to observe no fuel or coolant leaks and no blowing from either exhaust flange. I'm calling that a result.

[weeksy]

Great update, needs more pics

[mangocrazy]

Great update, needs more pics

You're absolutely right. Will attampt to oblige tomorrow.