Maintenance Day Today

Today I rode my Ninja over to my buddy Hanna's house for a day of maintenance. We started off by pulling his two wheels and my rear and hauling them out to the Triumph dealership in Batesburg to have some new tires mounted. They were pretty busy and short-staffed, so we had a bit of a wait that we partially filled by enjoying some of Shealy's fine barbecue just down the road. The dealership had two of the much-discussed new 675's on the floor. They looked nice, but the ergonomics certainly weren't all that great. Definitely not a touring machine, at least not without modifications.

Got back to Hanna's, and I got to work on dropping my swingarm. The owners manual calls for servicing it every 6,500 miles, but I'm now at 45,000 miles and am just getting around to doing it for the first time. I found the pivot area to be dry and in need of lubrication, but I also fortunately found very little signs of wear. While I had everything apart and had good access to that whole area I gave everything a much-needed cleaning with kerosene. Looks like a new bike, and I can tell a noticeable improvement in the swingarm movement.

Meanwhile Hanna got started on his first valve adjustment on his Katana 600. It was a pretty involved task getting to the valves, but once all that was done I was impressed at how easy they are to measure and adjust. Good day. Almost as fun as riding. :-)