All that for nothing???

I post my latest tribulation on the ADVrider forum and Blake (my neighbor and bmw confidant) asks me why I didn't call him before tearing the bike down? I think to myself....."yeah, why didn't you call him????" He says it's most likely something very simple since the bike had been running before. Blake went with me when I first went to check it out and took it on a test ride. Everything worked fine aside from the parts needing replacement. He comes over 1 night to look at everything and determines the cables appear to be binding. Oh, wow, ugh......I'm an idiot. 8hrs in the hot sun could have been avoided. No biggie. This is all a learning experience for me so it was still a good exercise BUT, it would have been much easier to just replace the cables.

Call up Han's @ Hucky's and order up 2 throttle cables and a new clutch cable. Tick, tock, tick, tock.....now I wait.

**Update - Got the cables.

Front fork rebuild

Another project, another learning experience.

The forks were in bad shape. Terrible bounce in them. Need new springs, washers/gaskets, oil...pretty much everything but the tubes themselves.

When I ordered my batch of parts from Max BMW (thanks for the help Rusty), I ordered Progressive springs and everything else needed. Followed the manual again and no problems to speak of. Got the front wheel and fender off. Unscrewed the fork plugs and drained out all the oil. Noticed loads of debris from both but the right more so. Pulled the lower tubes off each and the gaskets were shot; the right disintergrated. Now the tubes were completely drained. Reinstalled the lower tubes. Unscrewed the top protection caps and pulled the guide supports. Springs came right out and that was that.

Next I just wanted to pull the tubes completely out. Couldn't be completely smooth now right??? Geez...what gives? Nothing I could do could even make them budge. Had to hang up the grease rags for the day. Posted a suggestion link on advrider.com (thanks everyone there...) and got a few leads. Saving it for the next day. Spent the better part of Saturday on the project and it was much needed as I had my first triathlon (GJCC Memorial Day sprint) the following day. Good way to keep my mind off the day to come.

**Update - got the tubes out and Charles (flat track racer/mechanic extrodanaire) helped me get the damper rods out. Should have everything redone this evening. Inching closer...

Here are a few pics of the front fork rebuilt process