What's the dumbest thing you have done to your bike?

Okay,

I've been slowly wrenching on this thing since I got it and it is comming into shape. So I'm now looking at doing a little more cosmetically to it. While cleaning/polishing I noted that the speedo and tach had dirt "smudges" on the inside of the lens.

So a search on the site found a brave sole that had cut open their speedo to replace the two little screws in the face of the dial. I looked at the procedure and thought, I can do that. So I did, while in there, I managed to break off the needle, twice (them things as fragile as a DDT infested eagle's eggs) so I found a suggestion by Rickomatic for a toothpic fix. I did that and touched up the paint on the speed "redline" (I can't drive 55) and even around the 55. Well I put it back together with some epoxy and even used a wrap of fiberglass I had left over from building my kayak. It looked so go I decided to do the Tach.

So get them all buttoned back up and start the bike up and )(*_(*^)(&^ the tach doesn't move. Mind you there was nothing wrong with it other than cosmetic before. So I get on the bike and drive it and the speedo doesn't work either. More (&^(*^. I figure the tach is easier to open back up (since I didn't add the fiberglass on that one.) and get it done. Okay the needle is stuck. Tap it and its loose. Hook it back up without the casing and its still not working correctly. Fiddle etc. and it doesn't look good.

Good news. After a couple of days I had the wife follow me in the cage and check my speed. She says I'm reading 10 low (i.e. what the gauge says is 40 is really 50! I told her it didn't feel like 50). Well that sounded like a ticket waiting to happen. Ordered a new AfterMarket speedo and tach (on a Saturday thankfully). On Sunday, went out for a ride near a place that I know has a radar speed sign. So I went past it and it was now reading dead on (before I "fixed" it all, it was reading about 5 over i.e. 55 on gauge was 50 on road). I have now verified this with a GPS and my speedo is dead on.

Bad news. Tach is still not reading correctly. (but I did reattach the case)

So I went from an old looking speedo and tach that performed pretty well to a better looking speedo and tach, one of which works great (dead on speedo) and one which well....

By the way, is there an easy way to check a tachs reading on the 82 650 rj (mechanical tach)?

I shouldn't have cracked the cases, but live and learn. Everything else I have done had gone so well...

Ken

 

there should be a mech tach to check accuracy, reading my clymer cb750 manual, it says that when you pull of the carbs and throw them back on, use a mechanical tach, or something, it gave a honda part number, cuz the bike's tach isnt sensitive enough

 

You can use an electronic tach, such as an old-school auto tester, to keep a mechanical tach "honest." I use my old dwell meter (it has a setting for 4cyl cars) rather than rely on the bike's mechanical tach for setting the carbs, etc.

 

the dumbest thing i did to my bike was buy it, got so ripped off

 

I have reversed the choke cable and thotle cable at the carb. Thats the dumbest thing I have done so far.

 

I think the only dumb thing I've done to my XJ is kill not one, but two perfectly good batteries by not keeping them on the charger when not in use. Killing a good battery and then using that battery for testing blinkers also lead to a lot of confusion in that project as well.

So not charging the battery caused me to waste at least a couple of weeks and probably about $60 replacing parts that were perfectly good, plus another $90 for the two batts.

On the plus side, I've kept my batteries in good condition ever since!

 

I didn't know the right mirror was reverse thread so I've been at it for 2 days in the wrong direction 8O . Once I found the news on some other post, BAM! IDIOT! . I'm Sure there's more to come. I like this question

 

Dumbest thing i ever did was let me ex-girlfriend touch it.

P.S. make them buy their own to learn on. Trust me on this one.

 

lostboy, i'm with you. did the same thing after putting my rack back on after removing the mixture screw plugs. i couldn't figure out why my throttle cable shrunk 1/2 an inch & my enrichment cable grew a 1/2 an inch. thanks to bigfitz, he set me straight.

 

Probably leaving a perfectly good battery in the hands of a knucklehead at Autozone to charge. When I dropped the battery off it was a perfect rectangular cube - I picked up a balloon - the kid said "yeah sometimes they do that"

 

Probabaly the dumbest thing I ever did to a bike was shortly after I got married. I traded it in on a freaking Nissan 'cuz the ex thought it was 'Pretty!" :roll: Bright side is, I traded my wedding rings for a set of tires for my old 68 Polara and got way more miles outta them than the wedding rings!!

Took from 86 until 08 for me to get another bike.

 

Tried to start it right after doing a Compression Test.
Thought my my Starter Clutch died and the Engine wasn't cranking.
Nope. Just me being stupid.
Ran fine when I put the Plugs back-in!

 

Drunkin story coming children leave the room.
I had the XJ for about a month so still a little new to me.
Normally I check the oil level quite often and it seldom needs any, just a touch now and then.
I checked it this particular day and the window was almost empty.
So I bought a quart and topped it off, thinking this was very strange since it hardly ever needed oil and here the glass was just about empty.
Came home pretty lit up that night and decided to check the oil and start Her up in the garage.
Oil looked good but it was over the top of the sight glass no bubble, fine.
I start Her up great, OH god not so great.
There's a bright blue light on the dash glaring at me.
I look at the glass and notice as I rev the motor the oil level drops and the bright blue light gets brighter.
Drunkin mind things, oil light on, rev motor, less oil in case, light get brighter.
So I keep adding oil and checking the stupid bright blue light, to see if it went off.
Now I got the whole new quart I bought ealrier that day in the machine.
It's not liking that, doesn't want to rev real high, so I shut it down and went to bed grumbling about the damn piece O shit XJ I just bought and thinking of what could have caused this problem.
Next afternoon I got up still pissed and went to look at the bike.
Sight glass full YEP!
Turned key on and bam!
Bright blue light, hold on what's this printed under the bright blue light?
HIGH, as in headlight, as in you stupid schmuck.
Hope my stupidity made you smile.

 

The dumbest thing I've done so far, was to burn up the ground wire for my fuel sender.

We had the bike on a charger, and the tank was unmounted, just resting on the bike. The tank touched (+) lead of the charger, grounded out through the frame and made the (-) wire for the sender, GLOW from the tank, all the way up through the wiring harness.

The harness was perfect and unmolested up to that point. Sigh. I've since fixed it.

 

Well I don't feel so bad. I have 2:

A few months ago I was rekeying my seat lock and gas tank to the new ignition key. Instead of removing the gas cap I was removing the cylinder in place. There is a little bb in the parts and it wound up in the tank.

I had to remove and drain the tank. Then after 20 minutes of shaking it in every way I could I finally fished it out with a magnet.

The lesser one was when doing plug chops I took the bike out and could not figure out why it sounded like it was missing. Well it does help if you reattach all the plug wires.

 

Ah, that reminds me of a dumber one I did. This wasn't the XJ, but I think it still counts.

I had just reassembled my CBR 600 after a long winter's nap (due to my crashing it in October). I couldn't get it to start. It would crank and crank, but wouldn't start. Replaced the plugs and it fired right up. Took it out and rode it and had a big time.

I can't remember why I took the tank off again - probably to install the permanent plug for the charger onto the battery, which is under the tank on the CBR 600 - but I put it back together again and put it back in the garage.

Took it out the next weekend. Started the bike and let it idle to warm up a bit. While I was getting my gear on and checking tire pressure and whatnot, the bike dies. Hmm. Battery is good, oil is good, cranks and cranks but won't start, just like before.

Just as I was getting really irritated about the idea that I might have somehow fouled four more plugs...

...I notice that I had left the fuel selector set to OFF.

*facepalm*

I've said it before and I'll say it again: IT WORKS BETTER IF YOU TURN IT ON!

 

When i first bought my xj it hadn't run in years and the po also bought it not running so i had know idea what was wrong so i started with a new battery since there wasn't one in it! bought it, filled it, charged it, put it in the bike and instantly cooked the main fuse which i proceded to do two more times before i noticed that the terminals were opposite what i need! after that every time i cleaned or repaired something i wondered if i had fixed the origanal problem and didn't know cause i fried something else!

 

Okay, so I feel a little better. I'll have to watch out for some of those things.

Thanks for the help with the tach issue. Part of me thinks its getting better as I ride.

Light is out in the speedo now.

Ahh... and the beat goes on...

 

Everyone is going to make mistakes. If you're not making mistakes you're not doing anything.

Trick is to learn from them and hope you have the skills and tools to fix or go around the problem you created for yourself.

 

In that case, I'm learning alot...

Actually most of what I have done has gone well and a long way to bringing this bike int0 the 21st century (well okay at least into the next decade). I saw a suzuki on the side of the road which was a steal. My wife asked me why I want a 2008 since my Seca is now a 2009! Well it may not be that new, but its getting better.

 

well the bike wouldn't start, this was like july or so. Now being a mechanic i know that you need a charged battery for electrical testing. Well anyhow i continued testing as i was in a hurry and pointed toward the very expensive 598 dollar cdi unit. so i grab one from ebay for 50 bucks, good deal and all seemed well. i had to wait like a week for parts so i waited without further testing and when i got it i also gathered up spare parts from the parts bike and went to work. about 30 seconds of testing, on a charged batt, and the pick-up leads that i figured were ok before because of low voltage when the battery was low had a broken wire. wasted time money and a whole week of riding.

 

Had just finished putting the bike back on the road but hadn't got it road legal.

Went out on it one night and when I arrived at my destination I rode up on to some wet grass and got mud on the back tyre.

When I went to leave an hour or so later, I had to cross a lane to get on the right side of the road. I had just reminded myself of the mud on my tyre, but thought it was a great idea to give it a little gas to get out of the way of oncoming traffic and proceeded to spin the rear tyre until all the mud had gone and then it grabbed and I became airborne.

Not a good evening but thankfully a few hundred bucks later my ego was once again in the drivers seat :lol:

 

How's this: I just bought a 2000 Kaw Concours and was backing it off the pickup to ride home. It started fine, warmed up and every time I let off the clutch the engine stalled. It was dead winter so I thought it just wasn't warmed up enough. So after several more minutes I tried it again - same thing - engine stalled. What the ?? Tried a few more times. After thinking I just got screwed buying a junk bike I realized the side stand was down. It was a safety feature. Geez, I felt like an idiot.

 

gitbox, your picture explains it all ;D

 

Thats why my sidestand switch is gone. hah. Mine borked out on me and was telling the bike the stand was down when it wasn't. Once at highway speed.

I've forgotten to put the sidestand down before when parking the bike. Hop off, kaboom, *foreheadsmack*

 

never weld near live electrical circuits with a mig welder. when i bought my maxim i made a luggage rack for it, and when i went to go to work the next day the luggage rack broke, well, i still had my welder handy and decided to throw a quick bead, letting th bike warm up while i did it, long of the short, the bike suddenly died, well, into the cage i went thinking the bike would hit the ebay scrapyard scene, but when i got home and poked around a bit, replaced all the fuses, and fought with rewiring, three days later no power still. pulled the battery cover off, put the screw back into the battery that wobbled out from vibration, and whammo it fires up, three days down the tubes!

 

Two of the mixture screws on my carbs decided they no longer wanted to turn...at all. Since they are brass, I wound up stripping the heads trying to get them out. I attempted to drill one out, which actually went fairly well, but I didn't feel confident enough doing it by hand. My buddy had a pretty nice mill that I clamped the carbs in and tried to drill them out with precision - ended up drilling into the threads in the carb body. Luckily, someone on here (I think RickoMatic...go figure!) told me the thread size to retap the hole. Ordered the tap, as well as a used set of carbs just in case, rethreaded the hole and all was well. Oh, and now I have a spare set of carbs!

 

Wow, I just thought of another dumb thing I did. I used to ride a Honda 650 Nighthawk to college (a long time ago) and I carried my books on the luggage rack. After arriving one day I turned around and saw that my books were all gone. I remembered the last time I reached back to check them so I knew what stretch of road they must be on. So I rode back to that stretch and started looking for my books. They weren't on the road so I figured they must have slid into the ditch off to the side. I started riding along the edge of the ditch - real close, I might add - and fairly slow. Well, I got so slow I had to put a foot down for balance and wouldn't you know it was on the ditch side. Even as I was falling over into the ditch I was thinking "man, that was stupid". At least no one was around to witness the dumb act.

 

do... did you ever find your books?

 

Yeah, I did find them. They had tire tracks on some of the inside pages. I guess they were run over a few times before they got to the ditch. Still have them too.

BTW, getting that Honda right side up from the bottom of that ditch took everything I had.

 

lol wow out of a ditch Im sure it did take everything you had.

I just did my biggest dumb thing today. Went over to clean off the bars a bit and do a sync since i hadnt since I did the valve shims. It was running like crap cold on 2 exhausts now I hadnt started it in 2 weeks but wasnt running like this before...

During the valve shim process I put 2 of the 4 spark plug wires on the wrong plugs switch em back and bam back to normal. I felt like an idiot but man was I glad it wasnt something more serious.

 

Dumbest thing I ever did started like this: I was having oil sensor problems. Bike wouldn't start. Checked oil everything was fine. So I jumped the solenoid. Started and worked fine for a month or so. Then it did it again. So I checked the oil again, fine. Proceeded to jump the solenoid again. Found out what the problem was that time the hard way. I was messing around with it earlier that day and had it in gear (safety feature won't let you start the bike in gear). Bike takes off and goes about 3 or 4 feet and falls over breaking my clutch bracket and mirror mount on the left side. Then to make things better when I picked it up and rolled it back to where it was originally parked I heard something "crack". Left the right side cover on the ground and rolled the bike over it. They say you should learn from your mistakes and I never plan on doing that again!

 

Okay, I have a tach issue still and I am trying to verify the tach reading. (See original post) I think/am sure its reading low. I borrowed an automotive "multimeter" from a friend and it has an inductive tach reader that clamps around a spark plug and another that reads the terminals on the coil. So I hook up the inductive and it is bobbing around 1900-2100 at idle. My friend and I fiddle around with it awhile and it seems to be reading 2x actual RPMs. It has a 4stroke and 2stroke setting and is set to 4stroke. We then hook it up to his bike and it matches up pretty well with his bikes tach, but seems to be bouncing around a good bit. We then try the direct connect to coil method and it seems to measure 2x rpms also.

I know my bike has two coils each feeding two cylinders. (He has two coils each feeding two plugs on a single cylinder (as in two spark plugs in one cylinder of a v-twin kawasaki). Am I correct in concluding that my coils send a spark to both cylinders each time either one needs a spark (which would give it a spark near the end of compression and again near the end of exhaust strokes). This would account for the 2x RPM as it would be registering 2 sparks where a "normal" engine would register 1.

If this is the case, how can I get a true tach reading (electrical) to verify the mechanical tach. What settings might I use and should the tach number be pretty steady with one of these or should it jump all over the place?

The meter has two methods, induction with a choice of 4 or 2 stroke, and direct with a choice of 4 or two stroke and a choice in number of cylinders (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8...yes 1-8 with 7 missing). We used 4 stroke 4 cyl when we got the 2x reading. I'm thinking 4 stroke 2 cyl might give me the 1x reading, then all I will need to work on is the bouncing thing.

Running the meter on its internal batteries.

Thanks for the help,

Ken

 

I can tell you that one of the dumbest things that I HAVEN'T done - that I have seen done at least twice lately - is reply to an existing thread with a completely new topic, rather than starting my own thread.

Sheesh!

 

Ummm... I started this thread with just that topic...

Check out the beginning of this thread and it discusses the dumb thing I did (messed up my tach) and the above electronic solution was posed early on as a solution. Knowing that the person who supplied that solution may be "watching" this thread THAT I STARTED was why I posted here. Noting that my problem was now veering from the direction my thread here had gone, I also started a new thread with the post above so I could get help on that without changing the tack of this thread.

Rhys, if you had read it says "(see original post)" which started this topic in the first place...

I guess the dumbest thing I have done lately is assume that I could post a comment on my own topic...

Sheesh indeed!

 

since you know it's reading 2x what the actual rpm is, why not divide by two mentally?

 

Redfire,

His tach likely doesn't go up to 20k+.

 

Set it to 2 stroke, one cylinder, or even 2 or 3 CYL.
Each XJ plug fires once per revolution.
1 and 4 fire, then the crank turns 180 *, then 2 and 3 fire.

The dumbest thing I did was apply Naval Jelly to all the rusty spots of ALL my bikes at the same time, and not rinse it all off before it dried.
Do one bike at a time.