That seals it - I've forked up!

Well, last weekend I changed the fork seals on the bike.

And I got to use a grinder.

Strange mix really. Usually the two things go hand in hand but as always one or two little challenges reared their head.

I did the work at my girlfriends house, which is a large building in Melbourne that's undergoing some renovations. I was lucky, nae, blessed with the use of a good work bench and a vice for the weekend and I shudder to think of going back to work without one.

Due to having to do the whole thing I was a bit under the pump having to get the bike in and out of the place by the end of the day and I'm not happy with the job I've done. So I'll do it again one weekend... oh well.

I put the SR up on the Harley Cruiser stand that I'd bought from Anderson, choked it up with some bricks as the weight was biased forward a bit and went about undoing the pinchbolts that held everything together at the front. All 8,000,000 of them.

Forks came off beautifully, I drained the oil into a bucket and a bit on the the floor and put everything in the vice. I'd been to alltools where I had multiple orgasms looking at the shiny tools there and picked up a 50cm extension of my ratchet and a 17mm hex head.



Everything was in the vice but...

... The socket wouldn't fit inside the inner tube.

So it was upstairs to play with a grinder to take a bit off the outside.


Lovely stuff.

Tool Pouches

I've gotten away without a toolpouch for too long now. Mind you, there's been a few occasions where just having some allen keys and a 12mm spanner would have helped tightening or attaching something for a bit of peice of mind. Come to think of it, some tools would have helped on a few occasions...

1. My first muffler, a supersound exhaust had a pretty spectacular failure and I was left travelling the hume buying cigarettes from service stations in exchange for using what was left of a workshop out the back.

2. My second exhaust, the same model again, fell off at Kangaroo valley and with the help of a little Japanese fellow called Hiro, mounted it with a coat hanger after spending a while trying to find a screw driver as leverage.

3. Another time a mate of mine lost all power on his SR500 and we were missing just the right size allen key to have a look under the sprocket cover to see what had gone wrong. Turns out it had a stripped layshaft and it was fucked anyway but it would have passed a few hours if we'd been able to have a look, and given us a headstart on the problems that followed.

Now, I've looked at a number of different options and many of them that are sold look like they belong on a Harley, which isn't what I'm after...



Besides being a bit out of proportion it also looks a little like it'd hold something that'd buzz at a BDSM party.

Doing some thinking, I went back, as I do with everything, to small arms and ammunition pouches that could fit the bill. One was a Soviet SVT pouch, another the standard British and Commonwealth pattern '37 Bren pouch..

But thinking a bit more Japanese I remembered the 6.5 Arisaka Type 38 ammunition pouches (who wouldn't?) and realised it could work -



And Inside...



By my calculation the space for tools (with the divider removed) would be about 6" long and should be large enough to hold a few small spanners, a spark plug removal tool and some small allen keys. I'd also like to keep a wind-up light in there and some of that tyre sealing gunk but that'd be pushing it. However for short trips, it could mount along the bottom here. Bear in mind that plate is cut for a standard chain guard, and when It's redone it'll be cut a lot wider.



If anybody has any other ideas, feel free to make a comment below.