Squeaky starter motor - an easy fix.

Late last fall when the mornings turned quite chilly (frost on the ground) the starter on the DR began to make some funny sounds, similar to that of a wheezing duck -- a kind of sqeaky, squealing noise. It sounded exactly like this video I found on YouTube:

After reading of similar complaints from other DR owners on ADVRider, the diagnosis sounded plausible:  dry armature inside the starter motor. Requires a bit of lubrication. The end of the armature opposite the drive gear rests in a bushing (not a bearing). Apparently these bushings are made of a sintered material that contains some type of lubricant, whic is released slowly as the sintered material wears away, thus providing a permanent lubrication system. However, if the sintered material gets heated up or burned, it glazes over which prevents the sintered material from lubricating the shaft properly. In warmer weather, it doesn't matter much but when the cold weather hits, the dry rubbing makes a squeaky sound. I guess the best solution would be to replace the bushing in the end cap of the starter motor. But an easy fix that will last a couple of years is to simply put a dab of grease in the bushing. This quick and easy fix takes about an hour and costs nothing. It's also a good way of checking the internals of the starter motor, especially the parts that normally wear out (like the brushes).



First step: because you will need to remove the Cam Chain Tensioner (CCT) it's important to make sure the engine is at top dead centre (TDC) on the compression stroke. To do this, remove the plug on the flywheel cover so you can line up the timing mark. Then rotate the engine by hand (using a ratchet on the flywheel, or by turing the rear tire slowly with the bike in 3rd, 4th, or 5th gear). Remove a spark plug and keep your finger over the hole so that you can tell when the air in the cylinder is being compressed.

The timing mark on the flywheel as seen through the inspection hole.

I also use a plastic drinking straw in the spark plug hole

to make sure that the piston is at the top (but you need to be

sure it's at the top ON THE COMPRESSION STROKE.

That's why you keep your finger over the hole).

As a safety precaution, it's a good idea to disconnect

the + positive terminal from the battery.

Remove the exhaust header pipe

Remove the upper and lower bolts for the oil line

and move it out of harm's way.

Moving the oil cooler line out of the way gives

unobstructed access to the starter motor.

I like to put the bolts and crush washers back in

place to avoid losing them, and also to avoid getting

dirt inside the engine.

Remove the cam chain tensioner (CCT)

Then, remove the starter.

The starter motor removed.

End cap removed reveals the brushes as they are pressing

against the commutator with the wound springs.

A small dab of grease squeezed into the hole at the end of the armature.

A small dab of grease in the end-cap bushing.

I cleaned the guts of the starter using air compressor to blow the dust out.

Cleaned the rubber O-ring and cleaned up the casing a bit.

Wiped down all the grease and crap from the engine.

Getting ready to wind up the spring in the cam chain tensioner (CCT)

**note the long shaft sticking out: it needs to be wound back in before re-installing the CCT.

Remove the bolt that plugs the hole at the end of the CCT (right side in the photo above, bolt is removed)

This exposes a small flat screw inside. Use a small screwdriver to wind up the spring as you push in with your thumb. Keep turning the screwdriver slowly until you hear/feel a click. Then the pin is locked in and you can take your thumb off the end.

CCT pin is locked once the spring has been wound up with a flat scredriver.

Reassembly:

1. install the starter and clutch cable bracket

2. install the CCT and then use the flat screwdriver to unlock the spring

(which will apply tension on the cam chain)

3. re-connect the oil cooler line.

4. re-install exhaust header pipe

5. re-connect positive battery terminal

All buttoned up.

1993 Suzuki JR50 restoration

About a year and a half ago, I bought a 1993 Suzuki JR50 for the kids. It was well worn, and had been suffering from obvious neglect for some time. However, the bike was complete and the engine would start, but it ran like shit. I brought it home for $250 and figured I could make it look nice and get it running properly for maybe another $250 in parts and repairs. 

I bought new tires & tubes, replaced some broken and missing spokes in the rear wheel, removed and capped off the oil injector (never trust those things -- better to mix the gas for 2-stroke engines), repaired the kill switch, new chain, replaced a bunch of missing and/or stripped bolts, and some other small stuff. Then I painted all of the plastics, and the engine.  I cleaned out the carb and made a few little adjustments, but I couldn't manage to get the thing to run properly. It always seemed like it was starving for gas. I looked into buying a few bits for the carb... then I found brand new carbs available on eBay for $50. That was a no-brainer.  I had it shipped to Ogdensburg and drove there today to pick up the new carb (along with some other stuff I ordered online).  All, told I spent less than $200 to restore this little bike, including the brand new carb.

I took the carb out of the box: 100% identical to the OEM carb that was on the bike.  I simply removed the old carb (about 2 minutes of work) and bolted the new one on (about 3 minutes of work by the time I hooked up the throttle cable).  I turned on the fuel petcock and kicked it over 3 times before it fired up.  The bike runs like a dream, and I didn't even have to adjust so much as the idle screw.

Gonna take my 8-year-old daughter to a gravel pit tomorrow for her first riding lesson. Two weeks ago I bought her a helment, and elbow and knee pads.

The day I brought it home 

Stripping it down

The finished product.

525>520 chain conversion, sprockets, bearings and Shinko 705 tires

I bought a few things recently and just got around to installing it all. My old 525 chain and sprockets had about 25,000 Kms and were beginning to show signs of wear. Knowing it would soon be time to replace the it, I've been neglecting the chain drive gear.

I decided to go with a 520 conversion mostly because 520 chains are much easier to come by, and the sprocket selection (for different gearing) offers far more choices. The only difference between the 525 and 520 chains is that the 520 is slighly narrower. The links are the same length, just thinner rollers. I went with a medium quality DID 520V O-ring chain. These sell for about $75 in the US ($99 here in Canada). And 520 sprockets are cheap, only $20 for a front, and $33 for a rear.

Two new sets of CR10E spark plugs

rear brake rotor from eBay - $49

Suzuki OEM clutch cable

DID 520V chain (to replace the existing 525 chain)

JT 14 & 15-tooth 520 front sprockets

JT 43-tooth 520 rear sprocket

Polisport RMZ250 fork guards

new cush drive bearings

new bearing seal

new rear sprocket bolts

I cleaned up the cush drive with a wire wheel on my Makita driver/drill

New rear sprocket installed with shiny new bolts

Used my Dewalt 5" angle grinder to remove the old 525 chain's master link

I also installed new wheel bearings and cleaned up the cush drive rubbers

New rotor installed using shiny new bolts

Use the Dewalt angle grinder again on the new chain to remove 10 links.

10 links equals 10 pins. Gotta be much more careful on the new chain.

The master link for the new 520 chain is the c-clip variety. Some

say the rivet type master links are safer, but it's extremely rare for

the c-clips to fall off. Use the packet of grease provided in the

box with the chain.

c-clip installed.

When using a c-clip master link, I like to finish it with 

a blob of brightly coloured silicone. This helps to make

sure the c-clip doesn't fall off, plus the visual of seeing

the bright red link is quick to spot. If you don't see it,

then there could be trouble.

Shinko 705 front, size 90/90-21"

These $69 tires will serve as my asphalt rubber.

Much better than wearing down my Michelin T63 knobbies

riding back and forth to work in the city. With two sets of wheels,

swapping between street tires and knobbies will take 30 minutes.

Shinko 705 rear, size 130/80-17"

This is a really meaty tire, yet very quiet on the road

compared to the Michelin knobbies.

Riding with intravenous pumps

A couple of photos from a recent ride with the ManyPause gang... I wore my twin intravenous pumps and bags of antibiotics.  The good news is that I am no longer receiving antibiotics intravenously... pill form oral antibiotics now. The PICC line remains in my arm as a precaution just in case the infection returns. If everything is all clear when I finish the pills in 2 weeks, then they'll remove the PICC from my arm.

Showing the boys how the PICC line in my arm connects to the 

pair of vinyl tubes that are taped to my body, under my gear/clothes 

and down into a pair of fanny packs around my waist, where they 

are connected to a pair of battery operated pumps.

The PICC runs inside the vein in my bicep, then up my shoulder and into a giant artery inside my chest, next to my heart. This way, the toxic antibiotics are less likely to cause damage to the veins (because the size of the vein in your chest is much larger and flows much more blood than the smaller veins in your arm).

Here you can see the two blue fanny packs that hold the 

bags of intravenous antibiotics and the electronic pumps.

What the fuck? Are you really gonna ride with that shit plugged into 

your arm? Seriously?

Here's what the setup looks like when not tucked neatly into 

the fanny packs. I tape the clear vinyl tubing to my body, under my shirt -- 

much like an FBI informant who wears a wire.

Shinko 705 tires

Well, I finally managed to ditch the double-pumper intravenous system that had been connected to my arm for the last 2 1/2 weeks. The doctor has got me on oral antibiotics for 14 days, and he expects the infection should be completely gone by then. Let's hope so.


So, while I'm enjoying some sick leave from the office, I've been trying to get a few little jobs done around the house ... and not wanting to neglect the bike, I finally installed the Shinko 705 tires I purchased a couple of months ago.  I have a spare set of wheels for the bike, so my intention has always been to have one set of wheels with dirt tires, and another set of wheels with street tires. 

So, with the Michelin T63 knobbies already mounted on the other set, I pulled off the worn out T63 from my spare rear wheel, and a cracked Michelin Star Cross MS3 motocross tire from my spare front wheel. Then I installed two new MSR heavy duty tubes and the new Shinko tires.  I also had a new rotor for the rear wheel as the spare I had purchased from eBay had none. I bought an eBay special for $49 and that included shipping. Looks to be decent quality but time will tell. I also picked up OEM bolts from the dealer to install the rotor.

Shinko 705 rear, with a new $49 brake rotor from eBay

Shinko 705 front mounted on the RMZ wheel.

CORRECTION: I ALMOST survived the 2011 Roaming Rally !!!

My last post, called I survived the 2011 Roaming Rally !!! requires a little point of clarification. You see, I nearly didn't survive but I didn't know it at the time. The rally finished on Sunday, May 29th but within 2 days of arriving home I became very sick and found myself lying in a hospital bed for 13 nights.

At the time of the rally, I had been suffering from a nasty cough and difficulty breathing. It had been going on for weeks and I suspected a case of bronchitis and I also suffer from asthma (though it doesn't usually cause me much trouble). I didn't care, though, as nothing short of death was was going stop me from attending the rally. Something else that contributed to my getting sick was the fact that I take a heavy duty medication for my Rheumatoid Arthritis. This chemotherapy drug, called Methotrexate, is particularly hard on a person's immune system and I've been taking it for about 5 years now. While my RA symptoms have improved with it, the drug is definitely not without its' side effects: I get little cold and flu bugs all the time since I've been on it, and it's not good for your liver and bone marrow. RA is different from all the other types of arthritis in that it is an auto-immune disease which attacks your joints, whereas the other types are just your joints falling apart... the sypmtoms are much the same, but the cause is very different.

Anyway, back to the rally. With the wet weather we encountered all weekend, and wearing all of my offroad protective gear, and rainsuit over top of it all, it was a rather hot and sweaty weekend. My bronchitis didn't help matters. On the Sunday morning, as I was packing up my campsite and getting ready to leave for the ride home, I innocently picked a small scab from my elbow. All weekend long, my elbow pads had been irritating the scab that had been nearly healed from a scrape 2 weeks earlier. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

The next day at the office, I noticed that my elbow was quite sore and red. By the following morning, Tuesday, the pain level was off the chart, my elbow was hot to touch, very red, swollen, and a large abscess had formed. I went to a walk-in medical clinic  that morning, and the doctor directed me straight to the emergency room at the hospital.

Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctors were immediately concerned that it might be flesh-eating disease. They even mentioned the possibility of having to amputate my arm. They didn't even want to know about my bronchitis as that wasn't nearly as serious compared to the possibility of chopping off my arm. I spent the next few hours doing all sorts of blood tests, ultrasounds, MRI scans, x-rays, urine tests, and they pumped me full of antibiotics. By evening, they still had not ruled out flesh-eating disease but they weren't taking any chances. They were prepping me for surgery but were awaiting some test results before proceeding. Fortunately the test results were in my favour. As it happened, they identified the bacteria as Group A Streptococcus which is, in fact, the same bacteria that can cause flesh-eating disease but luckily did not in my case.

But all the while, the infection had been spreading through my bloodstream and I was becoming quite sick. By Wednesday morning, I could barely lift my head from the pillow.  Because they had rules out flesh eating disease, they cancelled the planned elbow surgery and opted to just slice open the abscess to drain the poison, and flush it out. They did this with a local anesthetic, and I somehow found enough energy to record the procedure with the video camera in my phone:

Once the abscessed elbow was dealt with, I thought I would be getting better soon. That was a wrong assumption because by that time, the bacteria had gone to work on my kidneys, bladder, and liver, causing a great deal of damage. My urine looked like cranberry juice because of the heavy concentration of bacteria, and my liver wasn't working at all. I spent the next seven nights in hospital recovering from acute renal failure and elevated liver funtion tests. I was hooked up to three types of I.V. antibiotics for the next week, plus oxygen and cardiac monitoring equipment.

They sent me home after a total of eight nights in hospital, giving me a bottle of antibiotic pills to take. I had to go back within 24 hours, and they put me back on two I.V. antibiotics, releasing me for the second time the next day -- this time with a portable I.V. pump and Clyndomycin (one of the antibiotics I had been receiving). This lasted a day and a half before I had to go back. They put me back on the same two I.V. antibiotics and kept me in for another 4 days. This time, they released me again with two portable I.V. pumps and both of the antibiotics pumping into my arm (Clyndomycin and Vancomycin). I am to wear these two pumps and I.V. bags in a backpack for the next two weeks and follow up with a doctor at the infectious disease clinic.

To make the intravenous medicines work more efficiently, they installed a PICC line I.V. in my arm. Basically, a normal I.V. needle is only good for about 3-4 days before they need to find a new vein in your arm. With a PICC line, a small tube/hose is inserted inside a vein in your arm, and fed through the vein, up your arm, past your shoulder, and into your chest, where it dumps the medicine into a very large, high volume flowing artery near your heart. So here's what the PICC line looks like:

The blue hose is about 14" long and feeds into a large artery next to my heart.

It has a splitter on it so they can connect two I.V. lines, or use one for I.V. meds 

and the other to draw blood samples. It can stay in place for up to 6 months.

Here is the PICC line with tape/dressing on it so it doesn't get pulled out.

You can see the I.V. line connected which is pumping antibiotics. I didn't have

my camera phone to record the procedure to install the PICC but it was pretty cool.

 

So, as it turned out, given the extremely weakened state of my immune system at the time of the Roaming Rally, picking a little scab from my elbow was all it took to cause a very serious case of cellulitis with bacteria infected bursitis, sepsis (blood overwhelmed with bacteria infection), which led to kidney failure and my liver that wasn't working at all. I just hope this round of antibiotics will put an end to the infection and let me get back to a normal life.

Two portable I.V. pumps and two bags of antibiotics connected to the

PICC line in my arm. Gotta wear this 24/7 for at least the next 

two weeks. Inconvenient, yes, but better than lying in a hospital bed.