I already mentioned I’m a lousy (inexperienced) mechanic. You already knew I bought a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast… which no mechanic will touch. I knew damn well what I was getting into. I did it anyway. Such hubris!
Dealerships in my area don’t like to service… anything. They’ll barely touch the Goldwing their customers financed two years ago. A decade ago they started to get fidgety over brake pads and a tire for my dirt simple 1999 Honda Shadow; which is pathetic. Honda sold like a bajillion of them! Imagine a mechanic in 1973 saying “Volkswagen Beetle? I’d need metric sockets! Can’t work on that.”
So anyway, I bought a 37 year old bike knowing I’d someday face the learning curve I’m enduring right now. Fine. A man needs a challenge and besides Hondas are famously reliable. (When I bought it I secretly wondered if I’d be able to make PC800 body panels with my 3d printer. Answer back then? No! More detailed answer now that I’ve experimented with 3d printing a few years? Mostly no.)
Last year I changed the oil. For an inept dweeb it was a cracking good start. I can and do change oil but it feels like a challenge. What can I say? We all have shit at which we suck.
This year I finally got healthy enough to take my PC800 camping. It was great. That’s when I noticed the tire is running out of tread. These things turn into sagas so I started “working on it” right away. There may (will?) be months of grumpy drama and unavoidable setbacks. Best to start early.
What do I mean by “grumpy drama”. Well, here goes:
I went to the dealer. “Can you put a new tire on my bike?”
I knew the answer but you’ve got to ask. It’s like checking the fuel in a car that won’t start. You’ve got to check before you do whatever else will really fix it.
The parts guy lobbed grenades at me. “Tires that size are out of stock. It’ll take 2 months to get one. Plus I’m quoting a price $60 higher than Amazon.”
The parts guy tagged out and handed me to the service guy. “That ridiculous price is just for the tire. Installation will be a lot more.”
I could live with that. A ‘throw money at it’ situation implies the situation will get solved.
But the service guy wasn’t done yet. He looked at the calendar like it was a cancer diagnosis. “We will drag this out”, the service guy continued, “we’ll take so long your life will begin to ebb before your eyes. The bike will wind up abandoned in a garage full of snowmobiles. We won’t even look at it until January, at which time we’ll say ‘it’s not a snowmobile’ and put it off another six months.”
I expected this but he heaped on more despair.
“Also, did you say it has ‘plastic fairings’?” He’d Googled PC800 and was squinting at the images. He didn’t like what he saw. “Why don’t you fuck right off? In fact, keep fucking off until you cross the fuck off event horizon from which we will never see you again.”
They didn’t say it exactly like that. I exaggerate… a little. And, it’s about what I expected so I wasn’t upset.
Before leaving I tried an alternative. “What if I show up with a wheel in one hand and a tire in the other?”
This changed everything. They were on board. They like mounting tires! “$50 to mount it. Probably take a couple hours.”
My path was clear.
Stay tuned…
That’s how I do it. I figure the shop will charge me $100 an hour for the labor. It will take me about twice as long to do it as they can, so I’m paying myself $50 an hour by doing it myself. That’s not a bad salary. The going rate around here just to mount and balance the tire is $65.
Besides, while you’ve got it apart, it’s a great time to inspect and grease the drive shaft splines, check the brake pads, check the wheel bearings etc.
I hate rust on my bikes so I take the opportunity to do a corrosion inspection on those hard to reach places and take care of any I find. When you let the rust get away from you it can be impossible to recover from without a complete “to the frame” teardown. Staying on top of it before it gets out of hand is the key. Any time I take anything apart, before it goes back together everything in the area will be rust free.
One thing to consider: on my Valkyrie, there are three o-rings and a thrust washer in the wheel hub/final drive that should be replaced every time it comes apart. Don’t know if the PC800 has anything like that but ask Mr. Google before you start so if you need them you can get the parts in advance.
Anyway, I have confidence in you. It’ll be fun.
I did most of the stuff you mentioned, greasing splines and such. It would be madness to put the tire back without checking that stuff, and I’m sure some dealerships do exactly that.
Please forgive me if I’m insulting your intelligence. I’m not really a “know it all” type (reading back through my comment, it may have come across that way), and you didn’t solicit advice so if it’s unwelcome, let me know and I’ll happily shut up.
It’s just a subject I’m pretty familiar with so I thought I’d try to save you a bit of heartburn.
Don’t sweat it. Your comments are welcome and appreciated.
Be prepared for disaster always is my motto. Just installed new tubes and tires on a 50 year old Jawa Babetta moped, now I am working on the fuel system which was clogged from tank to needle valve.
So, changing tubes and tires is easy, not much more than an overgrown bicycle after all….. yes, only the previous owner (redneckus americanus silvestris) re-spoked the rear wheel, used the wrong size spokes, used a grinder to cut off the excess inside rim but did not remove all the razor sharp edges. Assembled the wheel and promptly punched 3 holes into the new inner tube. Repaired the 3 holes with old style glue on patches, then instead of properly grinding/filing the spoke ends smooth , lathered a 1/2″ wide 1/4 thick bead of red silicon caulk in the valley to cover them, added the belt, re-assembled the tire (it was flat and did not hold air when acquired).
So, here comes moi, likely the 23rd owner of this thing, found all the mayhem, properly dressed all the sharp edges, extracted all the gunk, re-assembled properly with new inner tubes, new belts and new tires (Chinese of course). So now it rolls but won’t putt putt, onward we go.
And yes, I read the Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance 40 years ago when I had the Suzuki 650, to this day don’t understand what the F the guy was trying to convey.
Nothing is quite so fulfilling as “unfucking” the mess some earlier person made out of a machine and getting it to run smoothly. Amazing how well an old motorcycle or scooter can run with just a little care too. I once had a Vespa Paggio but I only got to use it a few years before life moved on. It was a fun little bugger.