I’d purchased the wrong tire? WTF!
Everyone and their dog insisted the PC800, especially in the first year (1989), needs a tire exactly the right size. If the tire is too big it bumps into (and damages!) the bedonkadonk. Honda (wisely) reduced the cargo area in 1990 to make more room for the tire.
That’s right boys and girls, my bedonkadonk is the biggest bedonkadonk they ever made!
The tire situation is known. It’s fact. The lore of PC800 handed down through generations is very clear. I’d been careful. How could I have possibly gotten the wrong thing?
- Perhaps I’d ordered the right size but Amazon delivered the wrong size? I checked my order and the shrink wrapped tire sitting in my garage. Nope, I’d gotten precisely what I’d ordered.
- Perhaps I’d misread the thousands of threads and discussions? Nope, I’d correctly (as much as I can tell) ordered precisely what everyone suggested.
- Had I’d been riding around on the “wrong” size all this time? Yes! Dammit!
What an unforced error! Installing the “correct” size seems obvious. Who could miss that detail? It has been known since the first Bush president was in power. That’s right, 1989 is back when phones were bolted to walls and bitching about AI was a science fiction plot. Yet technology of the internet (which didn’t exist in 1989) was telling me getting the wrong tire was extra bad. I’d been riding on it three years. WTF!?!
I delved into tire spec details (at the level of ultra-nerd) because this was bothering me. I’d ordered a Dunlop K555 size 140/80. This is EXACTLY WHAT HONDA TOLD ME TO DO. That’s the OEM recommendation. I’d pulled off a Dunlop D404 size 140/90. You don’t accidentally wind up with a bike this weird, why would you mount something that supposedly causes problems?
The good news is, there’s no damage. I think I know what “saved me”. In tire sizes, the first # is the width. Same width for both tires, thus they’ll both fit on the same rim. The second # is the tire’s “profile” the D404, with it’s 90 instead of desired 80, is about a half inch taller. A half inch is no big deal on a “normal” bike but on mine it’s sketchy. Luckly, I’ve never ridden two up. (In years gone by Mrs. Curmudgeon would ride with me. One day she announced sane people prefer vehicles with roofs and doors. Fair ’nuff.) If I’d ridden two up would I have compressed the shock just enough to create an issue? Maybe.
Just goes to show, God wants me to ride alone.
Further cogitation on the origin story of my bike:
The bike is old. It has hardly any miles. It must have sat, unridden and ignored, for some unknowable period of time; possibly many years. When a machine sits unused it degrades. The person who finds this glorious piece of history has to put their “barn find” back on the road. That means fiddling with all sorts of stuff. Brittle gaskets, leaky fuel lines, rust in the fuel tank, dead batteries, mice in the air filter, old tires, etc…
I didn’t want the drama of “resurrecting” a PC800. So I deliberately bought a PC800 that was 100% road worthy. I literally rode it home.
The owner said he’d had the bike “gone through”. You can either do this yourself (if you like misery) or hire a mechanic (if you hate financial solvency). The way he phrased it implies he paid to have it done; which makes me jealous. I can’t get a mechanic to do a damn thing most of the time, and when I can it takes forever. I deal with things myself as best I can but I’m (as I repeat often) a shitty mechanic. To me, “going through” a dead machine is terrifying. (I have been through the trauma several times. I hate it.)
I did not get a straight answer about when this happened. Also, nobody likes working on a PC800 so I wanted the name of the mechanic who willingly undertook this venture. I got the name of a dealership. Later on, when I inquired as the dealership, they wouldn’t give me the time of day.
Where am I going with this? The bike was dead at some point. It was “gone through”. During “gone through” someone mounted the “wrong” tire and also torqued the living shit out of it. Why?
I checked the tire. It was manufactured late in 2019. The front is roughly the same age. The tire has the date of manufacture embossed on it, NOT the date of installation.
It was made far away (South Korea I think?). It surely took a while to get from the factory to a dealer that mounted it.
What happened roughly when a 2019 tire was presumably mounted?
The bike was last serviced in 2020. The year everyone lost their damn mind!
Thus, I infer the bike’s origin story! It was sitting around for a long time. Then, the guy I bought it from paid someone to “go through it” exactly when people were stampeding like lemmings.
Remember back then? Don’t let them gaslight you. You saw what you saw. I learned more about human nature than I ever wanted to. I specifically and correctly, remember shortages of everything; likely including motorcycle tires. It was a world where people were closing schools, arresting hikers on open air trails, wearing bandannas like they had a medical purpose, arrows were painted on the floors of stores, churches were closed but not Walmart. (People did all that weird shit and they insisted it made sense. Never forget what you saw with your own eyes!)
That chaos was the moment when someone mounted whatever tire they happened to have in stock. Then they torqued it like a gorilla on crack.
Everything makes sense.
I’d be pissed if they did that shit in 2026. I find it in my heart to forgive it in 2020. Mounting “the wrong” tire to the wrong torque was a raindrop of “whoops” in a tidal wave of absolute pants shitting hysteria.
When the Visigoths are surging toward Rome, quality of service declines.
Everything after that was mundane. I took the wheel and the tire (the right tire!) to the shop. They said it would cost $50 to mount. I almost died of surprise when they charged me $50 just like they said they would. I never get stuff at the quoted price from a dealer! (Since I didn’t pay a disposal surcharge, the left over old tire is sitting in the back of my truck. I’ll deal with it.)
I also got the greatest gift ever from the service guy! The splines of a shaft drive require molybdenum grease. I don’t know what’s special about molybdenum but everyone says so. It would probably be cheaper to put cocaine on the damn splines. I was about to buy a tube, which is stupidly expensive (and I only needed a tiny amount). The shop guy was like “I’ll put moly on the splines for you. It’s like $90 a tube and that’s ridiculous.”
I wanted to give him a hug!
I had to buy an $8 tub of plain old lithium grease for the axle. What’s the difference between molybdenum and lithium? Dunno. Eighty bucks and a few more syllables?
I decided to drain and refill the gear oil in the rear drive. This was super simple. Now that I know how to do it, it seems like a thing to do whenever I swap a tire.
I cleaned the brakes but they didn’t need new pads. I didn’t mess with the bearings. There’s no indication they needed anything and I wasn’t about to go looking for trouble.
I torqued the 27mm nut of misery to spec using my crude manual torque-wrench. It felt like the torque spec was a lot less than I’d encountered. I’m sure somebody overtightened it, possibly because they were wearing a mask or listening to “news” about various cities in states of complete anarchy. I think my next tire swap will be a whole lot easier because the nut is properly torqued instead of “cranked on like someone hates axle threads”.
In 2026, in my quiet garage, where I do not allow people to freak out, the bike was reassembled in an entirely different manner than its last event. Moving with extreme caution I did it all in a few hours. No muss, no fuss. Someone more skilled could do it in 20 minutes. Someone more skilled than me had done a half assed job about 6 years ago.
It looks a lot cleaner now. Just like the guy in the YouTube video that started all this. I hope he know he inspires others.
Looking at the photo I see that it’s clean but not YouTube/TikTok clean. My bike is for riding. It’s never for show.
I took it for a test drive. It was super windy so I didn’t get to take a nice 300 mile inaugural ride. Shame. I earned one.
I daydream about a late season motorcycle campout. The weather sucks now. Maybe I missed my chance, maybe not. Regardless, the bike is ready to go.
Thanks for joining me.
A.C.
P.S. This is my “huge service manual”. It’s not an original. I paid for a download (there are free ones but I wanted better quality). Then I paid to have it printed and bound. It’s not nicely bound or perfect print but I couldn’t find an original for sale. It’s the best I can do. It helps offset my ineptitude.
