The Honda’s been leaving a calling card where ever I park it these days and it’s been getting worse.

The leak was coming from around the oil filter housing, so I thought a simple trip to a Honda dealer would result in a few oil seals and an oil filter.

Not so…, the the very polite parts guy calmly tells me that little O ring seal will be coming from Japan in 3 weeks time.

A search online results in finding out it’s dimensions are 81mm * 4.5mm diameter.

The local engineering shop had a similar one, at 4mm diameter, but it still leaked like a sieve.

Ebay had a few original ones listed, (new old stock), but when you live at the bottom of the world, things ordered from oversea’s have a habit of taking forever to turn up or sometimes not at all…

I’m sure I could keep hassling the friendly corporate Romans at the Honda shop, and I’m sure they will give me a nice reassuring answer, but no seal…

So, rather than wait, possibly forever, it’s time for a bit of ingenuity, or something like that, because not having a useable motorcycle sucks.

In the end, I simply made a normal gasket and fixed the problem!

Sometimes, the easist solutions are the best.

It’s not often I end up pushing a broken down bike home, but when it happens it’s a memorable experience.

It just died a few miles from home. I found a blown fuse which I promptly replaced with the only spare.

That was good enough to get me another 500 yards..

From there it was ‘just’ a few miles home -up hill. After some time pushing the bike in the hot afternoon sun with all my leathers on,  I thought there must be a better way…

My wife was at home so we arranged to tow it with the car while I held a strop in one hand, and steered the bike with the other one (a hairy experience).

A quick examination via google pointed me to a dead fuel pump.

Several hours later, I had the bike in pieces

The local KTM agent wasn’t quite that helpful, He simply advised me of a price of $600 and an unknown arrival date.

A quick search on Ebay found one for $130, which will arrive in a months time.

To be continued…

I’m a bit old school and usually do bolts up by ‘feel’, but yesterday, a torque wrench saved me a lot of grief.

Some of the newer stuff out there requires a bit of ‘finesse’, because the bolts and castings are about as strong as plastic.
In other words, soft castings and even softer bolts are very easy to break.

This miserable little 5mm bolt held the KTM’s oil filter cover on. If you look carefully, the thread was starting to deform near the head of the bolt as I tightened it up.

It’s meant to be tightened up to 8nm, but it felt like it wanted to strip itself. That meant either the thread in engine casting was stuffed  or the bolt was.
Fortunately, the bolt was stuffed and is easily replaced.

The worst case scenario is when it breaks in the engine casting, making it awkward to remove it.. luckily, that didn’t happen.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about motorcycles here,  That’s because there hasn’t been much to write about until now.

A ‘low oil pressure’ warning come up on the KTM, as i’m riding along one morning. It’s the sort of thing that can give you a sense of dread, but I’ve sort of had this experience before.

The bike sounded fine, and the temperature was normal, so I just kept going with my fingers hovering over the clutch lever.

Like so many things these days, warnings and alarms aren’t always credible.

I never that saw that warning again on the way home, but I thought I better find out what the problem is anyway.

A search of google brings up all sorts of horror stories, which didn’t do my mood any good, but gave me a few places to look.

First up was to check the oil level. It’s finicky to check this as the engine must be hot and the bike needs to be level.
To do this, I lie on the ground, hold the bike level, and look at the sightglass through the hole in the fairing at the same time. It sounds a bit awkward, and it is!

Second thing was to drop the oil out, and check the oil filter and the 2 oil screens.
To do this, the lower fairings need to come off first, which requires patience (lots)
The oil screens are easy to get to, one of them sits behind the sump plug and the oil filter simply sits behind a cover on the right hand side.

In short, I never found any problems, so I guess something went astray in the electrical/electronic department.

It’s just another thing to keep an eye on for the moment..