Well here goes, my first effort at posting a thread...
I recently joined the club having purchased a Rapide from a friend. His step dad passed it to him, and was supposed to have done it up in the 80's and it hasn't done much since. "Done it up" clearly could mean anything, so I'm going very carefully.
Big Eddy kindly cruised down on his Vin yesterday in the freezing cold, and cast his eye over the bike, and gave me the confidence to carry on getting it ready to fire up without a total strip down. Thanks Eddy, you are a top man.
This evening I decided I just had to clean out the oil tank. I could not bring my self to put clean oil in a tank with half an inch of silver sludge in the bottom. Thats when drained.
So, doing the "right thing" I searched the forum while having my lunch, for tips on how to do this job. Well, short of taking the bike apart and cutting manholes etc there didn't seem much hope.
But hang on, if the fitting at the back that the oil flows out of can be removed, can't I just flush the crud out of that?
So I set up a gutter carefully shaped at the top to go under the tank, to take away the "flushings" (you should know I am a farmer).
Before unscrewing the oil fitting, I put a pint of petrol in the tank and shook the bike side to side for a bit. That worked well, and dipping the tank with a stick showed the crud was loosened.
All set up, I removed the fitting, and a black and silver river gushed down the gutter. I had a gallon can of petrol ready and poured it full bore into the tank..... more black and silver gushing.
It took two gallons of BPs finest till the torrent ran clear. Peering in to the tank it all looked lovely and clean. Of course I couldn't see very far in, but I'm confident all the muck is shifted.
The worrying bit is the quantity and make up of the "washings". I filtered the 2 gallons of gas, and collected 15 see sees of silver filings.
Look away now if you have a weak constitution.
I fished this bad boy out with my magnet
So its a bit of a worry, but whats done is done. How on earth all that crap got back up into the tank does confuse me, and how much damage did it do on the way??
I took out the filter, which had a fair few filings in as well, so need a new one of those.
Certainly adds power to the elbow of those advocating full flow filtration!
Cheers, Tom.
I recently joined the club having purchased a Rapide from a friend. His step dad passed it to him, and was supposed to have done it up in the 80's and it hasn't done much since. "Done it up" clearly could mean anything, so I'm going very carefully.
Big Eddy kindly cruised down on his Vin yesterday in the freezing cold, and cast his eye over the bike, and gave me the confidence to carry on getting it ready to fire up without a total strip down. Thanks Eddy, you are a top man.
This evening I decided I just had to clean out the oil tank. I could not bring my self to put clean oil in a tank with half an inch of silver sludge in the bottom. Thats when drained.
So, doing the "right thing" I searched the forum while having my lunch, for tips on how to do this job. Well, short of taking the bike apart and cutting manholes etc there didn't seem much hope.
But hang on, if the fitting at the back that the oil flows out of can be removed, can't I just flush the crud out of that?
So I set up a gutter carefully shaped at the top to go under the tank, to take away the "flushings" (you should know I am a farmer).
All set up, I removed the fitting, and a black and silver river gushed down the gutter. I had a gallon can of petrol ready and poured it full bore into the tank..... more black and silver gushing.
It took two gallons of BPs finest till the torrent ran clear. Peering in to the tank it all looked lovely and clean. Of course I couldn't see very far in, but I'm confident all the muck is shifted.
The worrying bit is the quantity and make up of the "washings". I filtered the 2 gallons of gas, and collected 15 see sees of silver filings.
Look away now if you have a weak constitution.
I fished this bad boy out with my magnet
So its a bit of a worry, but whats done is done. How on earth all that crap got back up into the tank does confuse me, and how much damage did it do on the way??
I took out the filter, which had a fair few filings in as well, so need a new one of those.
Certainly adds power to the elbow of those advocating full flow filtration!
Cheers, Tom.
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