DIY maintenance

[Rynglieder]

There was a reasonably tolerable day last week so I decided to give the Z1000 a short run. It was obviously feeling deeply hurt by the lack of attention it had been getting over the winter and proceeded to run like a bag of nails.

Without giving them a fair trial, I accused the spark plugs. Coincidentally I had only been thinking about them the week before - at about 5-6k miles it had misbehaved in this way and the Kawasaki dealer said at the time that these bikes were heavy on plugs. As the bike has now done 13k I had almost been bracing myself for some sort of tantrum.

Being a "poor pensioner" these days I have been doing bits and pieces that would have been shoved in the direction of a workshop and flush with my own success of doing an oil change on the GSX I decided I'd have a go at the Z1000.

What a pig of a job. The tank came off easily enough but it was all downhill from there. The plugs are buried deep in the cylinder head and the socket set I possessed extracted numbers 1 and 4 without any drama. Before I could even see cylinders 2 and 3 the coolant reservoir had to be excommunicated and some heavy-duty hosing dragged through the spaghetti surrounding them.

Whilst I could now see the plugs there was no way my limited armoury of tools was going to get them out. The extension bar I had just about poked out above the cylinder head when seated on the plugs but there was absolutely no room to swing the ratchet down there. And thus, it was hand-in-pocket time again and an order to Amazon for a set of three extension bars of various sizes and a universal joint to suit.

Once everything was to hand, I pressganged the Dear Wife into an apprentice role to hold various bits of wiring loom and hoses out of the way as they were profoundly interfering with the plug's exit strategy, constantly trying to drop them back down into the head. I found myself reminded of those amusement arcade games with the grab that lets go of the coveted cuddly toy just before it gets to the drop chute.

New Iridium plugs were eventually eased in. Luckily, it all seemed to go back together OK in the end and I seem not to have forgotten any vent hoses, ground wire clamps and bits of bodywork that fell victim to the process.

Next up was an oil change. I thought that the filter wrench I had invested in for the GSX was going to come in useful, but no, the Zed needed one 3mm smaller, so that was something else added to the Amazon order. The new tool bill came in at about £20 and whilst I was not expecting to buy anything at all, I suppose it is probably less than the cost a half hour's labour at a dealership so I think I won out on the end. At least the oil change was totally straightforward.

The other morning, I decided to put some air in the tyres (as this is rumoured to improve handling) and took it for a short ride into Warwickshire. It was now running beautifully again and I allowed myself a self-congratulatory coffee in Alcester before the ride home.

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My thoughts are now turning to the GTR, but there's an awful lot of plastic around that and an even bigger tank to lift out of the way. Maybe I'll hang on until just before my next European excursion and let someone else tackle that.