First Service and Bean Soup.

Today was service the motor bike day.  Well I drove it up to the cycle shop and watched as they serviced the bike.  It holds .9 of a liter of oil.  Yah like nine tenths.  But if you change it you only get out .8 so that is what you put back in.  More than likely I could have done this myself, but I chose to watch them this first time.

The tricky and nasty part is that the rear axle oil must be changed, and it is 80/90 weight oil like in a differential on a car.  You take out a plug on the bottom of the drive, and it comes out, ever so slooooowly.  I wanted to see how they put the fluid back in and that was interesting.

They had a pint oil bottle with a cap that had a tubing fitting in it.  Over the fitting they had installed a length of tubing that was almost like fish aquarium tubing.  It was small enough to poke into the upper bolt hole in the axle housing.

With a measuring cup they measured out .19 liters of gear lube and then poured it into the cut out bottom of the bottle with the tube in the top.  They had wired up the bottle, upside down to the rack on the back of the bike.  This allowed  it to ever so slowly run down into the housing.

My turning signal switch has been working erratically and I asked them to look into that as well.  I was amazed to find that they had one in stock.  They disassembled the instrument housing and changed out the entire switch assembly.  That would be under warranty.

The price for almost one liter of oil and labor was $34.95.  With tax, it was almost forty.  These jobs seem labor intensive, and require tricks of the trade, that are not immediately obvious.   That is what you are paying for, the knowledge and experience to do the job quickly.  I would have fooled around all day and never got that thick oil into the transaxle.  And it was $10.95 a  pint.  No 500 ml, I’ll never get used to this metric thing.

From there I rode to the local harbor freight to get a tire wrench, and check if they sold spare tires for the utility trailer.  They did, but not the right size.  So I went to the local Tractor Supply.  They had exactly the right size tire mounted on the right rim.  It was ten percent off too.  With tax though it came to $120.

I had to go park the cycle and go back with the truck to pick that up, as the tire is a 15 inch and as big as most car tires.

This is dragging out too long, but this afternoon we had the leftover ham bone from Easter, so we made bean soup out of a bag of mixed beans and lentils.  I think the package boasted 12 different beans.  That was tasty!  Loyce made corn bread and it was hot out of the oven.

I rode off into the park South of town during the evening hours, to enjoy the warm temperatures we had built during the day.  We had to use the AC for a little while at the house this afternoon, but it is too cool off some in the next few days.

Retired Rod