Followers

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Replacing the Brakes With a Loud Audience - 11 February 2018

11 February 2018 – I got up and went downstairs to pay for another day. Guess what? This is a love hotel. I saw at least three couples use it for that purpose. They were very young: late teens, early twenties. Anyway, I had a bigger issue to worry about…my rear brake. I got it cleared through the man of the house that I could work on my motorcycle. He backed his van out and I pushed my motorcycle up into the daylight where I could see what I was doing.
I removed my right saddle bag / pannier and dug out my tools. I got out my metric Allen / L-wrenches and removed my break caliper. Sure enough, the brake pads were worn down to the metal. Typically, these pads last 10,000 Miles / 16,000 Kilometers. These pads only lasted 7,000 Miles / 11,000 Kilometers. I attributed this to all the mountain driving I have been doing. Lots and lots of braking in all those mountain switch backs. I went into my spare parts bag and pulled out a new set of rear brake pads. I was carrying two sets of them. I also have them for the front disk rotor. I got out my file and flat-filed off any welded on globs of steel on the rotor. I also noticed some work hardening on the outer diameter. I don’t think that will be any problem. I roughed up the pads, cleaned up brake caliper, the disk rotor and caliper mounting arm. I dipped my rag in the gas tank and wiped all my parts clean with the gas rag. It works pretty slick. I showed the owner of the hotel my worn out disk pads and he kind of shook his head. Both he and his wife were giving me this look……Can this Gringo get this motorcycle put back together? They were worried and I kind of smiled.

Well, I put everything back together and Loctite the bolts holding the brake caliper to the brake caliper mounting arm. I pumped up the brakes and tested the brakes. They were holding and releasing when I took my foot off the brake pedal. I re-installed the right saddle bag / pannier and put everything back into it. I tested the rear brake again and everything was still working. I backed it farther back into the garage so the owner could get his van back in. Everybody was happy. The Gringo was going to be leaving.

All the time I was working on my motorcycle, this little dog with a loud bark continued barking non-stop. He also riled up the other dogs in the neighborhood with his / her barking. Well, I went to my room and the barking continued all afternoon while I was planning my route around Lima, Peru. I got Blanche programmed to go around the city as best I could and was feeling pretty happy about it. Then I got to thinking I should purchase some Yamaha 20w-50 engine oil. I looked up on the internet to see if there was a Yamaha Dealer Lima. There is one, but it’s in the inner city. I thought to myself if I’m going to be driving up to Cuzco, Peru – Machu Picchu – through all those mountains, I should change oil. There will be a lot of shifting and clutching. It will be best to have new oil in the engine. So, I programmed a route into the city to the Yamaha Dealer. I got that done before 9:00 p.m. Blanche was all tuned up and ready to go. I had my hotel picked out in Nazca, Peru for tomorrow night. Things were looking up. The little dog was still barking. How could a dog bark that much? He was going on 12 hours of straight barking. I went to bed listening to the barking dog. I woke up sometime after 10:30 p.m. and the dog was still barking. I went back to bed.

No comments:

Post a Comment