Oh No! After the extreme cold weather my V Star 650 is pretending to be a Harley Davidson again! (Its just a joke people jeez, bikers are so sensitive. I know HD’s quality is not anywhere near as bad as the AMF days anymore)
Sooner or later if you have a xsv650 variant you will get this annoying leak by the kickstand. Not to fear this is a very easy fix that even the most non-mechanically inclined can fix. For me this problem seems to happen most often in the cold of winter, I think it is due to the plastic switch being set into the aluminum engine and the different materials expanding at different rates, or it could just be the cold O ring not sealing as good. Who knows, but eventually all bikes seem to get this leak.
Pull the fake Transmission cover off. There are only 4 bolts holding it on, they will be the ones with the washer and rubber behind it. The other bolts on the Classic cover are fake and for show only, they don’t go to anything. Your guess is as good as mine why they put fake screws on there, maybe its supposed to make the cover look cool and less like a fake tranny or as we would say “lipstick on a pig.”
Remove the crescent moon shaped cover, just 2 bolts here.
Check your stator wires grommet for leaks. Another leak can happen from here that is much more difficult to fix. These look good and seem to be holding since the Stator Replacement.
As you can see my leak this time is from the plastic neutral switch. 9 times out of 10 this will be the source of your oil leak from the kickstand area.
Its that time of year again, I let the bike sit too long over winter without first putting Seafoam in the gas and now the pilot jets in my carbs are clogged up and the bike won’t run off choke. I thought about doing a post on how to clean out the carbs but since someone already went through the trouble of doing some fairly nice videos of the process I’ll just use those instead. Parts of these videos are wrong here and there and while the guy looks like he knows what he’s doing its apparent he hasn’t done much with this particular carb or bike before, but overall they are ok. Enjoy.
Most of the time you would not need to fully disassemble the carbs to clean them, however if you do so be sure to use Ziv’s stainless replacement screws as it makes future maintenance a breeze. If the bike has only been sitting a short while and will not start or will not idle off of choke then 90% of the time the pilot jets are clogged and just need to be cleaned not the entire carb. If you happen to have Ziv’s screws already on your carbs you can very easily clean out the pilot jets (or swap main jets) in about 5 to 15 minutes without taking the tank off. Maybe I’ll do a future post on that process.
This one is a good example of the differences between a California model V Star (in the video) vs a 49 state model (mine). Most likely you would not have to deal with the extra gas tank vent lines.
I also wouldn’t even bother with the fuel catch jar. What are you saving? 5 drops? Just hold a rag under the petcock when you pull off the fuel line and call it good as the numerous pics of me on this blog doing the same have shown:
We went for a nice ride today to get a picture for a scavenger hunt from the CC&D forum which ended up taking us into new territory that I didn’t know existed. The fall colors of all the cotton woods and aspens were spectacular, quite a surprise. The colors visible from Santa Fe up on the ski hill had already faded, they usually peak the week of Columbus day and we’d had an early snow which knocked all the leaves off.
We went from Glorieta to Pecos along the old Route 66 winding through the amazing colors and from there we came to a crossroads where I had no idea where we were or where any of the roads went. We decided to head north and see where the road took us where we found a cool monastery and down a dirt road a lake surrounded by orange and yellow.
This exploded parts diagram shows how the clutch actuation works. The lever #14 is attached to the clutch cable and handle bar lever which pushes on part #1 to release and engage the clutch. When I pulled mine apart to see just how bad the needle cage bearing #4 was on mine which I guessed had failed this is what I found below.
There was no bearing at all!! All I found was a silvery crumbly paste and the three small bits of roller bearings to the right. The bearing was completely ground down to dust! That might explain a few things!
The push rod (#1) goes through the center of the splined input shaft to the transmission. An unusual but compact design. The end of mine looked like this, very heavily worn and mushroomed out making it impossible to pull out through the back. Normally you do not need to pull the transmission out to inspect all these pieces and this regular maintenence of inspecting and lubricating the needle cage bearing can be done with everything still on the bike. (I wish I had known that ahead of time and perhaps my bike wouldnt have broken down in the first place) However, as this part on mine is completely mangled the whole transmission would have needed to come out anyway.
Why doesn’t he just pull it out through the front of the transmission you might ask? This is why. On the other end the shaft is fused to the washer and it’s impossible to remove! This is looking bad for what other damage I might find… Time to get out the hack saw or dremel cut off wheel.
I was not expecting these pieces to be so mangled, so I need to pull apart the clutch and check for additional damage and see what other parts I need to order.
First step in pulling apart the clutch is to remove every other bolt. These parts are under tremendous pressure and if the pressure is not released slowly and evenly you could loose an eye or more importantly damage the flywheel. The existing bolts are not long enough to fully release the spring and longer ones need to be put in.
For most of the last year my 1976 BMW R90/6 has been neglected. Sadly the R90 has sat inoperable before starting the teardown this weekend. A year ago the V Star’s pickup coil and clutch decided to go out and a week after that the BMW’s clutch cratered also. During a ride home the lever got very stiff and on the last hard pull it made a loud expensive sounding CLANK and the lever went slack, riding in rush hr traffic on a 34 year old bike with sucky antiquated brakes at best and no clutch is not a fun experience. I decided to fix the cheapest one with readily available parts first then its been one thing after another and before you know it wow has it been a year already?
I had been able to temporarily fix the clutch by readjusting the cables and the push rod bolts at the back of the transmission but that resulted in lots of squeaking and the clutch then being stuck open. I’ve guessed after reading numerious threads on ADVrider.com that the needle pushrod/throw out bearing is toast and mine sounded bad enough that I’d want to check the clutch too for damage and piece of mind.
Main thing preventing repair has been the center stand that was broken when I bought it. I didnt have the equipment to fix it and didn’t trust any of the dealers who couldnt even find the air cleaner in the computer to lay a hand on it. A few months ago a buddy and former BMW airhead mechanic opened a independent shop 2 miles from my house and to throw a little business his way I had him drill and retap the frame to finally repair the center stand. With that finally done teardown can begin!
First thing was getting rid of the battery box to see what I was working with to pull the transmission. What a royal pain in the ass that was! In hind sight its better to leave it there and first remove the air box to give a big hole to pull it out through the side of the frame instead of out the top. Also 4 of the 5 rubber mounts came apart and sadly I cant find any OEM replacements. I have a link for some rubber mount fasteners somewhere that I’ll put up on my Airhead resources page I’m also working on as I rebuild it.
Next, loosening the drive shaft bolts at the back of the transmission. The 10mm wrench in the tool kit is perfect for this, my own box end wrench was too thick to fit. Step down on the rear brake to prevent the shaft from turning and getting these out is a snap, Cece did all of them. You must use a 12 point box end though, these are not hex head bolts.
To remove the swingarm on an airhead you need to remove a thin recessed nut inside a tube. Its placed in such a way that a regular off the shelf socket will not fit. You’ll need something like this special machined down and faced socket available from Northwoods Airheads. These are very high quality and nicely made and also much cheaper than the BMW made tool for the same job that I happened to find in the stock tool kit after I started and didnt realize I had.
While in the neighborhood we explored Mustang Island a bit to kill some time and have a look around. Much has changed since I was last here as a kid. The long stretches of wetlands, sand and dunes have all become colorful pastel beach houses and fancy hotels. All of these houses, no two painted the same color, remind me of pictures of some port towns I’ve seen in New England, Iceland and the Mediterranean pretty neat.
This is just for my friend Kody, it’s not too often we see anyone who’s name is spelled this way.
Well we had an unfortunate mishap during all of this after getting back to Port Aransas in the dark…
One of my auxiliary lights mounts sheared off from the many thousands of miles of vibrations and got caught between the front tire and fender. With a loud crunching noise it spit out the front of the fender but not before mangling both the light and my fender! The fender ended up with a pronounced crease down the whole length with cracked paint on the edges. These edges are now rusted with most of the paint flaked off.
One of the main motivations for this whole trip came down to this day. I’d had this ring custom made by Santa Fe Goldworks. They did an amazing job, it’s white gold with Mediterranean coral inlay. Although I had gone to David Griego first, I went to many jewelers and artists around the surrounding area to see what my other options were and the quality either wasn’t as good or they could not get anything like this anymore as SouthWestern jewelry was no longer “in vogue” like it was 3 to 5 years ago, in those cases everyone referred me back to David as one of the best out there. I think I made the right choice. David was great to work with and I highly recommend them, it was also nice to support the local artisans during these tough times.
I took a big risk of getting the ring done with no input from Cece, would she like it? I thought the non-traditional design would reflect her Native heritage. Only through a bit of subterfuge was I really positive on the coral. One weekend while the ring was in process I took her through many shops around the plaza so she wouldn’t suspect something when I said, “Hey lets go in here!” All of the staff were in on it and pretended not to know me. It was such a relief when she gravitated towards the coral work like I had already ordered.
Not suspecting anything... Can you see the tiny frog down by the puddle?
So I’d been carrying this around the entire trip being extra cautious not to loose it anywhere. While on the bike I kept it in my nicely padded camera bag to protect it from being banged around or potentially falling out of a pocket somewhere in the vastness of Texas. When we’d stop and go inside for a while I didn’t want to leave it outside unsecured so I had to keep taking it out of the bag and putting it in my jacket pocket, being careful that she didn’t see me doing it and then reversing the process while she was putting on her helmet before we left. Trying to do this a dozen times with your girlfriend 2 feet away without getting caught, whew talk about stressful.
For a month I’d been planning on proposing tomorrow at the Texas State Aquarium at the dolphin tank or during the Dolphin Encounter we were planning on doing, whichever felt right at the moment. Well this morning when I was getting water for breakfast one of those little tree frogs was up inside the faucet again and came out with the water. I caught him and put him up on the table for Cece and this one seemed content to sit there and explore the table top and not run away like yesterdays frog.
I spilled some cold water getting the stove ready and he gently touched his toes in there and slowly got in the little puddle, he did not look happy that it was ice cold. When the water was hot I slowly poured some more on the opposite side of the puddle for him to gently heat it up and the little frog flattened himself out and snuggled his legs into his new hot tub puddle, Ahhhh! It was pretty hilarious.
While we were having our breakfast a fly came to taste a few grains of instant chai and our little buddy got some breakfast too. Between the frog and the cardinals singing and the peaceful morning with just the two of us the moment seemed right and I proposed a day ahead of plans (good thing too with all the school groups of screaming kids we would encounter at the aquarium).
Cece’s response, “REALY?!”
When I fetched the box our little green buddy hopped up on top of the stove burner and scared us that he was going to burn himself. He stayed there watching us while I proposed, our little witness.
Such a huge relief that she loved the ring and I didn’t need to keep hiding it right under her nose. Thanks Santa Fe Goldworks! She gets lots of complements on it.
While we were killing time waiting to see if we could go out on a fishing boat we had a lot of time to explore the town of Port Aransas. Not much has changed since I was a kid, they still had many of the same old shops and restaurants and all the charter boat companies were all still there with most the same boats. Some of the small stores and restaurants were now abandoned or bulldozed and some massive new beach wear and gift shops had gone in.
Somewhere there are pictures of me and my knee high cousin standing in this sharks mouth taken probably close to 20 years ago, still looks the same as I remember.
Well some people got to go fishing… This is one of the old charter boats coming in from an overnighter.
One of the deck hands was telling us how to tell some of the beach birds apart. He said the, “laughing gulls are the ones that look like someone grabbed them by their back legs and dunked their head in a bucket of black paint.” Hahaha, they do look like that.
I’ve eaten here many times before and Castaways Seafood and Grill was just as good as I remembered. Many of the restaurants around here also have a neat policy where you bring in your cleaned catch from going out deep sea fishing and they will professionally cook it for you, pretty cool. I was really looking forward to bringing in some snapper or mackerel fresh off the boat and having them cook it but sadly our deep sea fishing did not pan out.
great po’boys at Castaways
The last night we went all out and went to Pelican’s landing. I knew we may be a bit out of my budget as soon as we saw the parking lot was full of Mercedes and Cadillacs. The food here was pretty good but remember to bring an extra wallet to pay for it. Really it was not much better than Pier 99 and other places we’ve tried and in my opinion not worth the extra cost.
We also tried Fins Grill & Icehouse and were not impressed. I got two recommendations from locals about Fins but if they were good at one time they really phoned it in when we were there, looking at the numerous mediocre to bad reviews online many agree with me. The food was slightly expensive and just wasn’t that great. The bread was stale, the fries were cold and the seafood nachos appetizer that we got was almost inedible. Maybe its the humidity but the chips were so stale they tasted like they’d been left out for a few weeks, the cheese was bad too, by the time they brought it it was already a cold hard lump and didn’t taste good. Not the worst nachos I’ve ever had but pretty close. The sea food bits in the nachos were great but the nachos part of the nachos was not. Strangely I’ve never had good nachos in Texas its not that hard to make and with the close proximity to Mexico you’d think they’d have some killer plates here. Maybe its the humidity and chips go stale very quickly, back home in the desert I can leave a bag open 3 or 4 days and they still taste fresh. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson and no more nachos from Texas! I may have gotten spoiled working next to BumbleBee’s Baja Grill with the best I’ve had anywhere in the US just a 3 minute walk away.
We had really been looking forward to getting to go deep sea fishing from Port Aransas for months prior to this trip. This is something that my grandfather would take us on nearly every summer when I was younger and hearing me talk about it Cece wanted to try it too.
We went to a couple of outfits the day before to get prices and times and decided on Dolphin Docks that I’d been out with many times before, all of the others along main street as well. They were the friendliest and most helpful with our questions. For the 8 hour deep sea fishing trips we had to be at the shop early before sunup which meant either getting up from our camp site at 3AM and riding all the way from Goose Island and hoping the road construction and ferry along the way did not slow us down too much or we could get another place to stay in town. We got a motel room across the street and had to leave the tent and stuff set up two islands away.
We had to get licenses from the gas stations the night before and were all set to go fishing in the morning!
The next morning however it was blowing hard and although the minimum amount of people needed to go out had already prepaid 4 of them did not show up the next morning and the trip was canceled. The captain said if we wanted to wait around for a couple of hours and see if there was enough for a later one we could do that. We sat and talked with the captain and owner and crew for a few more hours but by then there was even less people and it looked like the whole day was wasted. They said from the weather reports it only looked to be getting worse through the weekend as a storm system went through, the one we had been running from since New Mexico. So it looked like even less of a chance of going out the next day or on the weekend.
We went out and explored Port Aransas for half the day and by the afternoon the waters were calmed down a little and we were able to get in on a short bay fishing trip instead. I’ve never liked bay fishing, its like paying for something that you could be doing yourself but she was really set on getting to fish and we had already paid for our licenses for the day. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pics of us fishing we were too busy baiting hooks and then loosing it to small hardhead and gafftop catfish that we had to keep throwing back.
Me and Cece did not end up catching anything keepable that we could eat but we had a good time anyway. We struck out this time due to the weather, now we need to come back to try deep sea fishing!
The best places to fish, shipwrecks and places marked DANGER!
I did not know there was a lighthouse near Port Aransas. It looked quite neglected with all the buildings in a sad shape.
I thought this was pretty funny, across the bridge of this tanker ship in 8 foot high letters: NO SMOKING.
This is the owners other boat the Poly Anna shrimp boat. Its a very interesting design for a shrimper, it appears to have 3 hulls up front and 2 in the back, the one in the middle does not go all the way back. You don’t see many shrimp boats with muti hull design.
Our catch for the day, pretty slim.
One guy also caught this sting ray and I learned an interesting fact when they were discussing how to cook this thing. They said to cut it into small strips and they are pretty good. The guy wanted to know how they taste and they said exactly like clams because much of the time when you think you are eating clams you are actually eating this. So if you ever go to a restaurant and get clam meat in strips you are really eating sting ray.
Here is the stinger they cut off so nobody would injure themselves. Those serrated barbs look pretty dangerous, I’d hate to get stabbed by one of these.
We saw quite a lot of wildlife at Goose Island State Park. Everything from deer to snakes to a huge raccoon that tried to break into our motorcycle bag to get to some food. He was about the size of a mid sized dog, enormous! He was able to claw one zipper apart enough to reach in and commenced trying to pull everything out through a quarter sized hole! Now I realize why there are the big metal poles with hooks up top at every camp site, you can see one in the center above. We were a bit puzzled what these were for when we arrived, hammock support? theres certainly no bears that I know of on the coast of Texas.. Ahh! Raccoons, thats what they are for!
There were tree frogs everywhere as well, they would become important later. I’m not used to hearing frog noises from up in the sky while I’m trying to sleep. Each morning we had to round up all the frogs, they’d be inside the faucets and in the sinks and up on the walls in the bathrooms and showers. We’d have to rescue them all and put them back outside.
Of all the wildlife we saw I was most amazed with the numbers of cardinals we saw. I’ve never seen an actual cardinal before. They were everywhere and very vocal singers. Everywhere we’d see flashes of red darting from tree to tree.
Near the showers was a feeding station with bird feeders and some nice bird baths where I was able to get some nice pictures. The flashy males loved to pose for pictures but the females were a bit camera shy and difficult to catch and getting a male and female together in the same shot was next to impossible. Out of a few hundred pictures I only got 3 or 4 with both a male and female.
At first I thought these were the weirdest looking ravens or crows I’d ever seen. They were all black but when the light hit them just right the feathers turn a neat iridescent blue. During a phone call I mentioned the strange bluish crows with fluffy tails and white eyes and was told they were called Grackles. What do you know another new bird I’d never seen (or heard of) before. People have told me they are loud and obnoxious but the ones we saw everywhere were not, I kind of like them.
