Jesse vs. The Bike — 1 pt. for Jesse!
If you’re ever installing a new valve cover gasket, and you get the urge to tighten that bolt just a tad
more, ignore it, fight it, just don’t break the bolt like I did!
I was half-hoping to get my bike running today, CP and Steve were talking about going riding in this nice 75 degree weather. I diligently awoke with Joy this morning, made her breakfast and sent her off to work. I figured if I started this early, I could be up and running by 3p or so.
After 3 hours of scraping old hardened gasket off the engine block, I called it “good enough” (couldn’t really get anymore gasket off without taking metal too), and started putting her back together. I had tightened them down all around, incrementally, just like I was told. I was doing my final round of tightening, and one of the last bolts snapped! I went into a good deal of shock. I pulled the bolt out, which revealed an almost threadless bolt. I panicked! “This isn’t happening”, I kept telling myself. Saying that never really seems to work well. I needed to take a moment to think. One moment, another, and another. I knew I didn’t have the hardware for this, so I grabbed my bike (pedal, bah!) and went to Ace about 6 blocks away.
I got a screw extractor, came home, and started drilling away. The hole wasn’t quite centered, and I was running out of clearance, so I took the cover back off (drat!). I tried the extractor using my drill, which didn’t work well at all. Then I light bulb went on… google… “how to use a bolt extractor”… perfect, I just need a tap wrench… back to Ace, got some liquid wrench this time, oiled up the hole, came back 15 mins later, started drilling again, then I used the tap wrench. Oh thank God, the bolt is coming out!
After a short prayer of thanksgiving (I was already on my knees), I called the Honda shop to order a new bolt (just glad it wasn’t a camshaft block I was ordering!). I then proceeded to put the cover back on, and using liquid wrench on each of the bolts before putting them back in, very carefully tightening the lot of them.
I’m not finished putting the bike together yet. I’m having trouble connecting the throttle cables to the carbs (those are important, you know). Hopefully I can find a couple extra hands to help me with this tough part. Joy is working late today, sort of glad she wasn’t around to witness this extreme set of events. Hope to be riding Thursday or Friday. I’ll take it as it comes.