They were joined by 4 helpers (Todd McLain, Joe E, Gary Beard, and Gary F’s friend (sorry I can’t remember his name) plus Merle, Bob, Sam and Tim so each owner had a personal assistant and that worked out well.
Here’s an outline of the basic steps we followed:
I showed a brief DVD on partial removal of the top shelter and soon the anxious wrenchers wanted to tear into their bikes. So we did.
There was lots of plastic to remove, connectors to remove, seats to remove, 4 10mm bolts to remove, and then the final 7 screws to remove before reaching the air filter element.
Franco and Todd were first to reach Franco’s airfilter element followed by Jeff & Gary B, Gary Paul and Joe E and finally by Gary F.
Jeff Harvey won the prize with this submission:
It seems as if a rodent started making a nest in the air filter. And this was after only about 25k miles. Jeff thinks it must have been in there when he got the bike as the bike is in a protected garage.
Gary F also decided to replace a burnt out headlight bulb and the others continued their work.
In the end here are the happy owners:
Franco had the least mileage on his filter (around 12k miles) and you can see that his filter is in the best shape. The rest had a minimum of twice the miles on them.
As we finished up we were treated with brats brought by GP and grilled by Bob Price.
In the end it took around 3 hours to do the changes and we stopped for teachable moments. Franco and Todd were the fastest (but it wasn’t a race). I really recommend that you change your filter on the recommended interval. It’s not hard, it just takes some time. If you want to change it, consider coming to the the WAA Maintenance Day on March 27 at Don Hatley’s after our chapter gathering. BTW, Gary Beard has the filters in the chapter stores at a good price.
And of course, Sam was taking names
Below is a maintenance tip. Use an old egg carton to keep the miscellaneous parts organized.
And if you are intimidated by the photo below, your favorite Honda garage will be more than willing to do this task for you.
It was a fun afternoon. Angela presented the bowling tournament trophy that we received at the District Rider Education seminar to Bob P and Sam.
Thanks to Merle Swanson for donating her garage and to Bob Price for setting up the garage. Wingers gained some great maintenance confidence. Hopefully Jeff will gain some improvement in his Wing’s gas mileage. And now I need to do my own.
If you’d like to see all of the pictures I took, go to: SMUGMUG
Submitted by your Ride Czar, Tim Bowman
Tim
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