The thaw brings its own woes.
I know, I'm never satisfied ;P
The bikes have, of course been off the road for the last fortnight. Went to do a check today and, after tens of thousands of miles of cheerful service, Talen's ST1300 decided its gear-shift lever was not moving. Not at all... *sigh*
Despite the washing, it's obviously got salt and crud splashed up into it. It's equally obvious that Honda had no intention of anyone ever accessing it. Some bright spark has placed the ball joint (which is almost certainly the problem) between the frame and the engine block. Strangely the manual is completely silent on the existence of this joint, or on a means to access it.
Here's the User Manual image:
Are you any the wiser? No, neither was I.
After identifying the probable location of the issue (not remotely visible on the image above), a thorough search around the user forums indicates this is not an unknown problem. So that's encouraging.
So we spent all this afternoon stripping fairing (lots and lots of fairing), shining torches into the dark depths of the transmission linkage and trying to work some lube into the offending part. It's much improved, but the lever still doesn't return properly - so tomorrow will be further work. *Grumble*
I guess it must be character-building or something... At least we can work in an unpleasant environment with an undefined problem, and not end up throwing spanners at each other. Must be all that practice ;P
And Dear Honda Design Engineers: When you design something to be utterly inaccessible, at least ensure it's properly effing sealed!
The bright side is - it has thawed! At least for now :)
The bikes have, of course been off the road for the last fortnight. Went to do a check today and, after tens of thousands of miles of cheerful service, Talen's ST1300 decided its gear-shift lever was not moving. Not at all... *sigh*
Despite the washing, it's obviously got salt and crud splashed up into it. It's equally obvious that Honda had no intention of anyone ever accessing it. Some bright spark has placed the ball joint (which is almost certainly the problem) between the frame and the engine block. Strangely the manual is completely silent on the existence of this joint, or on a means to access it.
Here's the User Manual image:
Are you any the wiser? No, neither was I.
After identifying the probable location of the issue (not remotely visible on the image above), a thorough search around the user forums indicates this is not an unknown problem. So that's encouraging.
So we spent all this afternoon stripping fairing (lots and lots of fairing), shining torches into the dark depths of the transmission linkage and trying to work some lube into the offending part. It's much improved, but the lever still doesn't return properly - so tomorrow will be further work. *Grumble*
I guess it must be character-building or something... At least we can work in an unpleasant environment with an undefined problem, and not end up throwing spanners at each other. Must be all that practice ;P
And Dear Honda Design Engineers: When you design something to be utterly inaccessible, at least ensure it's properly effing sealed!
The bright side is - it has thawed! At least for now :)