Dre-XT-Stück - sidestand

I have to admit, that lately it seemed as if the old girl had a bit more of a "sporty" lean to her and knowing fair well that those sidestands are known to bend (and eventually break) I thought a bit of bending it back and maybe bracing it was all it would take. But the sidestand's not the main culprit. 

 With the old girl leaned onto the little pickle...

 

I wanted to unbolt the sidestand, which was substantially easier than planned. 

So the assumption that something had given in, wasn't fundamentally wrong, it was just that it was the clevis that had bent because the pivot bolt snapped. The shank is 12mm and there was a sufficiently long M12-bolt in stock.

These bolts are widely available (even new from Yamaha), but should you find yourself in a pickle and have to machine one yourself and maybe lost some of the fragments, these are measurements mine had.

Depending on how worn the hole in your frame is, the 12.0mm might range from T-I-G-H-T to rather sloppy. I repaired that one, when painting the frame, so I had to take a bit off as things got very sticky.

SR500 - lights out

Very sneakily the SR500 sidecar has made its way towards becoming a veritable and reliable daily. Until about two weeks ago, when very suddenly the headlight started to fail, which together with admittedly rather improved weather conditions meant that the old Dre-XT-Stück was pressed back into service. 

After a bit of wiggling, especially on the blue cable coming down from the right hand side switch cluster, the light worked again.

A slight bit of pulling then made everything fall apart permanently.

Luckily after some rummaging in my parts stash I found an even more knackered right handlebar switch from a XV750SE and borrowed a new plug. (Yes I know, you can buy those plugs from Kedo, they don't actually cost a fortune... but I wanted to fix it now.)

Whilst I was at it, it was really about time to reposition the front right pin holding down the sidecar cover as over the last two years the cover had stretched quite a bit. As is indicated by the fact that this is now the third time to reposition the pin. (I should really patch up the old holes...)

And last but not least - the turn signal indicator - the bulb had simply burnt out. Now it works - doesn't work - works - doesn't work - works ... 😉

So next in the cards is a proper big 30k service with oil-change and adjusting the valves and then we're probably even ready for the upcoming MOT.