Joe Gresh

ExNotes Review: UABRLA Tire Inflator

By Joe Gresh

There’s a reason we call this pump a tire inflator instead of an air compressor. The thing is pretty small to start with and half of that size is battery to power the thing. Don’t expect to run your 1/2″ air impact wrench with the UABRLA is what I’m trying to say in an original, thought-provoking manner.

I have a small, 12-volt Slime brand tire inflator that I carry on whichever bike I’m riding. It works well and is like 15 years old now. The main issue (I hate to say problem because it’s more of a design limitation) is that you have to connect it to the motorcycle’s battery. On the RD350 that’s not a big problem but on some bikes, like the ZRX1100, the battery is buried under a bunch of junk I store on the bike. You have to remove the dirty socks, chucks of broken concrete, a dried up Sharpie marker and last year’s Laguna Seca vintage racing schedule. That gains access to the battery door, then you have to slide the battery out to access the terminals.

For airing up bike tires in the shop I use a larger 12-volt compressor (it has some grunt) and a 12-volt car battery.

I bought the UABRLA because I sometimes forget on which bike the Slime pump is stored. I’ve ridden off to the hinterlands thinking I had flat tires covered yet the Slime was packed away on a different motorcycle.

You’re probably wondering if I’ll ever get to the UABRLA review.

The UABRLA was delivered from Amazon in only two days. That’s pretty fast considering where I live. It came with a hose for connecting to tires, a charging cord, a 12-volt cigarette adaptor so you can keep filling tires even if the built-in battery is dead and a little collection of adapters for beach balls, inflatable mattresses and New England Patriots footballs. A handy tote bag is included. The unit also has a flashlight and a USB port for charging small electronics. The flashlight has three modes: on, on-strobe, on-SOS. Four modes if you count off.

The inflator has presets for car tires, motorcycle tires, bicycles and sports equipment. I can’t see the need as air is air but maybe if you were a complete novice it would help.

A nice touch is the auto-shutoff that kills the inflator when the tire reaches a preset pressure. The setting is pretty accurate being only a pound or two off when checked against a pencil-type gauge. Or maybe the pencil gauge is off. Regardless, I can’t tell a tire is low until the rim scrapes the ground.

The built in battery supposedly has 20,000 mah capacity but I can’t be bothered to test that. I filled up two bicycle tires and topped up 6 motorcycle tires with the little inflator and it was still showing 2 of 4 bars. I’m guessing you could fill one car tire with the built in battery. After that you’ll have to switch to the 12-volt cigarette adaptor.

Anyway, I wouldn’t use this machine for car tires. Maybe adding a few pounds would be ok. My experience with these little inflators is that they get hot if you run them too long so I’d let it cool a few times if you’re filling a 40-inch tall muddier tire.

One thing I would like different is a 90-degree air chuck instead of the straight chuck that comes with the UABRLA. It gets a little tight on some motorcycle wheels.

The UABRLA is a nice-looking bit of consumer glitter. I’ll be tossing this pump into my motorcycle travel kit and hopefully it will last more than one or two uses.

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ExNotes Long Term Test: Oxilam LED Headlight Bulb

By Joe Gresh

As you’ll recall from the Oxilam headlight review we published on ExhaustNotes a while back, I loved the thing. It gave a much brighter view at night and the light source was positioned in the correct spot for the reflector on the ZRX1100 Lawsonsaki. Low beam was wide and had a sharp cutoff so as to not blind oncoming drivers, and high beam lit up the dark New Mexico roads nicely.

Unfortunately. the bulb burned out on my bike after only 3000 miles. Considering the original halogen bulb lasted 35,000 miles, 24 years, and was still going strong, I was disappointed.

Taking the bulb apart revealed a neatly constructed circuit board, a cooling fan, heat transferring grease to the large aluminum heat sink, and broken solder connections at the main board/plug connector junction.

The board connections are tiny and I may try to re-solder the connections (there are four of them broken: two on either side of the circuit board) but I don’t hold out much hope.

The Oxilam kit came with two bulbs, and I’ll pop the other one in to see if my failure was just a fluke. I do like the quantity of light produced and riding with a plain old halogen seems dark now.

My new, revised rating on the Oxilam LED headlights is: Don’t buy them just yet. Wait until the second Oxilam has proved itself for 24 years. I’ll be sure to report back here if I’m still alive.

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ExNotes Review: Doremi Kawasaki Z1 Body Set

By Joe Gresh

Zed has been dormant for a few years. The bike has a running issue that has eluded my best efforts to remedy. But this story isn’t about my mechanical incompetence. This story is about Zed’s gas tank.

Back in the Zed’s Not Dead series I cleaned the tank fairly well using the apple cider vinegar method. The cider/baking soda trick works well but Zed’s tank was looking a little crusty after sitting two years with alcohol laced fuel inside.

I decided to give the tank a second cider session. All went well and the tank was spotless inside. I installed the tank and filled it with fresh gas. Checking the tank for leaks revealed none so I closed up the shed and retired to dream big dreams of fun motorcycle rides to come.

The next morning when I opened the shed a strong odor of gasoline hit my nose. Fuel was everywhere under Zed. The right side tank bottom was soaking wet. Apparently only the paint was covering pinhole rust-through spots. After draining the remaining fuel I ran a wire brush over the bottom of the tank, which revealed a ton of tiny holes.

My initial plan, because I can’t let it go, was to cut out the bottom of the tank, fabricate a new sheet metal piece to fit and then braze the new bottom into the tank. It’s a good plan and it might have worked.

Instead, I went with Plan B: a new set of painted bodywork from Doremi (a Zed parts supplier out of Japan). Doremi is resold by several different companies in the US. I chose Cycles R Us, an eBay seller because they had the correct year and color in stock and their shipping was only $39. Prices for the body set are mostly the same (around $1500 with some outliers at $1700).

I know what you’re thinking: that’s a lot of money for a cheap bastard like me. It killed me to spend the money but used tanks are going for $500 and new, unpainted reproduction tanks are $400. Not to mention a professional paint job on my repaired stuff would probably exceed $1200.

One of the good things about the soaring value of Z1 Kawasaki’s is that you can spend money restoring them with a good chance of getting your investment back (minus your labor)

Enough of the rationalizations: let’s get into the product. Opening the well packaged box from Doremi was breathtaking. The paint is stunning. I cannot find a flaw anywhere and I don’t think the factory Kawasaki paint looked this good back when the bike was new on the showroom floor.

For 1975 Kawasaki’s Z1 had two color choices, a metallic aqua-blue that was pretty and my bike’s color, a dark burgundy that looks almost brown in low light. The color pops deep red metallic when a single photon from the sun strikes the paint surface. The stripes are perfectly applied and I cannot fault the quality of Doremi’s product.

My kit came with new tank badges and a new gas cap, some resellers break these parts out of the kit and sell them separately.

The tank badges are flat when you get them and require gentle bending by hand to fit the curvature of the gas tank. This is kind of a trial and error thing. I got the badges pretty close but they still need a little tweaking near the front. I stopped bending them mostly because I was worried about messing them up.

The gas cap comes loose in another bag. Putting the cap on was pretty easy once the roll pin was test fit into the tank.

The gas cap latch was a little harder to install. The instructions were oddly worded and there are some notches you are supposed to file into the underside of the latch. The photos aren’t super clear and I could find no reason to file notches so I ignored the instructions and did it the way I wanted.

The main issue with the gas cap latch is getting the little torsion spring inside the latch then holding it concentric while the pivot shaft is slid into place. The instructions recommended using a small, flat blade screwdriver, I tried that but it was fumbly and the spring never ended up in the correct location.

The method I settled on was to compress the torsion spring and capture the two ends with a small tube (the interior metal barrel of a wire crimp connector) once you have both ends of the spring under control it’s easy to insert the spring and line it up with the pivot shaft.

The latch’s pivot shaft is sort of a rivet. After it’s in place you have to peen over the end. This is a two-man job as you’ll need to hold a weight against the pivot head on one side while rolling the other end. I’ll get CT to help me with this step.

The new side covers arrived without badges so I used the original badges. The old badges were in fair condition but I suspect the reseller removed the new badges from the Doremi kit.

The new tail section was a bit fiddley in that the bolt holes didn’t quite line up perfectly like the original tail. You reuse the original Kawasaki grommets and spacers with the new tail. Maybe new grommets would be softer and have more give. It took a little aggressive tugging to get all four bolts lined up and in place. I imagine the plastic will take a set in its new position and future fitting will be easier.

Zed’s original paint was in horrible condition, the bike had sat outside for an indeterminate length of time. Talk about patina. I cleaned up the old paint as much as I could but it was tatty and dead. The Doremi body kit transformed the bike: it looks like a new, 1975 Kawasaki Z1-B. The bike is beautiful in the sunlight with the perfectly smooth surfaces changing color as you move about. Damn, this bike looks good.

Is the Doremi body set worth $1500? If your old stuff is rusted, yes. Even if your old stuff is in good shape you’d be hard pressed to find a painter who could lay down a beautiful job like Doremi for $1500. It’s like you’re paying for a paint job and the bodywork is free!

I recommend the Doremi highly. If we had a rating system at exhaustnotes it would get top marks. If you want your Z1 to look like a new bike get the Doremi.

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Laguna Seca 4: AHRMA Wrap Up

By Joe Gresh

Foggy and cold in the morning. I broke down and bought a burrito from the Flag and Wicket down in the paddock. Everything was soaking wet and I didn’t feel like making food. The Rag and Basket has good burritos and they are nearly the same price as a Quart-o-Grease from McDingies.

The Rag and Moose down in the paddock has good eats for not too much money.

I don’t think they can run in the wet fog but the rider’s meeting is on. We will see if they wait a bit.

The trials sections were mostly tight corners in uneven terrain

This never happened historically but I’m letting it go.

When you’re at the track you’ll need to be somewhat self sufficient as the only place nearby is the Toro restaurant and they close early. There a little food store towards Salinas but before the Toro where you can get stuff. Forget going west to Monterey, it’s sort of touristy and unless you’re going to the Aquarium or cannery row it’s a food desert. It could be that I don’t know where to look.

I think it will be a short day today. The fog is still thick, if a bike went off the course you’d never know it.

Foggy conditions delayed the racing for a bit. AHRMA still managed to run a full slate

I wandered over to the trials sections and they were ok, the fog doesn’t bother trials riders as they only need to see a few feet ahead. There was a triple log obstacle that I saw only one guy on a TY175 clear. Everyone else dabbed. The trials was held down in a little valley and the sections led a short way up the sides. Very tight turns and soft sand caught out many competitors.

Two old codgers on two old bikes. Still flogging. Fulton and Roper.

Back on the track the fog cleared and AHRMA ran 14 more multi-class races. You get your money’s worth for sure.

I’ve decided to let the whole historic thing go. What AHRMA really does is provide sanctioned races for orphan motorcycles, both new and old. Even 160-175 Honda twins.

Sunday the campground empties out and the squirrels take over. You’ll need to keep that tent closed or they’ll rob you blind. I like the Sunday night, it’s quiet and you get to be alone for a few hours.

The wind never let up the entire day and I got sort of tired watching so many races. It was dry and around race 12 I decided to load Godzilla in the truck before the plastic bed liner got slippery with dew.

All in, I’ve been here four days and it’s time to break camp and get back home. I highly recommend attending the AHRMA either as a spectator or a competitor. Just bring plenty of water and any food you might like to eat.

I’ll be back next year. Maybe bring the RD350 to see how it runs at sea level.

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Laguna Seca AHRMA Racing 3

By Joe Gresh

I’m in no rush to leave the tent this morning. The wind blew all night long and is still blowing hard. It’s cold and damp. Canvas pops and snaps, the tent inflates and deflates as if it is a breathing thing. I’ll have a second cup of coffee.

The vintage motocross races at Laguna Seca are situated over the hill, towards the north. It’s a natural terrain course just like the tracks these vintage motorcycles ran on way back when. No manufactured hazards like triples or whoops. Any whoops on this track are made by churning knobbies. So of course I love it.

Laguna has more CZs in one place than I’ve ever seen. A bunch of Honda Elsinores and BSA 4-strokes populate the area. Less popular are Yamahas, Kawasakis and Suzukis.

The BSAs were out in force. One of the few 4-strokes that could compete with the 2-strokers…if you had Banks riding it.

Four Elsinore 125s put on a hell of a show. They were swapping the lead back and forth, passing three bikes in a corner only to be re-passed the next corner. It was good, handlebar banging action. I’m going back for more today.

The motocross crowd is a bit looser than the road racers. There is a yellow rope denoting the track that you are not supposed to cross. Nobody pays attention and spectators walk rigs up to the edge of the course to yell encouragement at their buddies.

Just a few of the motocross classes. Something for experts to beginners.

One guy had a train horn attached to a battery powered compressor and when the bikes were stuffed into the corner he would blast the horn inches from the rider’s ears. You don’t get that sort of fun on the pavement over the hill.

Unlike some of the road race bikes, the motocross bikes are historically accurate. These are the bikes that actually raced back then and except for razor sharp fresh knobbies they are in a slightly beat condition.

There are a few 100-point restorations racing but those guys take it easy around the track. The Sunday riders got the same encouragement and horn as the top racers.

Tidy Penton, these were the original KTMs and beautiful bikes. The cylinders were huge square things.

In the evening I hear live music drifting in on the soaking wind, a two stroke bike circles camp and people chatter, sounding like they are right next door. I have to remind myself not to be old. Sure, I want to got to bed at 8:00 p.m. but nobody else does.

Back to the road race side of things. AHRMA is always expanding the definition of historic and they even have classes for modern motorcycles. These classes are well stocked because the bikes are easy to get and keep running. I’d say more than half the field were riding new-ish motorcycles. Our old buddies Walt Fulton and Dave Roper put in another fine showing but I kind of lost them in the multi-class race they were in. So maybe they didn’t do fine.

I’m really enjoying how well Godzilla is running down at sea level. The bike has tons of grunt and runs so smooth with the oxygen levels. Probably the humidity helps also.

I’m off to watch some racing. It’s still windy but I can’t sit in the tent all day. The neighbors will start talking about the weird old man next door.

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Laguna 2: More Hasty Conclusions From Laguna Seca

By Joe Gresh

Man I slept good last night. The combination of the new cot, air mattress and mummy bag worked to perfection. Add in the cool moist Monterey weather and the loudspeaker’s 8:15 call for a rider’s meeting was the first thing I heard. I’ve really got this camping thing down. With the added capacity of the Toyota truck I was able to bring along a few luxury items. Like a chair and an ice chest.

Can Ams also had a somewhat unusual disc valve with a long intake runner leading to a carb in the back of the engine next to your left foot.

A bike I never knew about, the AMMEX motocross bike.

A 1930s Husqvarna. Not much different than my 2008 version.

Unlike last year, there are no food trucks in the paddock, only the Bear and Shank which has some pretty good food at reasonable (for California) prices. The ice chest frees me of food anxiety, I’ve got plenty for the weekend.

My enduro riding buddy, Gilroy Larry, stopped by with his clean TY250 Yamaha trials bike. We rode over to the trials area but it was more secure than last year. There’s also a sweet, old-style motocross track where a guy can race his old bike without spending 95% of his time in the air. (Note to Supercross: less hang time and more racing!)

I still have one of these in boxes. It’s a C110 Honda 50. 4-speed with hand clutch and a pushrod engine. When mine ran it did around 45 miles per hour.

Unusual rear wheel on a Mule flat track style bike.

I had one of these also. This is a one-owner, dad’s old bike.

Since we are apolitical here on ExNotes I know Berk will love this Suzuki 100.

A beautiful 500 Tiger for not much money.

It’s a good thing I don’t have $4500 laying around or i’d buy the Triumph.

There are entirely too damn many four-strokes out here. My era of motorcycle racing was dominated by two strokes both on the pavement and in the dirt. Flat track was the only place four-strokes were competitive and that was by favorable rules. To me, a buzzing stroker is the sound of speed.

Bikes are warming up on Laguna’s interior roads. You’ll see a full on road racer cruise by the camp if you wake up early.

The same dense air that’s makes it so easy to sleep has Godzilla running fabulously. The grunt is amazing and the smooth, steady beat makes me want to move here rather than tune for my 6000-foot elevation.

Yesterday we had no fog and the picnic table was soaking wet in the morning. This morning diaphanous clots of fog are blowing past like smoke from a fire and the picnic table is bone dry. Listen, I don’t like using diaphanous any more than you like reading it. I guess should have paid more attention in meteorology class.

There was a vintage bike show at the track. The show had a pretty decent turnout. Maybe 50 bikes showed up. I owned several of the models represented.

The evolution of Maico crankcases Part 1: 1970s.

The evolution of Maico crankcases Part 2: The 1980s.

It’s hard to beat looking at old CanAm motorcycles while out on the track vintage bikes are racing by at full song.

Sent from my iPhone

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ExNotes Hasty Conclusions: The 2024 AHRMA at Laguna Seca

By Joe Gresh

Rookie mistake: leaving your chair outside at night. The dew is heavy at Laguna Seca and my campsite is shaded from the early morning sun.

I love the pipes on this Turnip. Not likely to drag in corners!

I’ll walk around the pits instead. No food trucks yet and the Bear + Flag doesn’t open very early. Luckily I brought along some Cafe Bustello instant.

Tech inspection. The lines were long which is a good thing for AHRMA (America Historic Racing Motorcycle Association).

Triple tracker wandered into pavement world.

175 Bridgestone twin. The terror of the track back in the day. Hondas didn’t even try.

VP race fuel on site. Only a few bucks more that the 86/corn squeezed crap you buy on the street.

Mono framed side car. Very thin aluminum. I’m shocked it doesn’t crack.

Heavy side car contingent at this year’s races.

The crowd in the pit area seems to be as large as it was last year with even more Honda 160-175 twins. These things are like cockroaches while the actual bikes that raced in the 1960’s/1970’s are thin on the ground. I guess those Hondas survived because no one raced them.

Even if you don’t care for motorcycles Laguna Seca is a great place to camp. I have Site 110. The trees have grown a bit and I’m worried about ground squirrels breaking into my tent and stealing my food.

There are lots on fairly modern bikes, too. At least they are modern to me; they are probably 25 years old.

I made the mistake riding into Monterey. Lots of traffic. The only restaurant open was a McDonald’s. An older lady was buying a single cigarette from a guy who was out by the parking lot. I could see the bay from McDonald’s. Inside, there was no one to take your order. Electronic kiosks were set up and you entered your order then paid at the kiosk. There were about 5 people waiting, glancing down at the bits of paper the kiosk spit out. No one was getting food. McDonald’s food is not good enough to go through the hassle, so I left.

Heading back towards the track on Highway 68 the traffic came to a halt. It took me about an hour to go 4 miles. My old Yamaha 360 did not care for this kind of treatment. Forget going anywhere from 3:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. In the evening I sat and watched the long line of motor homes making their way to the paddock. It was fun…to me.

Today is race school and practice. Tomorrow (Saturday) the racing starts in earnest.

Sent from my iPhone

That BSA at the top of this blog was not racing. I included it for Hack.

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Rainy-Day Japanese Atomic Monster Repair… Revisited

By Joe Gresh

Monsoon season has streamed into New Mexico’s upper atmosphere, hampering my concrete construction projects so I took the opportunity to settle some old scores with Godzilla, my 1971 Yamaha RT1-B Enduro. I’m getting the bike ready for a west coast trip and there were some annoying little faults I wanted to do up right before riding the California coast.

Godzilla has grown over the years. I’ve put a taller 21” front wheel on the bike and longer rear shocks. As a result the bike leans way over on the original-length kickstand. Parked in the shed I use a chunk of 2×4 to make the Yamaha sit more vertical but I’m not about to carry lumber all the way to California.

I measured the length needed, about 1-1/2-inch, and cut some tube off an old handlebar I keep around for just this purpose. I’ve been altering a lot of kickstands lately. I don’t know why I have to keep messing with kickstands but there it is. I used a piece of tube from an old floodlight frame to make a centering piece so that the three sections stay straight.

The tube from the floodlight was slotted and press fit into the extension piece.

Then all the pieces were assembled and welded together. After welding I touched up the stand with a bit of spot putty and gloss black paint.

The angle worked out great. Unfortunately the longer stand now hit the lower chain guard bolt when in the up position.

To solve this problem I added a blob of weld to the kickstand stop; this increased the clearance between the longer stand and the chain guard.

The next problem was the rear wheel sprocket carrier. This part has heavy wear as Godzilla spends most of its time in the dirt. The sprocket was alarmingly loose, not enough to throw the chain but not far from it.

There are two distinct areas of wear. The first is the hub boss that the sprocket carrier rides on. The second problem is the distance between the sprocket carrier retaining circlip and the carrier had become quite wide, meaning the clip didn’t hold the carrier tight to the hub. This allowed the carrier to wander in and out, causing even more wear on the hub boss.

To fill the gap between the hub boss and carrier I used a section of well-greased, steel measuring tape as a shim. I wound the tape around the boss and held it into position with a bit of string. To determine the thickness needed I started long and trial fit the carrier. I kept decreasing the tape length until the carrier would just slip over the shim.

For the circlip gap I was lucky and found a piece of aluminum pipe that fit nearly perfectly and trimmed off a baloney slice to use as a shim.

By trial and error I fit and re-fit the shim. I used the South Bend lathe to reduce the thickness of the shim bit by bit until the clip would fit without any back and forth play. Now the sprocket carrier is snug to the hub but still has a bit of rotational movement between the hub’s rubber cushions.

Godzilla seems to be in pretty good shape right now. It’s running a bit rough but that’s probably due to the old gas in the tank. I’ll dilute the crap gas with fresh and take the bike out for a nice long ride. See you in California!

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Painless, Paintless Dent Repair

By Joe Gresh

I’ve ridden my Yamaha RT1B 360 Enduro for thousands and thousands of miles. The old two-stroke has been across country more than once and I rode it on the Trans America Trail east to west from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to Port Orford, Oregon. In all that time I never put a dent in the beast known as Godzilla.

It is a fairly easy job to load the light-ish Yamaha into a pickup truck…normally. This time was different. I lost my balance mid-ramp and the Yamaha started to topple over onto me. I was out of position to save the bike, my legs were getting tangled and in that split second I envisioned a broken arm or crushed ribcage. I let the bike go and jumped down to safety. The bike fell to the left; the gas tank smashed into the side of the truck bed and my somewhat pristine Godzilla had a huge dent.

You and I have both heard about the paintless dent repair kits. Amazon had this one for pretty cheap and I thought I’d give it a try.

The kit comes with everything you need, except alcohol (to clean the tank, not drink). After the tank got a good scrubbing with the hooch, I used the included hot glue gun to attach the little puller tabs in places I thought needed to be pulled. The dent was pretty deep and had a crease running diagonally across the tank. I didn’t hold out much hope.

The flimsy plastic puller seemed like it would break at any moment but the thing held up. It was strong enough to yank the pull-tabs.

The kit came with a slide hammer but that tool broke the tabs. I believe the shock load was more than the plastic could handle. You’ll need weld on tabs to use the slide hammer.

Usually the tab would pull off the tank and since the paint on Godzilla is 53 years old the glue removed a bit of paint each time. The kit came with a little spray bottle that you fill with alcohol; the alcohol loosens up the hot glue to allow reuse of the tabs. It took several re-positionings but I managed to get the majority of the dent pulled out.

The creases in the tank are still visible and the tank is far from straight but it’s at least 80% better than it was. From 10 feet away you may not notice the thing is dented. I worked on another egg-shaped dent on the top of the tank that was there when I bought the bike. The paint in this spot was in bad shape so it was hard to get anything to stick.

I ended up sanding the egg-dent to get something firm to attach the pull tab and gave the spot a light dusting of gloss black spray paint. After the paint dried I feathered it in with 600-grit. Again, I got the dent about 80% removed.

I think for minor dents without sharp creases and with fairly new paint stuck firmly to the metal the kit would actually work pretty well. The Z1 has a ding that’s a prime candidate for the dent puller except the dent is right over a stripe decal. I’m sure the tab will lift the decal.

I call the paintless dent removal process a good one. The kit I bought was bottom of the barrel cheap so possibly a better kit would produce better results. I’m happy enough with Godzilla’s tank. After all, it’s a dirt bike and will probably take a few more hits before I shuffle off.

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Screwed

By Joe Gresh

I haven’t been riding the Yamaha RD350 lately and it’s not because I don’t want to. There is a lot of concrete that needs doing at the ranch and I get to do it. Anyway, the RD350 has a loose screw in the tachometer and the screw dances around inside the gauge beating a tattoo onto the tachometer face. It drives me crazy to see that little screw eating away at the tachometer lettering so I parked the bike. A few days of rainy weather put a stop to my concrete-the-world efforts and I decided to take advantage of the down time and fix the tachometer.

These Yamaha instrument clusters were not really meant to be serviced. The Yamaha factory crimped the bezel onto the gauge body and back in the day it was cheap to buy another gauge. If you have infinite patience like my buddy Deet, it’s possible to unkink the crimp and reassemble the gauge so that it looks to all the world that its never been touched. I am not that patient.

I modified a harbor freight pick (free with purchase!) into a pry bar, which allowed me to get the crimp slightly lifted. Once you have the bezel edge up a bit you can get a more serious pry bar in there.

This bar is also a modified Harbor Freight tool. The rounded face allows you to work the crimp back to a more vertical position.

With the bezel mangled and pried back the lens will separate from the gauge body allowing access to that annoying screw.

Since I had the gauge this far apart I took the mechanism out of the gauge body and gave it a few drops of oil. This turned out to be a bad idea.

Putting the gauge back together is the reverse of the above description. Make sure the lens is perfectly clean or you’ll be looking at that speck of dust forever. To re-crimp I got the bend started with a screwdriver and the used a small hammer and punch to flatten out the waves. It doesn’t look factory but a rubber bumper covers the mess.

After assembly and testing the neutral indicator light looked odd. It was lit all the time and very dim. I assumed I must have screwed up the wiring and rechecked everything. Turns out the rubber bellows that shields the neutral light socket from the bulbs illuminating the gauge did not slip into position correctly. This caused the boot to fold over blocking the neural light photons and allowing random background photons to leak into the green lens area. I had to un-crimp the bezel again, disassemble the gauge and slip the boot on correctly. Perseverance will beat talent every time.

The speedometer screws were also loose, the face was jiggling around and it was only a matter of time before those screws fell out. I took that gauge apart and tightened the screws. Then I did the oil thing and also adjusted the needle 8 miles per hour slower to more closely reflect the speed I was going.

The sun is shining and I can start putting more miles on the Yamaha RD350 without staring at that stupid screw bouncing around inside the gauge. And I will just a soon as I finish up this driveway.

Do you have a copy yet?