South West Bikers | Motorcycle Forum

It's lockwiring tom, a mandatory requirement for racing.

graham22 wrote:

Scotty wrote:Another one is a Ducati Monster that an old girlfriend of mine owned, she bought if via ebay to go racing in the Desmo Due series, and her friendly local dealers helped her out quite a bit, including some "race prep" that I discovered when I serviced it for her a few months later...

It came to me like this...



and left like this...

You ignored the first rule of lockwiring - leave it loose enough to undo the bolt without removing the lockwire - any club racer will tell you that!!!!!!!

Leaving it loose enough to undo the bolt negates the point of lockwiring it in the first place, the whole point is to stop anything like the sump bolt coming undone through vibration etc, and anything else like the oil filler cap. On some bikes like some of the big twins exhaust bolts can rattle out, so by lockwiring them you stop them being able to turn and come undone.

My Suzuki Bandit 600..

When serviced (at a main dealer) who shall remain nameless the oil sump pan bolt was overtightened so much the sump thread was completely stripped!! The solution.. push the bolt in the hole, seal with instant gasket and hope the customer doesnt notice! Which I didnt notice till I went to service the bike myself a few months later..

Had to remove sump and get it heli-coiled.. at my expense!!

Thought of another one... this time at the hands of a formerly franchised Kawasaki dealer in Leicester, Planet Bikes. In early 1999 my girlfriend at the time had a ZX-6R and she wanted to change the chain & sprockets. She deemed that I didn't have time to do it (as I was building my race bike at the time) so she took it to Planet Berks for the job. After collecting it she complained to me about it making a noise so I had a look and this is what I found...

1. The new chain was as tight as a guitar string
2. The R-clip that I'd fitted to the rear spindle nut had been replaced with a manky old split pin
3. Using a straight edge to check rear wheel alignment I found that there was about 25mm difference side to side at the front wheel, checking at the back I found that the rear wheel was misaligned by ONE FULL MARK from one side to the other on the chain adjusters.
4. After removing said split pin and putting a socket on the spindle nut to undo it I found that it couldn't have been tightened to more than 10Nm - not much more than hand-tight on a thread of that size.

This was from a franchised Kawasaki dealer remember... Planet Berks was part of the Perry's Motor Group, and their workshop was staffed by car mechanics who knew nothing about bikes. My girlfriend didn't even get an apology from them - in hindsight we should have taken it higher up to KMUK..
I knew a local guy who was an excellent mechanic, especially on Kawasakis, and they contracted him to get the workshop up and running initially. One day he'd just done a valve clearance job on another ZX-6R and was filling in the job card for it - 6 clearances needed adjusting, 3 shims he'd swapped, so it only needed 3 new ones, and the workshop manager (whom I shan't name, but would if pushed) asked him what he was doing so he explained it, only to be told "oh, we always charge them for a full set of shims regardless" - that's 16 shims at probably £5-6 each in those days. Phil told him that that wan't the way he worked so he packed up his tools and walked out, never to return. Fortunately that dealership shouldn't affect anyone down here, last I heard they'd changed franchise to Honda...

worryingly though theyre still trading

i heard some horroe stories about motorcycle city and the way the used to work,no suprises that theyre no longer around

jam wrote:

graham22 wrote: You ignored the first rule of lockwiring - leave it loose enough to undo the bolt without removing the lockwire - any club racer will tell you that!!!!!!!

Leaving it loose enough to undo the bolt negates the point of lockwiring it in the first place, the whole point is to stop anything like the sump bolt coming undone through vibration etc, and anything else like the oil filler cap. On some bikes like some of the big twins exhaust bolts can rattle out, so by lockwiring them you stop them being able to turn and come undone.

Jam,
My comment was tongue in cheek albeit based on experience of many club racers over the years - seen many a lockwire in place for 'cosmetic' rather than safety reasons.

Graham