FRom THE PEN oF jaNE GRaY

DECEMBER 2020

Farewell George

JEGNov2020

The BMWMCQ is in mourning this November On Monday 9th Farewells were said to a very valued member A cheery smile, a warm embrace, a Gentleman to the core He’s riding now in Heaven with those who’ve gone before

George filled the world around him with kindness & good deeds His legacy will surely be if kindness grows from seeds With his beloved Maggie always by his side They’ll always be remembered for their famous “Biscuit Ride”!

By Tony Gray, Member #3905

The Club recently held another very successful service day at Rob Wynne’s place outside Jimboomba. It was successful on several fronts including attendance numbers and enthusiasm, jobs completed and new things learned. Here are a few to share:

If removing your rear wheel on a shaft drive bike then first mark the wheel position so that the wheel is returned in the same location on the hub. What difference will that make you may well ask? Maybe none but maybe it will affect the balance of the wheel/tyre on the hub. It costs nothing to do this and I have adopted it as standard practice now. I learnt this one from one of many short maintenance videos on the facebook site of BM Motorcycles in Ringwood Melbourne. Take a peek sometime, you may learn something? A Torx bit is a Torx bit right? Well so I thought but not always. I was assisting Merv Bone who was undertaking a Final Drive service on his 2012 GS 1200 Camhead. I noted one of the T50 Torx headed wheel bolts was slightly rounded – Merv said this had resulted from the over enthusiastic use of a rattle gun by the tyre tech installing a new tyre. With care we got the bolt out OK but when it came time to refit and

maiNtENaNCE CorNEr torque the wheel we could not get it up to the required 60nm without the torx bit slipping. Merv had a top quality Snap-On bit that we were using. The bit was fitting quite shallow into the bolt head so I had a look at my midquality Force bit and noted it had longer splines than the Snap-on (refer picture below). When we used the Force bit it went deeper into the bolt head and the wheel was torqued up without a problem. Subsequently Merv visited a mate of mine who works at Warby Tools who stock an Aladdin’s cave of top quality tools. They are at Rocklea and well worth a visit if you want to stock your Christmas stocking. The advice Merv received was that the Snap-on bit was the correct tool for the job (Merv had a new replacement wheel bolt to show at this stage) but just to give the bit an ‘affectionate’ tap with a hammer to get it to bite properly. Nothing too severe. Something for you to remember. Those of us old enough to have owned Japanese bikes in the 1970s (or still do) would remember how difficult it was to remove the Phillips headed bolts/machine screws that held everything together. Some affluent souls of the day (not me) replaced every bolt with socket headed allen bolts. An impact driver was/is an essential tool to have in your toolkit. One of these is cheap to buy and will last a lifetime –