Kawasaki 1994 ZZR600
Ok so I should probably explain the name first, its partly derived from the bike's license plate and was given to her by her previous owner. However speaking with a Polish friend, they remarked that Ulga means relief in Polish, now given my subsquent history with this bike it's actually quite an apt name.
So this is my first big bike after getting my license, I have to be honest my preference has never been for sports or faired bikes, however a mate was looking to sell her and she's proved a great bike to cut my teeth on both as a rider and ham fisted monkey (I'd never refer to myself as a mechanic).
The first issue to sort was a warped front disk, which proved more of an issue than you'd think, the first place I took her to was adamant that it was the pads... being nieve and new I went along with that diagnosis only to decide 10miles and £500 later that they were wrong. Rather than go back I decided to head to another shop, in Eaing this time, and they confirmed that yes it was the disk that was warped, by this point one of the forks was weaping so they fixed that as well for me. So now I've spent about £1000 on ULGa in some 2-3months and woken up to the fact that I need to make a choice, either sell her and get a new bike on finance or learn how to maintain/fix her myself. Being glutton for punishment I've stuck with her...
OIL SUMP
The first job I did solo was to replace the oil pan. The thread on the plug was knackered and at some point it had been drilled out and re-threaded so I wasn't keen on the trying to do the same again or mess about with helicoils etc, so I ordered a whole new pan.
I figured I could remove the exhaust pipe to where it went from 4 into 1, which was almost clear or the pan, and should give me enough clearence to unbolt the pan and remove it. That all went fine given I was working on my front path, and cleaning the old gasket off was a doddle, but then came fitting the new pan and gasket... next time remove the entire exhaust, trying to fit a sticky gasket and angle a pan in around the pipe was bloody tricky and resulted in much cursing but i stuck with it and six hours after starting all was done and ULGa no longer leaked oil.
It was a few days later that my mate Steve (he who sold me ULGa) told me about the Oval Motorcycle Centre, a workshop based in Nine Elms where you can hire a work bench to carry out work on your bike with all tools supplied and an onsite mechanic to help you out when ever needed... DOH!
ULGa
© 2012 by Tom Harrington.