The 7 P’s state that; Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. So with that in mind, it was time once again for our Rendezvous planning party! Woo-Hoo! Rendezvous!! And you gotta have a planning party for this thing so that everyone knows what they’re bringing, what time we’re leaving, directions to get there, etc. So let’s get this planning party started!
The location was the usual; Zig’s house. Start time; 7pm. Instructions were to bring meat to grille and beer to swill.
However, Flex took it upon himself to bring something a little extra; a set of brake pads to replace the tired and worn ones that currently resided on his rear caliper. (Ok, so we’d discussed this earlier and, between myself and Zig, we’d have the tools to do the job…or so we thought.)
Here we see the bike, sitting at the ready. And look around; there’s plenty of daylight, too. No problems, right?
Hmmm…we yanked the saddlebag off and took a closer look at things. Damn. I’d thought his rear caliper setup was the same as mine. Nope! His caliper’s bracing method is that long arm which the rear axle threads through.
I tell you this; I’ll be damned if I’m yanking the tire, just to do the brake pads! And after a closer inspection, we knew we were in good shape. We should be able to just pull the retaining bolts, compress the pistons, drop the old pads out, slide the new ones in, bolt the retaining bolts back in, give a few presses on the brake pedal, and we’d be in business. Simple, right? Riiiiiight!
So here’s a shot of the stupid frikkin’ 12-point bolt heads that none of us had the right sized socket for (the two smaller ones on either side of the center bracket bolt). Stupid Factory!! Why can’t you make things simple?!?!?
A quick call to Kevin who hadn’t left his house yet, and we were in business. Ta da! Kevin arrives, with the socket in hand! (Zig is in awe of Kevin’s awesomeness.)
Ok, we’re moving again! The bolts are out, now we’re compressing the pistons, courtesy of a large, flat-headed screwdriver.
Yay! Old pads drop out…
New pads ready and waiting…
(Hey, why aren’t the bricks bathed in sunlight? Could it be because we’re running out of daylight??)
Retaining bolts are going back in… (And it looks like I had to use a flash for this photo? Could it be that it’s getting dark???)
Why yes! Yes, we’d run out of daylight because we’d had to wait for the right sized socket to arrive. But if HD had made things simple, then we’d have been done a long time ago. Anyway, the pads were in, and we worked the pedal to get the pistons tight again. Flex took the bike out for a test drive and made it back alive, so we counted the procedure a success.
But Flex wasn’t done with us just yet. Oh no; so far, we’d gotten off fairly easily. And we can’t have that! Let’s adjust the height of the highway pegs! Yeah yeah, what can go wrong with that? Ha!
I don’t know who the manufacturer of these things is, but they deserve a couple of nad taps. Instead of a simple one-piece compression bracket, these things had three separate pieces, including 5 (5!!) bolts. Oy! Needless to say that once one bolt was out, they all had to come out, and none of them wanted to thread back in correctly. Oh yeah, did I mention it was dark by now and we were working by flashlight? Oh what fun we’re having now. Frustration won out so I gave up and handed the tools over to Kevin for him to give it a try…
Kevin, with all his awesomeness still intact, succeeded in securing the bolts and we were good to go again.
At this point, it dawned on me that Flex had yet to lift a wrench, so as punishment, we made him put his own saddlebag back on. (I know; we’re tyrants.)
And with that, the rear brake job was done! Yay for rear brake job being done!! Whew, ok boys, let’s call it a night. Wait a minute…are we forgetting something? I could swear that we were supposed to be accomplishing something else tonight, too. What was it…
Oh hell…we’re supposed to be planning the ‘Vous trip!! Crap!! Ok, have any of you guys written down what your’re bringing out? Do we have a plan for where we’re meeting? Do we have a departure time? No? Sweet! This party is going just as well as all the ones before it! :-D
Grabbing the list of items that would be needed, we haphazardly assigned names with neither care nor concern. We had to get this done! (What the hell were these guys doing while we were working on Flex’s bike? Oh…right…they were handing us beers. Ok, I guess we can let things slide.)
By the time the last tire left Zig’s driveway, we had a sheet of paper with a bunch of names on it. Listed alongside the names were lots of words – most of which had been crossed out or written over, but some were actually legible. Would I go so far as to say we achieved a plan? Hell no, because this is all subject to change - not to mention there are still a lot of logistical questions that need answering. We’ve only got 17 days until we roll out, so it’ll mean a lot of running around, phone calls, emails, trying to track everyone down and get things finalized. There’s a lot of work still to do.
Maybe we should have a planning party…
The location was the usual; Zig’s house. Start time; 7pm. Instructions were to bring meat to grille and beer to swill.
However, Flex took it upon himself to bring something a little extra; a set of brake pads to replace the tired and worn ones that currently resided on his rear caliper. (Ok, so we’d discussed this earlier and, between myself and Zig, we’d have the tools to do the job…or so we thought.)
Here we see the bike, sitting at the ready. And look around; there’s plenty of daylight, too. No problems, right?
Hmmm…we yanked the saddlebag off and took a closer look at things. Damn. I’d thought his rear caliper setup was the same as mine. Nope! His caliper’s bracing method is that long arm which the rear axle threads through.
I tell you this; I’ll be damned if I’m yanking the tire, just to do the brake pads! And after a closer inspection, we knew we were in good shape. We should be able to just pull the retaining bolts, compress the pistons, drop the old pads out, slide the new ones in, bolt the retaining bolts back in, give a few presses on the brake pedal, and we’d be in business. Simple, right? Riiiiiight!
So here’s a shot of the stupid frikkin’ 12-point bolt heads that none of us had the right sized socket for (the two smaller ones on either side of the center bracket bolt). Stupid Factory!! Why can’t you make things simple?!?!?
A quick call to Kevin who hadn’t left his house yet, and we were in business. Ta da! Kevin arrives, with the socket in hand! (Zig is in awe of Kevin’s awesomeness.)
Ok, we’re moving again! The bolts are out, now we’re compressing the pistons, courtesy of a large, flat-headed screwdriver.
Yay! Old pads drop out…
New pads ready and waiting…
(Hey, why aren’t the bricks bathed in sunlight? Could it be because we’re running out of daylight??)
Retaining bolts are going back in… (And it looks like I had to use a flash for this photo? Could it be that it’s getting dark???)
Why yes! Yes, we’d run out of daylight because we’d had to wait for the right sized socket to arrive. But if HD had made things simple, then we’d have been done a long time ago. Anyway, the pads were in, and we worked the pedal to get the pistons tight again. Flex took the bike out for a test drive and made it back alive, so we counted the procedure a success.
But Flex wasn’t done with us just yet. Oh no; so far, we’d gotten off fairly easily. And we can’t have that! Let’s adjust the height of the highway pegs! Yeah yeah, what can go wrong with that? Ha!
I don’t know who the manufacturer of these things is, but they deserve a couple of nad taps. Instead of a simple one-piece compression bracket, these things had three separate pieces, including 5 (5!!) bolts. Oy! Needless to say that once one bolt was out, they all had to come out, and none of them wanted to thread back in correctly. Oh yeah, did I mention it was dark by now and we were working by flashlight? Oh what fun we’re having now. Frustration won out so I gave up and handed the tools over to Kevin for him to give it a try…
Kevin, with all his awesomeness still intact, succeeded in securing the bolts and we were good to go again.
At this point, it dawned on me that Flex had yet to lift a wrench, so as punishment, we made him put his own saddlebag back on. (I know; we’re tyrants.)
And with that, the rear brake job was done! Yay for rear brake job being done!! Whew, ok boys, let’s call it a night. Wait a minute…are we forgetting something? I could swear that we were supposed to be accomplishing something else tonight, too. What was it…
Oh hell…we’re supposed to be planning the ‘Vous trip!! Crap!! Ok, have any of you guys written down what your’re bringing out? Do we have a plan for where we’re meeting? Do we have a departure time? No? Sweet! This party is going just as well as all the ones before it! :-D
Grabbing the list of items that would be needed, we haphazardly assigned names with neither care nor concern. We had to get this done! (What the hell were these guys doing while we were working on Flex’s bike? Oh…right…they were handing us beers. Ok, I guess we can let things slide.)
By the time the last tire left Zig’s driveway, we had a sheet of paper with a bunch of names on it. Listed alongside the names were lots of words – most of which had been crossed out or written over, but some were actually legible. Would I go so far as to say we achieved a plan? Hell no, because this is all subject to change - not to mention there are still a lot of logistical questions that need answering. We’ve only got 17 days until we roll out, so it’ll mean a lot of running around, phone calls, emails, trying to track everyone down and get things finalized. There’s a lot of work still to do.
Maybe we should have a planning party…
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