The Hardest Bike to Self Maintain.

Hugh Straub

Joined
Feb 21, 2013
Messages
6
Location
New Orleans
Bike
2010 Red NT 700
Don?t get me wrong, I very much like my NT700V. But, of the 14 or so motorcycles I?ve owned over the last 40 years, this has to be far and away the most difficult for a shade tree mechanic. Thanks to the shop manual and most helpful directions, suggestions and pictures on this site I managed over several hours to pass through layers of Tupperware, intake chambers, a mare?s nest of sensors other assorted detritus to spend 15 minutes checking tappet clearances. Only because of my fervent prayer were the front cylinder clearances in spec. Heaven knows what tool one uses to adjust those front tappets.

Today?s foray under the plastic was the utterly simple task of changing spark plug caps. (I have recently had some minor misfiring and I suspected the prior owner had not heeded the service bulletin for 2010 models to replace the spark plug caps. Turns out he did not.) Getting to the plug caps is easy enough?seat off, a couple of pieces of side panel removed from each side and ?Bob?s your uncle?. But, then, getting those caps off the plugs in the remarkably tight confines fouled by frame members and hoses galore was unbelievable. Once finally off, the rear cylinder plug cap replacement went as hoped. However, the front cylinder plug wire was hidden behind the bike?s frame and had exactly no slack. (I suspect the Spanish builders got a bonus for saving a nickel?s worth of spark plug wire on every bike.) While I finally managed to get the new cap installed, it was only after wearing out every four letter word I know.

Happily, after all that pain, the bike runs a treat.

All this is a long way of asking if anyone on this forum has ever owned a more difficult bike for self maintenance than the NT700V?

Kind regards

Hugh
 
Hugh, I haven't done any self-maintenance yet. It won't be long until Chuck Henderson teaches me to do valves. I always did them on my previous two bikes (both '99 Kawasaki Concours). On the Connies, the hardest part of the task was getting the valve cover wriggled back under the frame without knocking the valve cover gasket out of position.

I can say that the NT has really made me appreciate plain old Allen-head screws as a way of attaching plastic to motorcycles.
 
Hugh Straub said:
Don’t get me wrong, I very much like my NT700V. But, of the 14 or so motorcycles I’ve owned over the last 40 years, this has to be far and away the most difficult for a shade tree mechanic. Thanks to the shop manual and most helpful directions, suggestions and pictures on this site I managed over several hours to pass through layers of Tupperware, intake chambers, a mare’s nest of sensors other assorted detritus to spend 15 minutes checking tappet clearances. Only because of my fervent prayer were the front cylinder clearances in spec. Heaven knows what tool one uses to adjust those front tappets.

Today’s foray under the plastic was the utterly simple task of changing spark plug caps. (I have recently had some minor misfiring and I suspected the prior owner had not heeded the service bulletin for 2010 models to replace the spark plug caps. Turns out he did not.) Getting to the plug caps is easy enough…seat off, a couple of pieces of side panel removed from each side and “Bob’s your uncle”. But, then, getting those caps off the plugs in the remarkably tight confines fouled by frame members and hoses galore was unbelievable. Once finally off, the rear cylinder plug cap replacement went as hoped. However, the front cylinder plug wire was hidden behind the bike’s frame and had exactly no slack. (I suspect the Spanish builders got a bonus for saving a nickel’s worth of spark plug wire on every bike.) While I finally managed to get the new cap installed, it was only after wearing out every four letter word I know.

Happily, after all that pain, the bike runs a treat.

All this is a long way of asking if anyone on this forum has ever owned a more difficult bike for self maintenance than the NT700V?

Kind regards

Hugh
Click to expand...

You need to adjust the valves on the ST1300. Shim under bucket. If a valve needs to be adjusted then the cam (there are four cams)needs to come out too change a shim. And you need to know how to calculate the proper value shim size. If it is on the left side then the air box neds to come out (remember 4 cylinders vs two)and heat blanket under the quad throttle body needs to be pulled back to access the camchain tensioner. Makes the NT seem simple , which it is. Now if we talk about the rear wheel removal I will agree the NT700 is a pain in the butt.

I remove all the plastic to include the large side faring panels. Makes life easer. Once you know the tupperware sequence then servicing you NT is just a matter of having the proper amount of time and not get in a hurry. once you service your bike a few times then it will seem easy. Of course having the correct tools does also help. So save your pennies and buy the correct tool as needed. To remove the throttle body on the NT700, only two air box sensor connetors need to be disconnected and one connector on the throttlebody. I agree the first time is always a bit tramatic. But then the first time with any thing is alway a bit tramatic.

Checking and Adjusting the front cylinder valves on my Wee 650 requires the radator to be R&R. Again Shim under bucket. If a shim needs to be changed on the front cylinder it is going to be a bit cramped to get ones hands in there the remove the cams and buckets. I have been lucky 31000 miles on the Wee and all valve checks have been in spec. And again having TIME and proper tools to include a platform lift realy makes the maint job on all my bikes much more enjoyable. If it takes me two ot three days, so be it.
 
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[but changing the NT plugs is the most awkward task I've done (so far)..]

The left side is a snap as you almost have a straight shot. The right side is difficult but I've found that by using a normal spark plug socket, with short "wobble" extension, and fine tooth ratchet the task isn't bad. All the tools have to be assembled in sequence over the spark plug as doing it on the bench or tool box doesn't work.

To Hugh's question - "Yes" there are many, many other bikes that are more difficult to service. If you've ever worked on a VFR with V-Tech you'd think the NT700V was as simple as a single cylinder lawnmower engine in regards to service. Modern bikes with fuel injection and feedback loops require lots of sensors and that's just the way of life. I'm actually overjoyed that the NT has screw-type rocker arms so can overlook all the other hassles which I consider minor.

Have you ever looked under the hood of a modern car?
 
IMHO, the hardest part is the removal of the Tupperware. The service manual is as clear as mud on the proper removal procedure for some of the panels. Once you've got the Tupperware off, the job is knocked. With the right spark plug the method described by DirtFlier works well. The use of a short section of fuel hose over the plug makes installation easy too.

Mike
 
ABS bleed on a BMW R1200C. Valve adjustment on a BMW F650GS. Carb rebuild on a 250cc kawasaki Ninja.

Nice thing about the NT, you don't have to do this stuff very often.
 
I have had the plastic off twice for valve checks. First time was slow and methodical, and it took me a long time to do the first valve check. Second time, I don't think I even looked at the book and had all the plastic off, including the big side fairing. I did not rush and still had it stripped in around 15 minutes.

I went over to a friends house who purchased a PC800 that was in need of some TLC. It ran well enough for him to ride it home, but he plans on keeping it many years so went to the trouble to check everything out and make sure it was fully serviced. The PC800 plastic is much worse than the NT. Many of the connectors are simple plastic snap in things that eventually get brittle. I am with Phil. All the NT plastic pieces except the pocket covers and the lower black side pieces are held on by reliable screws and not snap in connectors.

I can see how if someone uses their NT more than I do and needs to service it more often might be put off, but i have found the intervals long enough to consider it a trouble free motorcycle. My DR650 is certainly easier to work on, but I find I am tinkering with it more often. Oil changes are more frequent, chain needs cleaned, Carb adjustments....... I just ride the NT. I will be due for the third valve check soon and have new spark plugs and oil ready to go at the same time, but I haven't done anything major to the NT since I prepared for the 2012 Spearfish trip. Just one oil change. When the weather gets cooler I may just do it early some convenient rainy Saturday.
 
The NT valves, once you use the "check the rear cylinder first and put that valve cover back on " trick and the "extend the front throttle body Hose clamp bolt out 2.5 cm" trick, aren't too bad at all.
Thanks to those that taught me those, as well as the youtube guy with the hints on the Tupperware.

Any bike where you gotta take the cams out to put in calibrated shims is a PITA.....IMHO.
Chris with a few precious minutes of internet
 
Having checked the valve clearance three times, I'm extending the checks to 20k miles, rather than the 8k recommended in the manual. Also if you use gas mileage as a guide, you'll see that the spark plugs last much longer than 8k and the same goes for the air cleaner element. I'm still changing oil & oil filter at around 5k. My bike now has 35k miles.

My '06 Accord/w 4-cyl engine has NO recommendation for valve clearance adjustment. The manual says "only as necessary" or something along those lines. I'm up to 76k miles and the valve cover has never been off. :)
 
My complaint about NT maintenance is not that it's hugely difficult, but that it's more difficult than it needs to be. Honda could have designed the bike to make access to various parts easy. Instead, like most manufacturers, their focus is on designing the thing to be efficiently put together on an assembly line. That reduces their cost. Maintenance is your cost and there's no incentive to them to reduce that.

edit: I'm with DirtFlyer on the valve check interval. I've done it 6 times and every time the clearances were within spec. I touched up some that were at the edge of spec. My ride to Alaska, this year, wound up being 15,000 miles and the valves weren't looked at until I got home. They were OK, so I've concluded that I can safely double the valve check interval. The bike now has 52K on it. Fluid changes get done following Honda's requirement except for oil and filter, which I do at around 6K intervals. Oil and filter were changed twice during my Alaska trip.
 
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bicyclist said:
My complaint about NT maintenance is not that it's hugely difficult, but that it's more difficult than it needs to be. Honda could have designed the bike to make access to various parts easy. Instead, like most manufacturers, their focus is on designing the thing to be efficiently put together on an assembly line. That reduces their cost. Maintenance is your cost and there's no incentive to them to reduce that.
Click to expand...


+++++1 You hit the nail on the head George. True of any manufactured vehicle............
 
Every bike has their plus and minus for maintenance. The more body work, generally the more difficult maintenance is due to having to "uncover" the area you need to work on.

Valve checks and adjustments on the NT are MUCH easier than the GL1800 for example. Not only do you have to detension the cam chain on the GL1800 (after much plastic removal from the fork tunnel area, if you need to adjust the valve clearance, you must remove the cams so you can replace the shims.

20110211_Fairinglightinstall_0017.jpg


20110211_Fairinglightinstall_0021.jpg

Then you need to measure the shims and figure out the size of the new shim to replace so when you put the "puzzle" back together the valve clearance is correct. I use a spreadsheet to calculate the replacement shims and a micrometer to measure and blue print the shims. Ugh the math! :cool:

The NT requires you to simply loosen a nut with a box wrench, slightly turn a screw with a flat head screw driver, and retighten the nut. EASY!

Try replacing the filter on a GL1800. You basically have to remove the entire top of the bike. With the airbag version, I also have to remove the radio and the airbag. The bike looks like this JUST to start air filter change. I still have to remove the airbag and the radio before I get to the air box. It is a 4 hour job for me to change the air filter. :eek1:

20090112CBIpodInstall002-1.jpg


The Vstar 1100 I had required me to remove the exhaust pipe just to change the oil! The NT is very easy on that front.

I put the NT about in the middle of complexity of bikes I've worked on.


Hugh Straub said:
Don’t get me wrong, I very much like my NT700V. But, of the 14 or so motorcycles I’ve owned over the last 40 years, this has to be far and away the most difficult for a shade tree mechanic. Thanks to the shop manual and most helpful directions, suggestions and pictures on this site I managed over several hours to pass through layers of Tupperware, intake chambers, a mare’s nest of sensors other assorted detritus to spend 15 minutes checking tappet clearances. Only because of my fervent prayer were the front cylinder clearances in spec. Heaven knows what tool one uses to adjust those front tappets.

Today’s foray under the plastic was the utterly simple task of changing spark plug caps. (I have recently had some minor misfiring and I suspected the prior owner had not heeded the service bulletin for 2010 models to replace the spark plug caps. Turns out he did not.) Getting to the plug caps is easy enough…seat off, a couple of pieces of side panel removed from each side and “Bob’s your uncle”. But, then, getting those caps off the plugs in the remarkably tight confines fouled by frame members and hoses galore was unbelievable. Once finally off, the rear cylinder plug cap replacement went as hoped. However, the front cylinder plug wire was hidden behind the bike’s frame and had exactly no slack. (I suspect the Spanish builders got a bonus for saving a nickel’s worth of spark plug wire on every bike.) While I finally managed to get the new cap installed, it was only after wearing out every four letter word I know.

Happily, after all that pain, the bike runs a treat.

All this is a long way of asking if anyone on this forum has ever owned a more difficult bike for self maintenance than the NT700V?

Kind regards

Hugh
Click to expand...
 
There is a lot of mechanical "density" in a motorcycle. Lots of stuff to cram in there if you're gonna' keep the outside looking decent. Nobody's even mentioned Ducatis with their desmodromic valves. I remember (showing my age here) when Mercedes-Benz came out with the 300SLR and the '54-'55 Formula One car that had desmodromic valves. I was greatly impressed with the mechanical brilliance of such a design, but I sure didn't think about adjusting anything.

If Honda's shop manual just showed clearly which direction to slide things and what kind of plastic connector was being used where, I'd be a lot happier about servicing the NT.

BTW, I just called Sun Honda and asked the Kat, the service writer to schedule my 80,000 miles service. There was a long pause. Then I told her I just needed a regular 8K service and she said, "Oh!..."

If I knew what my schedule was going to be for the next few months, I'd wait till Chuck got back from CAL-STOC and let him teach me to do the valve adjustments. This will be the last one I pay for.
 
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On to the soapbox:

This topic is one of the most annoying issues I have had with my MC's for many years. I am actually old enough to remember when changing the spark plug on my S90 Honda involved pulling the plug cap off the plug and putting the factory supplied plug wrench on the plug and turning. Or taking off one nut to open the air fliter and installing a new filter. Or checking the valve clearances by turning the foot starter until the appropriate mark on the crankshaft appeared after removing the crank cover (5 or 6 screws) and then screwing off the tappet covers. Or taking the engine out of the frame just for the heck of it in an hour or two. Yes in my youth I did such things just to see if I could.

I take another approach. Maybe Honda has over engineered their maintenance in the name of performance. And just maybe it is really overdone. So I am looking at 31k on my NT and I have not changed plugs, checked the valve clearances, or put in an air filter. Still getting arond 50mph and many hundreds of dollars in my pocket and time to do other things. And then it blows both fork seals within 500 miles of each other. Guess they forgot the gators though I have never had a Honda blow a seal save my PC800 at 50k. But then that one had self adjusting valves did it not? Certain irony there.

Honda get the message. Some of us these days would like to do as little maintenance as possible in as little time as possible. Even my Orek vacuum came with a replacement belt and had a five minute change time. For those who enjoy such things there are plenty of SuperSport bikes.
 
You could get a Guzzi :) The only regular maintenance is oil and valves. Valves are a 20min job on a bad day, and no oil drips. I have the old oil pan system so the entire pan is removed to change the filter. It does mean I get to make sure there are no extra bits in there :)

The Duc twin cam motors are also bad. "Hidden" rear cyl and shim in bucket adjusters.
 
I find that the maintenance items also seem to be requiring too frequent replacement based upon my experience. I first replaced the spark plugs at 8K. They were pristine so I then replaced them again at 24K... still had a lot of life in 'em so they will get replaced again at 48K. The valve adjustments were spot on at 8K and 16K so I'm going to check them next at 48K. I finally replaced the air filter at 24K but it still looked awfully clean. I don't ride in dirty/dusty conditions so YMMV on this one. Oil changes I do a tad more frequently than Honda recommends because my shift quality deteriorates after about 6K although since switching to Rotella that has improved greatly.

Mike
 
mikesim said:
I find that the maintenance items also seem to be requiring too frequent replacement based upon my experience. I first replaced the spark plugs at 8K. They were pristine so I then replaced them again at 24K... still had a lot of life in 'em so they will get replaced again at 48K. The valve adjustments were spot on at 8K and 16K so I'm going to check them next at 48K. I finally replaced the air filter at 24K but it still looked awfully clean. I don't ride in dirty/dusty conditions so YMMV on this one. Oil changes I do a tad more frequently than Honda recommends because my shift quality deteriorates after about 6K although since switching to Rotella that has improved greatly.

Mike
Click to expand...
On my NT700, my valve adjustments were in spec at 8k and 16k but I had the exhaust valves on the rear cylinder out of spec at 24k miles, readjusted and will check again at 32k.
 
[...Honda could have designed the bike to make access to various parts easy...]

Other than industrial or agricultural machinery, I doubt if any manufacturer gives much thought to ease of service, especially by the owner. The package has to be easy to assemble on the production line with the finished product being sleek on the outside.
A lot of components are pre-assembled as a group, often off site, so a particular individual component is never handled on the assembly line which sometimes explains why it's so difficult to get at that component.

"Home mechanics" are less and less able to perform even the most mundane tasks as machines only seem to get more complex with each new model. Both Fi and ABS have added two more levels of complexity to the picture. Conversely, some tasks that are extremely difficult for home mechanics to perform are routine for technicians who do (or did) that sort of work for a living.
 
That's a good point. For a bike with as much fairing and plastic as the NT, it is fairly easy to service. Easier than some cars I have worked on.
 
charlie b said:
You could get a Guzzi :) The only regular maintenance is oil and valves. Valves are a 20min job on a bad day, and no oil drips. I have the old oil pan system so the entire pan is removed to change the filter. It does mean I get to make sure there are no extra bits in there :)
Click to expand...

That is the beauty of the Guzzi. did a valve adjustment on my baby Breva in about 15 minutes. I went back and did it again cause I thought that I must have missed something. 15 minutes just didn't seem long enough. hahaha
 
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