I am all signed up for an Aeros­tich Tours Mex­i­co motor­cy­cle trip in Jan­u­ary. Roger, one of the lead­er’s on the trip, com­ment­ed to me in an email this week: “you are cer­tain­ly set up well for this trip. I would only sug­gest as an addi­tion that you install more aggres­sive tires, even as far as the MKC80 Con­ti­nen­tal knob­bies that are used on BMW Adventures.”

So Wednes­day I called friend Ian’s much men­tioned Pre­ci­sion Motor­cy­cles in Gole­ta and ordered the Con­ti­nen­tals. Today’s task was to get the wheels off the Suzu­ki and out to Pre­ci­sion to have the new tires mount­ed, then home and replace the wheels on the bike. The time to the first shot, tak­en at 12:45 when the rear wheel was off, was about 50 min­utes. Then it was on to the front wheel. The first task was to get the front wheel off the ground. Grab­bing an eight foot 2x4 from friend & neigh­bor Jil­l’s yard, a con­crete block from my back­yard, and neigh­bor Greg as a push­er, I lever­aged the 2x4 under the bike and tilt­ed it up while Greg shoved the block under the bike. Low­er­ing the bike onto the block I was then set to remove the front wheel.

But what’s this? The front axle is tight­ened (and removed) with a 12mm allen. Bum­mer alert! Off to Sears to buy a 1/2″–12mm allen end­ed tool. No luck, but at lease they had a 12mm allen wrench that I am think­ing I’ll use to get the wheel off then get a 1/2″ — 12mm allen at Spe­cial­ty in Gole­ta while the wheels are being retired near by so I will be able to tight­en the axle to the spec­i­fied torque at reassem­bly. An hour after image one we now have image two, i.e. both wheels are off (you can also see the con­crete block sup­port­ing the front of the bike).

At around 2:20 I’ve just dropped the wheels at Pre­ci­sion and turned to find­ing a 1/2″ — 12mm sock­et giz­mo. Spe­cial­ty had all sizes but 12 and after a third strike at a third place I got the sug­ges­tion to call the local Snap-On guy. He was at Per­ry Lin­coln-Mer­cury and said he had the part so I drove there and end­ed up with a 3/8″ — 12mm allen tool for $32! Yikes!

After a very nice and serendip­i­tous lunch at Fres­co with old friend Bev King, Pre­ci­sion called to say all was ready so I drove out and grabbed the new­ly mount­ed Con­ti­nen­tals as well as my old tires and returned home (image #3 around 5:40). The front wheel went on pret­ty sim­ply. I walked next door and recruit­ed Jill to be the con­crete block remover as I again lever­aged the bike up with her 2x4 and low­ered it down onto the front wheel. Thanks to Jill and she returned home to resume her dinner.

On to the back wheel. After much strug­gling with try­ing to fig­ure out how to put it all togeth­er with the chain I am final­ly at the point of think­ing I am done and am tight­en­ing the axle to its 72.5 ft-lbs of torque when I real­ize that the brake caliper does not sim­ply bolt on after the fact like the ones on the front wheel but is inte­grat­ed with the axle instal­la­tion. Back out comes the axle, fol­lowed by more frus­tra­tion and strug­gles attempt­ing to get it all cor­rect­ly assem­bled. I was about to give up for the night as I was feel­ing the need of anoth­er pair of hands to fin­ish the assem­bly and was rem­i­nisc­ing about days gone by when I had bud­dies to help and hang with me in such endeav­ors as this evenings when who reap­pears but Jill with an offer of assistance.

Too won­der­ful. We went at it togeth­er for about half an hour and then it real­ly was done; image four tak­en at 7:35.