Chassis | Moto-Abruzzo

19/04/201426/05/2016

Rear suspension linkage – excess play

Last year the Capo had an advisory on its MOT about play in the rear suspension – not much, just 4-5mm at the back wheel but enough to be picked up. The bearings, pins and seals had all been replaced only about 3-4K miles previously, so I doubted they were the problem and frankly I couldn’t feel anything when riding …. so the investigation was delayed until now.

With another 12K on top, the play hadn’t got any worse so I wasn’t too worried …. until I found the fault. The thread in the shock absorber lower mount was shot. Trying to remove the bolt simply unscrewed the thread the other way – bugger! The bolt is 10.9 high tensile into aluminium at a torque of 45nm which isn’t much, and I know I used a torque wrench to install it last time ……. hmmm.

In the end I carefully ground the thread ‘hump’ down to a nice flat surface and used a Nyloc nut as a replacement. Luckily the bolt is 47mm long and has a reasonable amount of spare thread on which to use a nut and sufficient clearance behind the drag-link. In an ideal world the thread should protrude 1-3 turns past the end of the nut, but in this case it sits flush. I’ll probably see if I can find a 48-50mm bolt to replace the existing one just to be absolutely sure it’s right, a flanged Nyloc nut wouldn’t hurt either … hell I might even take up wire locking again, who knows!

So everything else was cleaned, checked and re-greased. I can now certainly say that the group-buy linkage kit is in perfect condition after a total of approx. 16-17K miles. The play is gone and I just hope the MOT man appreciates my scrapped knuckles!

11/03/201403/12/2017

On the right wavelength? (Part 2)

Waiting at the Post Office today were a couple of type-380 60 red LED tail/brake light bulbs to have a play with. I got these from Autobulbs.co.uk in preference to the 92 LED version that needs modifying to fit into the Caponord reflector/socket (thanks for the info Andy!).

To recap on the conclusion of ‘On the right wavelength? (Part 1)’ – In my opinion it would be unwise to fit WHITE LED tail/stop bulbs in the Capo UNLESS you first have definitive proof of the red light output and even then, there is the subject of the legality of fitting them in the first place!

What follows then is a laymans point-of-view of the alternative red LED bulbs after a fun-filled afternoon tinkering in the barn …….So ……. off with the lens cap, pop out a bulb and in with the new …. Easy to fit with no modification, they are certainly brighter than the standard 5w tail lights, while the brake lights are definitely on a par, if not a tad brighter than the standard 21w filament, most importantly the change in output when the brake is activated/deactivated is crisp and very obvious. Of course the one thing you notice electrically, is the wayyyyy lower drain on the battery when braking! Here’s a table comparing the power usage:-

Difference in power consumption

One additional point I noted in favour of the LED’s is actually based on their construction …. the filament bulb relies heavily on the reflector/lens diffusion to spread the light because it only has one fairly focused source of illumination, whereas the LED has 60 independent sources that reflect and refract far better giving the appearance of a much brighter output from ALL of the lens, a more uniform glow if you will!

Oh and one thing I almost forgot to mention about the LED bulb is that all 60 LED’s are illuminated at all times, the activation of the brake light simply intensifies their output, rather than switching on/off additional LED’s as I’ve seen in some bulbs. I think this maintains a much more even and balanced spread of light.

Conclusion …. yes the RED bulbs work as well if not better than the incandescent and of course the power saving is incredible. How they perform when hot and after several hundred hours of use has to be seen. In the end though I do have to wonder about two things; the logic of selling white LED bulbs for use at the rear of a vehicle and the woefully outdated UK/EU legislation in use – for example, using a bulbs power consumption as a measure of its output is unbelievably outdated. Technological change is here and seemingly faster with each passing year, legislators need to move out of the 20th century if they have any hope of keeping pace.

Me? …… I’ll leave them in for a while, just for evaluation off-road you understand. 😉

Caveat: Using LED tail/stop bulbs on the Caponord in the UK is illegal and as such karlb/moto-abruzzo cannot condone their use. They don’t carry an approval marking nor do they meet the brake light power requirements (15-36w) as set down in the ‘The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989′ ….round in a circle we go …. the very thing we’re trying to save (power) it turns out we can’t!!

04/03/201426/05/2016

Saddle up and ride out …..

No hour of life is wasted

that is spent in the saddle.

Winston Churchill

Bless him I never had old Winnie down as a biker, but hey if the cap fits …… 😀

Yes the humble saddle, that piece of plastic/metal and foam that can feel like an armchair or a razor blade, or in fact morph from one to the other over the duration of a few hours or minutes depending on the bike! To be fair the Rally-Raid seat is pretty good, if anything just a bit soft for my weight and could probably benefit from a stiffer foam to stop me sinking into it and putting too much weight on the old coccyx.

After 11 years of wear and tear I was thinking about getting them recovered/padded but didn’t much fancy being without the bike for several weeks while the job was done – step into the limelight Stanleybobly, who just happened to pop-up on the AF1 radar with a near-new set of Raid saddles for a painfully decent price. It would have been plain rude not to have bought them!

So now the Capo has a spanking new pair of saddles and I can work out where I want to send/take the old ones for refurb at my leisure – any advice about UK upholsterers always appreciated.

…… and thanks again to Stanley for selling them to me! 😉

05/01/201405/01/2014

Service time over

Service time is over for another 6,000miles. I decided a couple of years ago to extend it from the original 4,650 miles due in part to the well documented stability of the valve clearances and because I’m using the long oil filter and a decent branded oil. Whether I’m being realistic or foolhardy for extending the interval only time will tell. 😕

Valve clearances were all in spec but on the tight-side, so no need just yet to use the new Hotcams shim kit, but next time I’ll change all the shims by ±0.025mm to shift the gap back into its mid-range. That should see the valves good-to-go for at least another 50k miles. Everything else was absolutely fine, with just a slight tweak of the CO to lean out the idle.

The rest of the bike was given a thorough check over and happily all bearings and seals are fine, a squirt of grease in the rear suspension linkage keeping that nice and smooth. The drive chain and sprockets were cleaned and checked and after 33,333 miles (yes, that’s a genuine number!) they’re still good ….. This is the highest mileage I’ve EVER had from a drive chain. DID ZVM2 chain rocks!

05/11/201305/05/2019

Clutch master cylinder seal

12mm seal UPDATED MAY 2019

A nice bit of news has come my way regarding the Caponord clutch master cylinder. If you’re ever thinking of finding a repair kit for it ……. good luck. No one has so far. But a couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Eddie in the Netherlands, who being a rather determined chap, wouldn’t accept no for an answer. So he set about hunting through 12mm Brembo kits used by various manufacturers to try and find a suitable seal.

Well the bottom line is that after finding, fitting and testing a kit for several hundred killometers, he’s found a solution ……… from the KTM EXC125 – 520 range, part number 50313061000 and priced at £17.28 in the UK.

Now this may seem very expensive for a kit you will only use the seal from, but when compared against the cost of a new master cylinder or a second hand one from EBay of suspect quality, it makes the cost a little easier to swallow.

I have to wonder at the logic of producing various 12mm seals that would only be used in a few thousand units, compared to making one seal that will be incorporated into many kits throughout the years. If you spend a little time online and look at decent photos of various 12mm kits from old-timers like the Ducati Pantah to modern KTM’s the seal looks awfully familiar. Of course, getting your hands on one and trying it is the only difinitive proof. And an expensive hobby!

So I’d like to thank Eddie for contacting me and sharing this valuable information, I owe you a beer!

UPDATE MAY 2019

It looks like Wemoto (UK) are stocking a kit for the Capo. Well at least they list one! I haven’t bought one yet, but good friend Beasthonda from the AF1 forum has and I had a look at it last week. The main piston looks to be a little shorter, only a millimeter or so, and that may not even be an issue when the pin is adjusted to suit. Anyway I’ll update again when the kit is fitted and hopefully working.

13/09/201326/05/2016

Metzeler Karoo 3’s arrive

As the title says …… a rather grumpy little man arrived this morning tooting his horn like crazy and gesticulating madly about the state of the road. I tried to point out that’s why he was delivering my new tyres 😀 . Fell on deaf ears though.

Anyway, here they are, a nice shiny new set of Metzeler Karoo 3 110/80-19 59R TL and 150/70-17 69R TL tyres manufactures in the 18th week of 2013. Ordered on Wednesday evening (Ebay) and arriving on Friday morning, so that’s excellent service (and price €178 – approx. £149.70) from Felappi Srl – felaps10 on Ebay.it.

There are 6 TWI (tyre wear indicators) on each tyre at the minimum 1mm tread depth. Measuring the available tread down to the TWI gave the following:

Front 7.6mm at the centre, 7.0mm at the edge

Rear 9.6mm at the centre, 10.6mm at the edge

Snowflake symbol on true 'winter' tyres You can also see the ‘M+S’ text on the sidewall of the tyres. As far as I’m aware this means diddly-squate ….. nothing except that grooves at the edge extend into the centre of the tread and that 25% of the tread is open. There are no tests or criteria with regards to real-word operation of the tyres in mud or snowy conditions. Tyres that are tested as truly ‘winter’ tyres will have the snowflake symbol on them …. and I don’t know of any m/cycle tyres that have it. If you do, drop me a line.

This is all very well of course, but I’ve yet to fit them and put some mileage on them! Hopefully next week I’ll get them mounted and run them in playing on the Gran Sasso, it’s a tough life but someone’s got to do it. 😉

30/06/201307/09/2017

Exhaust heat management

Last year I had a look online for exhaust coatings that could possibly help reduce the radiated heat from the Caponord down-pipes. Among the usual rattle-can, cloth-wrap and ceramic paint contenders, I found a link to Zircotec in Oxfordshire. A few emails later and it looked like it would be around the £150-£180 mark to get the Capo’s pipes done. Not cheap granted, but when you read through the claims and list of customers who swear by the product, you just know they have something unique. Now they are ready to bring a product range specifically for motorcycles to the market. Take a look through the website and be amazed!

19/06/201326/05/2016

Oh do get a grip ……

I can’t believe that the Aprilia heated grips have been on for 5 years, boy how time flies! Over that time they’ve worked perfectly and I can’t justify replacing them any time soon. What I do need to do however, is replace the rubber grip as the originals look tired and are well worn. In truth, they could probably last another year or two as they’re not split yet, just look worn. And I don’t like my RR looking shabby!

I ordered a set of Ariete 02624/L grips from Caprimoto here in Italy and they arrived within 24hrs, fantastic. They cropped up on a thread on the AF1 forum a few months ago as a viable Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid & Ariete 02624/L grips alternative, as the Aprilia ones appear to be unavailable except as a complete unit. I’ve written about the fun and games of grip replacement and thoughts on upgrading the original Aprilia heated grip elements in a separate page. Click here.

23/05/201328/11/2017

UV damaged plastics

I first noticed it about a year ago – the ease with which the rear mudguard scratched. Then the flaking started, it was as though the plastic was turning to powder, all very unsightly! So I ordered a new one last May (2012) – AP8126706. It finally arrived in the UK about a month ago!

A quick internet search on UV damage to plastics proved quite interesting. It seems that they add the plastics equivalent to sun-cream or sun-block to the mixture before it’s injection moulded and this converts UV to heat rather than causing the plastic to decompose. Maybe Aprilia skimped on the Factor 50 when they moulded mine! 😀

23/05/201328/11/2017

Scottoiler – 12 years on

Yes it was 12 years ago I bought the Scottoiler ‘Touring’ package and a twin-feeder as an upgrade. It was all fitted to my lovely Kawasaki ZRX1200, then a year later swapped to a Triumph Trophy 1200 where it did several years sterling service. Later it spent a couple of years on the shelf before being dusted off and fitted to a Blackbird. Then in 2008 it went onto the Caponord where it worked faultlessly until earlier this year.

I noticed a steady decline in the amount of oil being fed to the chain and adjusting the RMV (Reservoir Metering Valve) made no difference. The fault turned out to be a clogged twin-feed. I tried blowing it out and using vacuum to suck out the blockage, but nothing worked. In the end I bought a new one and cut the old one open to try and find the culprit. It turns out that inside lives a piece of foam that acts like a reservoir and this had broken down into mush and was blocking every passageway.

The new one only took a few minutes to replace and oil flow was restored. I’ve worked out that this kit has well over 220,000 miles under its belt and that equates to a purchase/running cost of about £1.65 per 1,000 miles. In truth though it is starting to show its age, the flow rate seems to be less adjustable that it once was which I’m putting down to the rubber diaphragm hardening with time. Before winter I’ll replace the RMV completely (about £42) and hope this one lasts another 12 years!