Bike troubles...

[erik]

I went for a ride last sunday. It was a good ride, but that evening after I'd got home I noticed a puddle of oil under the LH fork leg and found a nasty scratch in one of the forks. Bugger. Have to replace the seals (I found BrianM's great post about replacing seals here, cheers Brian it's a good to have a guide). I've read you can fill rust pits with epoxy if you treat the rust, so I'll try doing that at the same time because my forks are a bit pitted, and fill the scratch as well. I smoothed it off a bit with a sharpening stone, hence the marks in the photo.

I've cable tied a rag around the seal to catch the oil till I can replace the seals.

That's on top of having to sort out the clutch. I'm getting a sore left hand from the clutch, I think maybe I'm holding it open longer than I normally would have to because the clutch is dragging a bit, but I'm not sure. I might just have to adjust the lever so the clutch engages with the lever closer to the bar.

I'm glad my bike has problems like this, because it's the only way I get to learn how to fix bikes. But it's getting a bit tiring trying to figure out what's wrong with the clutch and what to try next to fix it (or whether it's good enough and I should just leave  it...).

Another thing I read somewhere was that sometimes a dragging clutch or difficulty changing gears (possibly just when stopped?) can be caused by unbalanced carbs and that blipping the throttle when trying to shift into neutral when stopped can help. I was sceptical, but it does help on my bandit!
How's that work? I thought maybe the blip creating a brief tension-release type effect on the drivetrain enough to make it pop into neutral, but I think that just holding it at slightly higher revs helps too. The only other thing I can think of is maybe it's a similar effect to how V-twins and big-bang fours have better traction due to the power pulses?
It wasn't that long ago that I checked the carb balance, maybe I should check it again.
My commute isn't long enough to get the bike up to temp, and the gear changes aren't too bad when cold, just a bit sticky sometimes. I'll have to do some longer riding (after I've replaced the fork seals...) and test the clutch some more to figure out if it's good enough or what.