The shame of it

[FJTillDeath]

so yesterday I was at my girlfriends house. (her family stay with their gran) and the grans 2 adopted children were running around the yard when they ran slap bang into my FJ the crashing sound needless to say woke me up and the site of the bike on the floor infuriated me a great deal. Anyway I rished to lift upthe FJ, got it up to inspect the damage and it wasnt good. The clutch lever had snapped a quarter off - bearable but annoying. the side fairring had a gash/ scrape on it - quite an eye sore, the inicator light broke and petrol was leaking very badly from the bike.

Immediately I set to take off the seat to get to the tank and see if any pipes had snapped loose, but unfortunately none had, which meant the petrol was leaking from the carbs. So I had to disamble the Carbs and take them out from the airbox and the intakes (let me just say a huge thank you to andyb for setting up the post with the illustrated car guide - it made life so much easier) So I found the leak, corrected what was wrong and set back to put the parts back together.

In a way the bike falling had a silver lining in that I found the intakes to the carbs were already loose when I opened up, which is probably why they started leaking in the first place from the shock of the bike falling over. Unfortunately I found that after putting the b ike back together it was misfiring and making a really bad crackling sound - burning fuel in the exhaust. So I took it apart, tightened the intakes and all connections to the air filter nice and tightly, but the bike still missfired and made a crackling sound so I thought it would be the spark plugs going. Replaced them all (which stopped me from getting a new clutch lever but it still works so I thought id fix that next month and upgrade it to a better system - any ideas?) anyway I replaced the plugs and while replacing them I realised that I had earlier forgot to connect one of the smaller pipers to the tank so it was sucking in air rather than petrol stupid of me to forget but yeah better late than never.

As for the indicator I got some prattleys putty to put it back togeter and then put clear insulation tape on it just for peace of mind.

As for the scrape on the side I am gonna sand it down and get some paint to match to fill it in.

One other good thing about it falling over is that my friend offered me a K & N air filter that comes from the xjr. Anybody had experience with them? should I stay stock or take up the guys offer and upgrade?

Oh and about 2 litres worth of petrol leaked out so that should give an idea of how bad the leak was. As far as I can tell the bike is running normally..for now. Sorry for the lon post

[Arnie]

Ok, its never good to have your bike laying on its side.
But, at least you weren't on it when it fell.  And, it wasn't traveling at high speed.
And, you learned some things about maintenance - like check all fasteners for tightness.

I think I have a spare used clutch lever.  I'll check tomorrow.

BTW  My choice would be to keep the OEM filter or change to UNI DualPods, not K&N
BTW2 How long till the kids heal?

Cheers,
Arnie

[FJTillDeath]

The kids luckily had cover from the gran although she did give them a good hiding. I am bummed about it still happening but good came of it in the long run so i guess that makes it better. The main thing is now i feel confident for the next time I climb in to the bike