There should be a gin at my right hand but I’m keeping it tea at the moment so there’s a mug of Tetley’s finest in a lovely autumnal orange mug from Aldi.
Why should there be a gin? Because I have spent the day crouched over the W650’s crankcase removing swarf from the inside, and it has gone Quite Well.
It shouldn’t be there, but then the barrels should come off without the need to recruit a firm of specialists with a big hammer. They had to drill things free and as a consequence there are little shavings everywhere.
And I’m picking them out, one by one.
There are other things I will be doing later, like flushing the case out and changing the oil as often as I can afford, but it seems to me that the more tiny crunchy bits I can remove now, the better these other options will work.
I’m a child of the 70s and we had to amuse ourselves in ways that didn’t involve electronics. One game I remember involved magnets on strings, cut-out fish with paper clip noses, and a cardboard “tank” which you fished inside without peeking. The long winter nights simply flew by…. but my magnet-fishing skills have turned out to be an excellent foundation for several hours this afternoon with a small magnet on a wire.
Even better, it didn’t fall off the wire and disappear in the bottom of the crankcase, which I’d placed a 50/50 bet on.
It’s less than ideal and I’m sure I won’t get all the flakes out, but there are very few examples of people successfully getting those barrels off thanks to Kawasaki’s decision to have four of the retaining bolts run outside the engine and rust into immobility. I found one person discussing it online and he said he’d had to destroy the barrels to get them off. As replacements are £1,000 (or “one set of Africa Twin wheels”) I’m just glad the workshop got them off.
More fishing tomorrow. Perhaps a squad of handsome Norwegians will turn up to make sure I’m not going over my quota.
transport of delight 
Check a cabinet salvage yard/shop for soft close hardware. The magnets are super strong and tiny.
Thank you, excellent tip!
I used to love fishing for ‘fish’ (IYKWIM) with a magnet. That game taught me that wrapping a thin piece of fuse wire around the magnet and passing a DC voltage through the fuse wire does not increase the power of the magnet. Sorry 🙂
I was wondering about electromagnets 😂
It’s aways a real joy to read your blog! What a pain in the ass, having to fish out those flakes, but hope you are successful in the end.
Thank you! I’m making progress and I’ve checked in the manual and pretty much the whole bottom of the case comes off (“oil pan”) so once it’s not resting firmly upon it I will do that to get the last lurkers.