Maria gets a TBS and some before/after pictures

Yesterday, after bringing Maria home I had noticed some "surging" or uneven acceleration behavior between 2500-3500 rpms, mainly in 2nd and 3rd gears. A bit annoying in that it threw off my shifting off sometimes and caused the bike to lurch forward slightly. More annoying that the mechanic at the dealer who did the test ride did not mention it or better yet, fix it before turning Maria over back to me. Oh well, what are you going to do. The test ride probably was not long enough perhaps for him to notice.....I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

So today after having commuted to work on Maria, got home and took her fairings off and set her up for a throttle body synchronization (TBS) which I suspected was needed.

I noted the mechanic had used torx head screws for 6 of the screws holding the fairings on, I replaced those with hex head screws so I wouldn't have to swap tools to take fairings off in the future.

Wow, the throttle bodies were way, way, way out of sync! There was 16 inches difference in the ruler I use for my manometer. No wonder she was surging! Less than 15 minutes later, I had the idle at the correct 1100 rpm, got the levels within one inch of each other at idle and even closer under acceleration and very much steady! She sounded much smoother too.

I went on a test ride without the fairings and she was smooth as butter! I was a happy camper once again. I'd toyed with the idea of checking the valve lash as well but that would have been only if the TBS didn't do the trick of removing the surging. I would have to wait till the engine was stone cold too before I could do the valve lash checks.

Here's some pictures of the items that were replaced and such on Maria before I put the fairings back on.

Before: note the mirror housing mounting studs, worn down to nubs by the pavement

After: The new mirror housing mounting studs

Before: The damaged valve cover, the spark plug cable was torn off during the crash

After: The new sparkplug cable and valve cover guard

Note the newness of the valve cover's metal vice the jug's metal's color

Tomorrow its back to Brigitta for the daily commute to work, I felt the effect of Maria's fairings on blocking what wind there was on the commute home. I got quite warm. Maria will be my weekend long riding partner, Brigitta my commuter motorcycle. This way, they'll both get their riding time in and part of my attentions on a regular basis. : )