Uraling to Alaska - Day 18: Maintenance Lessons by RichardM

Today, Richard and I spent the day finishing off the remaining maintenance tasks for Valencia's 30,000 Kilometer Service interval.  No issues there and I learned a couple of helpful hints from RichardM in the process!

Turns out, he was a mechanic for a while before going to college and ending up in the IT field!

Major lesson of the day for me:  Know your tools and their capabilities.  To Wit:

 My 2 Ton bottle jack, which has been in my sidecars' trunks since I've had sidecars.

I'd always lamented how they really didn't have much lifting reach, and so carried a small 

block of wood to add height.

 Here's the jack, fully extended, not much right?

Well, today RichardM pointed out to me the top cap

screws out and adds like three inches to the reach of the jack!

Second lesson, instead of spending lots of time and paper rags cleaning out my plastic funnels after using them, just do a quick wipe and then store in large plastic bags!  Much simpler and faster:

Part of the day we spend fixing the toe-in adjustment on RichardM's rig.  He'd graciously allowed me to take his rig out for a short ride to see how it felt.  I thought it needed just a small inward adjustment as I felt a slight pull to the right when going straight on his rig.

So he pulled out his measurement devices (2x4s and tubes) and we discovered his rig a toe-out of 2"!  Not good.

So we worked on fixing this and inducing a toe-in instead.  Some time later, we got everything lined up and got it to a toe-in of 1/2" which is "mo better".

RichardM took his rig out for a ride and said he was still feeling a bit of a tug to the right when going against the wind, and, a neutral feel when going with the wind at his back.  Some head scratching later, we decided to remove the plastic portion of his sidecar's windshield and he went out for another ride.

He came back and reported a much better feel when going against the wind, almost neutral which is what you want!  So it was the drag of the windshield that was causing the pull to the right!  I was glad to hear this and we'd followed what we knew to be the right measurement procedures for toe-in adjustment!