When I came back from my trip, I made sure I reached home with a nearly empty fuel tank so I could swap the fuel hoses.
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I had to do a quick trip to Bangalore on Dec 26th, chose the Duke instead to go by car. I started early in the morning and was back home for lunch. Few pictures on the way:
All this just to see one door. I headed back after 10 minutes
Average speeds while returning were high thanks to the partially completed Blore Mysore Expressway
This one is my wallpaper
I was cleaning my garage and found this Roots Megasonic horn. It did duties on my older bike and was retired since I couldn’t fit it on my other bikes or cars.
However – this looked possible on the duke.
Little bit of cutting and drilling, I was able to fix the horn. It sits a centimetre inside the leg guard and barely clears other surfaces by a couple of millimetres, but it fits!
Needless to say, this horn is obnoxiously loud. My previous horns – hella pearl trumpets, were pointed downwards while angled at me so I actually would get to hear most of the noise and was ineffective. This on the other hand is the totally opposite.
When I came back from my trip, I made sure I reached home with a nearly empty fuel tank so I could swap fuel hoses.
New hose vs old, cracked and hardened hose. It’s a good idea to change hoses now if your bike is almost as old as mine.
I noticed oil weeping from the breather hoses going into the airbox. This is a common complaint on this generation of Dukes.
Easily fixed by removing the old wire clamps and replacing them with SS worm clamps
The front rubber dampers on the rider’s seat had all disintegrated by the time I got the bike. I had glued in a couple of rubber pads and even those disintegrated. I put in a request for new dampers from the local KTM and Bajaj centers, they haven’t got them in stock for over 2 months now.
The other day I was spending some time at my mechanic’s place, and I saw him replacing the chain pads on a Royal Enfield. I took a look at that rubber and hey, it might just work.
They’re much larger and would help distribute the weight better and last longer I guess. I had to enlarge the holes for the new rubbers to fit but it did fit.
Sometime during the life of this bike, looks like someone spilled some acid around the starter motor. The starter motor and the area surrounding it had a lot of surface corrosion. The starter looked completely rusted out and pretty bad. I got some time today to spruce up the motor.
Motor taken out. So much rust and corrosion
Cleaned up with a dremel and wire wheel
At this point, I opened up the starter, the brushes looked to be in good shape, I blew out all the carbon dust inside, sanded the commutator and put back the motor. Taped it up and gave it a lick of paint
Rustoleum 248930 Wheel Spray Graphite is what I used. It’s a very very close match to the standard KTM grey used on the engine and covers. I’ve only painted the rusted portions – rear isn’t painted at all.
A final dust coat to blend everything
Bracket holding the Rear Brake Reservoir got a fresh lick of paint too
Motor back in
New hardware to secure the motor
I recently took my old Yamaha RX165 out of storage. It’s much much slower than the Duke but sounds so much better. Will keep using it for the usual city roundabouts and reserve the Duke for the highways.
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