Service time

As mentioned last month, it's time for Tallulah's annual service. As it's me doing the work & I have a copy of the service schedule, it's quite a biggie.

Armed with a cup of coffee & my trusty iPod, I head out to the garage to set up the workbench.

Tiger mid service

First on the list is to warm up the engine so I can drain the oil and surprisingly it all went rather well, including unscrewing the oil filter which, as other owners will testify is a pain to do. The oil filter sits in a recess under the engine so you can't get a chain wrench on it. You can buy a tool to do the job relatively cheaply, but I don't have one of those. I was all prepared to use an old screwdriver to try to get it off (as I did the last time) but while the filter was on tight & didn't leak, I managed to unscrew it by hand.

Oil drained, it was time to replace the fuel filter. Again, owners will testify to this not being an easy job. The fuel tank has to come off and drained of fuel so you can access the panel on the side where the filter & fuel pump sits.

To take the tank off you need to remove the front indicators, the battery and battery box.

Then remove the fuel gauge plug, two breather tubes, the fuel pump plug and fuel line. Then you can lift the fuel tank away from the bike.

Then drain the tank (I used a piece of spare fuel line to syphon the fuel out)

Then undo the bolts holding the plate which the fuel pump is attached to, finally you can get to the fuel filter.

Two minutes to replace the filter then you can put it all back together again.

Fuel filter being replaced

Balancing throttle bodies

 While the tank was off, I took the opportunity to balance the throttle bodies.

Balancing the throttle bodies is fairly straight forward once it's all set up. I found the middle pot was quite a way out of balance but it only took me 10 minutes to sort that out. The tricky part was holding the revs at around 1200rpm.

Usually the bike would tick over easily, but I had to disconnect the IAVC (the thing that regulates tick over) so had to hold the throttle to stop the engine stalling.

Balancing throttle bodies

All that done, I checked the air filter, fuel and coolant lines and gave everything under the tank the once over before putting it all back together again.

The final thing to do was take Tallulah out for a spin, but as I was going to use her for commuting to work the following week, I called it quits for the day. Well, with coffee, lunch and other comfort breaks, it did take me the best part of 5 hours.

The following week I used her twice into Peterborough & back as well as a short 2 mile trip to the garage to fill her up (23.5 litres in a 24l tank) & can say with the modification to the screen, a good service & throttle body balance, she's now the bike I expect her to be. Smooth acceleration, easy to keep a constant throttle, even in slow moving traffic & the difference balancing the throttle bodies made is very noticeable.

Now if only I could sort out my trapped nerve, I could ride her all day.