Cleaning/water intrusion

So I finally took off the fairings off my bike to straighten out the front
cowl. It was far easier than I had anticipated, and now I get to see the
guts of my bike! I want to clean it off and do some small maintenance bits.
I know I shouldn't pressure-wash anything, but what should I beware of
getting water in? I know the air intake, the wheel/swingarm bearings, and
the fork, but how well sealed are the electrical bits? Anything else I
should watch out for?

 

IIRC, you've got a CBR600f3. Your electrical connectors are not sealed.
To be quite honest, I take a pretty practical attitude towards cleaning
the bike, and cleaning beneath the cowls is generally not high on my
list of practical work (unlike, say, making sure that the brake pistons
and slide pins are clean and properly lubricated).

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

Your electrical wiring harness connectors are probably not sealed at
all, unless they are in a "swamp area" of the motorbike.

"Swamp area" is a term we used on aircraft. Everything exposed to the
elements, or below a certain level inside the aircraft was considered
to be in the "swamp" and needed sealing to avoid corrosion.

Motorbikes don't usually have a lot of electrical stuff in the "swamp",
except for engine connectors low down on the engine, or maybe headlight
connectors that might get blasted if some newbie went riding his
Hurricane in a hurricane.

And, here you are talking about taking all the covers off your machine
and bringing the swamp to the unsealed connectors? Maybe the best
answer is "don't do it"?

So what if there's a bit of dust underneath the side covers or under
the gas tank? Florida isn't all that dusty, frequent rains keep the
dust down, but people driving on the beaches deposit salt on the roads.

If there's a bunch of beach salt accumulating under the covers, it's
good to be aware of that problem and to try to engineer a solution to
it. But, sometimes solutions lead to more problems than they solve.
Like, I once folded up a red shop towel and put it underneath the side
cover of my Suzuki to keep it from flopping around.

But the shop towel got soaked with water when I rode in the wet. The
wet towel caused corrosion on the exposed bridge rectifier in my
charging system. A new one cost me $50.00....

If your electrical connectors are clean and dry and free of corrosion,
you might try sealing them with dielectric grease. Like, the headlight
connectors in the swamp of my T-Bird were just filled with dielectric
grease. But the electrical contacts were pushed together with a lot of
force which you might not get with the plastic modular connectors that
the Japanese use on motorbikes.

You might consider sealing all the clean, dry connectors externally,
while they are still mated, with RTV silicone rubber cement, like
windshield sealer. Most commercial available RTV sealers are easily
removable.

So far as cleaning what you can see from the outside of your machine
without pulling off all the panels:

Little bits of grease and road tar can be removed with a clean cloth
soaked in WD40.

Lemon Pledge furniture polish is good for light cleaning, too.

Gunk is not a good way to remove grease, because there is soap in the
solution and the petroleum distillate solvent in Gunk penetrates every
crevice it can get into and the soap follows the Gunk and remains on
metal surfaces, corroding them.

And there are times when a motorcycle just needs a soap and water
douche to get abrasive dirt and grit off of it. You can use household
dishwashing liquid or commercial car wash preparations. They will leave
surfaces clean, but they will usually remove any wax you've applied.

I put duct tape over the gas cap, the exhaust exit, the ignition switch
and the reserve tank switch that Yamaha uses instead of having a
petcock with a reserve position.

I put duct tape over the chain, too, to keep as much water as possible
off the chain.

You might also consider bagging the handlebar control switches to keep
water out of them. Getting water in the horn switch is annoying because
the horn won't work. Getting water in the clutch switch and the starter
button is annoying because the engine might not start.

But, getting water in the headlight switch could be fatal if your
lights quit working while you're riding at night.

 

Fascinating stuff! Your bike must love you!

All this is very nice but just a little over the top for a person
that accepts that a bike is just a machine. I have mostly
owned unfaired bikes where a lot of electric connections and
switches are not very well protected.

Shock and horror, I have ridden these bikes through tens of
thousands of miles of rain (and the chain was in place, not in
a sealed plastic bag).

Sometimes they get so dirty that I actually wash them and
every time I do that I use the water hose a lot and I don't
cover up bits of the bike. Once in a while one of the
switches (usually when the bike is has done some years and
miles) will give me a bit of trouble but not enough to lose
sleep over. Generally the connectors work just fine (with a
few exceptions caused by unusually dumb location right in
the wheel spray or such).

Maybe I should add that I tend to own bikes for a decade
rather than a year so I'm not just careless and pass any
trouble on to the next owner.

I'm not saying my methods are better, just that they
work, and work well.

 

Thanks for the insight... lots of helpful info.

 

Stuff that ought to be watertight or at least well shielded

Things that hold oil (engine, forks, etc)
Bearings
High tension ignition stuff (enough so it's not shorting)
Connectors (to avoid corrosion)
switches (so they continue to work right)
Places where water can collect (tail lights etc).
places where tach or speedo cables connect to the engine/tranny

Be careful about washing with any kind of high pressure hose.
Try to be careful about stuff on the above list, particularly if
the bike is a few years old and the sealing in these areas is iffy.