Parts on Nanikore

New Sprocket and Chain

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 10:58:23 +0000

Inevitably with all chain drive motorcycles, there comes a time when we need to replace the chain - the two most common reasons are because even with the best care and attention, it’s stretched with wear, and even following adjustment it’s not performing well, or the lubricated linkages begin to fail and the links begin to stick. In my case it was the latter; a couple of links were sticking, resulting in a small noise and vibration at certain chain speeds.

It’s also considered good practice to replace the front drive sprocket, as well as the rear sprocket, so I’d need to make a decision on new ones for those too.

Chain-wise, I’d already chosen the chain I wanted to upgrade to, an X-ring chain by noted Japanese chain manufacturer, D.I.D. In the end, I ordered a 120 link D.I.D 525 VX3 chain. The MT-09 Tracer takes 110 links by default, so that worked, and the X link reputably offers even better reliability and wear than O rings. Also, I got the plain ‘steel’ finish - you can spend a few more yen and get the gold finish, and had it been for my old gold rim wheeled CB400, I might have gone that route, but for my Tracer, the steel look fits in more, and saves more than enough money to pay for that coffee.

For sprockets, I took a look at a few possible candidates such as Sunstar and Superlite. Sunstar are well stocked in NAPS here in Japan and look well regarded.

On the other hand, site favourite TougeExpress shared this video of a Superlite rear sprocket with a fairly bad wobble from new - have a look at the video below, and whilst it was a few years ago, it put me off.

Courtesy of TougeRider

In the end I took another experienced friend’s advice and went with sprockets from Japanese company, ISA. After receiving them, I have to say, they’re very nicely made, and come with a free sticker! You can’t argue with that. I ordered from their online store and delivery was quick, and nicely, before you complete your order, they ask what model/year of bike you have - I’m suspecting that’s a quick check to make sure you’re not ordering something completely wrong for your bike.

isa_sprockets.jpg" alt="" caption=""

The Tracer is a fairly standard design - 16 teeth on the front socket, 45 on the rear. I got a quote for having the work done at my local garage (Red Baron) - I really don’t have the tools or the amount of time for this job - and the garage also had new sprocket nuts and bolts on-hand, and a new front drive nut which should be replaced also, so it made sense to get them to do the work, and the quote was quite reasonable.

In the end I was only left loafing around in a coffee shop for about 90mins, and the work was done.

So there we are. I can say in the 700+Km since I got them changed, they sound and feel so much smoother, so yes, there are very tangible benefits, and the feeling that I should’ve gotten then done 1,000Km or so sooner.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

TougeRider — 2022-06-07

Good stuff G. Nice having a new smooth chain humming away the miles.

Batteries are, and are not, on Sale

Thu, 05 May 2016 22:33:44 +0000

It’s that sinking feeling you get when you haven’t been on the motorbike for a week or two, and you pull the cover off, turn the key, watch the rev needle pulse across, then hit the ignition button to hear a whelp and that empty clicking which tells me that this battery is not holding charge how it used to.

Actually, I’ve known for a while this day was coming, partly because when I put it on the Optimate at the end of December it didn’t give it a great rating, and partly because it’s now four and a half years old.

What to do? Well, what to do is to push the bike a hundred metres on the flat to the top of the hill near where we live, sit on it, trying to appear like just a normal, average biker, then start rolling the bike down that hill, let it get some momentum up and then drop that thing into second gear and hear it roar!

Perhaps not roar, but turn over for sure. At the very least.

This never fails - except for that one time when it did fail, when I’d had the previous battery, when I’d left it for far too long before replacing it, that roar moment never arrived, and I had to push the bike back up the hill to our house, where I then sat grumpily drinking tea for an hour wishing I was out on the road. Good exercise for sure, but not actually fun, per se.

The other times when it does work, you can then ride off and enjoy yourself and blissfully forget about that battery issue until after the next non-ignition, and another rolling start.

Not this time! No pushing motorbikes uphill again, I would actually do something about in a matter of days, not weeks this time.

I went off to NAPS to see what a new battery was going to set me back. NAPS is a motorbike superstore of sorts, selling clothing to tyres to mods and doing general maintenance works.

I’d done my homework of course - Amazon Japan had the battery model I needed for 10,500yen, but would take a week to ten days to be delivered, but I like buying local, and according to the NAPS website, I should come into their shop to check out the deals on batteries!

Indeed, deals there were. As long as you wanted Furukawa batteries. There were great deals on many Furukawa batteries. The only problem was that I didn’t want a Furukawa battery - they do make great batteries, they really do, but they’re expensive, and even with a 30% discount they were 20,000yen for my bike, when what I wanted was more of what I had - a basic GS Yuasa unit. Alas, GS Yuasa were not included in the great battery sale really, meaning my battery would cost me a little over 15,000yen. I don’t believe in using shops as a showroom and then buying online, but - it’s a battery, there’s an identical one in my bike already, and sadly 30% is a bit more than I’d usually pay for buying local.

Given the notes on Amazon, I expected to have to wait for a week at least. The battery actually arrived two days later. That’s pretty good service to be fair.

All that remained to do was pull the old one out, and put this new one in. On my model of bike it’s really simple - take the seat off, remove one screw, pull a flap down, then remove the battery and put the new one in. It’s as easy as that - literally a five minute job, depending on tea requirements and neighbours asking what you’re doing.

The moral of this story then is to perform regular battery maintenance (the Optimate has always been good it seems), and to buy a new battery when you need to. And yes, my bike is over a decade old and has this thing called a ‘carburetor’, having a flat battery with more modern injection systems can be more complicated.

I actually felt a little let down by NAPS. Their website, by not giving me a price on the GS Yuasa item, and recommending to go to the shop was a little false as there was no sale on that item. That said, this is business, and it’s always nice to browse in NAPS, and I did remember to pick up some chain cleaner I needed anyway. You got me.

New Tyres - Michelin Pilot Road 2

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 02:21:29 +0000

I’ve discovered that one of the few downsides to owning a very reliable motorbike is that even though you do the regular checks on it, there are times where you think, “When was the last time I checked that?”. For me recently that was the tyres, as I knew they’d been on quite a few years, so I did a close inspection, and whilst they had wear left, there was a small amount of crazing in some of the tread, and since I actually have a lot of riding to do over the winter, I decided it was time to swap them out. I asked around, checked in on the GaijinRiders forum and I was actually surprised that for the two things I needed to know, I was getting quite a few people saying the same thing - for my bike and riding style, the Michelin Pilot Road 2 tyres would fit the bill, and the best place to get them fitted was a small shop in Setagaya in Tokyo called Speed Stars.

I called them a couple of days before to confirm the tyre and the dimensions, and they’d said they’d need to order the tyres in, which I thought might mean a week or so wait - actually it would be the next evening. That’s just good service and market knowledge.

The shop is about an hour from me, but it’s a decent run on a good road, so no problems there. The day I went the weather was miserable and raining, but I’m an all weather rider, so I got on the rain gear and the trusty 2006 Honda CB400 SF to make the run.

The SpeedStar people come across as really friendly, and had the job done in less than an hour. I’d actually arrived a few minutes after they opened and there was already a couple of people in - I get the feeling this place is really popular. I waited in the adjoining cafe they own, where the staff were friendly, even showing me around her own bike (a nice Harley) and chatted until the new tyres were on. They’ve got a very nice atmosphere there, and it’s the kind of place which is worth stopping in if you happen to be passing in Setagaya. The pricing was good too - cheaper than NAPS, and there’s a small discount for paying cash, but even if NAPS were a little cheaper, I’d still go to SpeedStar just for the people and service.

I’ve now done a few hundred kilometers on the Road Pilot 2s, and they really area a good tyre - very stable with good cornering and you can really feel the improved rolling characteristics over the old Battlax. That cornering is going to be important - I love riding the twisties and I’ve also noticed they’re a lot better in wet corners too.

I’m looking forward to getting a few thousand more kilos under these.

A Cover for the Motorbike

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 03:16:56 +0000

For some reason, this month seems to have become the month of getting a cover for the motorbike. Just to go over the history a little then.

My previous cover was one I bought at NAPS a couple of years ago based on the recommendation of a friend. I can’t remember the brand, but it felt thick, and seemed well made. Indeed it started out well, kept the bike nice and dry, but sometimes the local cats would sit on it, and scratch it, and chunks started to come out of it. It’s difficult to describe the material - it was like a thickly woven paper, a bit like the one-shot oil change overalls material, but several layers of it bonded together. After a year, I found it left a lot of ‘dust’ from the inside layers on the bike after putting it on and taking it off again, and finally after two years I’d decided I really didn’t like it, as now some of the seams were ripping, and some holes exposed the bike, so I planned to buy a new one.

I could have gone for something from NAPS since it’s just down the road, but decided to ask around, and ended up getting a few suggestions from Jason Fullington, and after reading some reviews and thinking about it, I decided to order a cover from Nelson-Rigg - the Falcon Defender 2000 - through Jason’s company AFGMoto.

As it was coming from the States, I expected it to take a week or two, but it made it within a week, and since I was looking to go to the AFGMoto shop anyway, I decided to drive on up there, though in a four wheel vehicle and in traffic, it took a little longer than expected - it’s just outside the Yokota airbase on Route 16, which is not a quiet road.

In the meantime though, and in an odd twist, I went out on my bike for an hour last weekend, leaving the old cover neatly folded next to the conifer tree in front of our house, so it wouldn’t move, and when I got back, it had gone - yep, someone stole my old, hole-riddled cover in the hour between 9.30-10.30 PM.

Fortunately the bike was only under a tarp for a few days.

As you can see from the image below, the Falcon Defender is a rather tasteful black and silver. The black is a thick polyester weave, which feels very sturdy; the silver is a heat treat version of that. Unlike previous covers which had straps, this one has an elasticated skirting which I actually find feels far more secure, and should prevent flapping in the wind. Under the silver logo triangles are some holes to allow some venting, which the previous cover lacked, which I think was also an issue.

It feels very good, it looks very decent too, so frankly I’m very pleased with it, and it’s far, far easier to get on an off. As a package, it also comes with a backpack to pack it in if you want to take it with you, or store it - something else I just couldn’t do with the bulky cover before, and actually something I’d want to be able to do. One minor issue for me is the eyelets for a bike lock are just a little too small for my lock, which isn’t a major issue, and they eyelets are re-enforced, which is nice. This may be more or less of an issue depending on where you live - I don’t think my old cover would’ve been stolen if it was on my bike.

For sizing, buying from a US site for a Japan only bike was a little concerning, and from their sizing, it seemed a medium size would do, but I saw a couple of reviews which praised the cover itself, but advised going one size up, and I would agree - for my Honda CB400 Super Four, that’s a large size cover on there. The only downside is that the heat shielded material stops just short of the end of the exhaust, but I generally let my bike engine cool anyway before putting any cover on it.

Price wise, given the exchange rate (Yen wins) and buying through AFGmoto, it was much cheaper than I think anything I could have gotten from NAPS, coming in under 7,000yen (though I picked it up of course), making that previous cover at 10,000yen even less of a deal.

Useful Summer Products

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:33:33 +0000

Japan is hot and humid in the Summer, which is something I don’t need to tell anyone who has actually been here for it, but here’s a few things I have found which makes it that little more tolerable, especially if like me you actually like to get outside in it. One thing not explicitly on the list is sunblock which I apply liberally and frequently … and liberally again. Surviving n Japan has a round up on that, but in the meantime, here are some useful summer products.

Taichi Arm(our)ed Mesh Gloves
Just to start with a motorbike oriented one - my old summer gloves somewhat fell apart at the end of last summer, and because I like to ride my bike year round, I decided to pop down to NAPS in May during one of their sales and try on some gloves. I tried on a LOT of gloves. Aside from the four fingers and thumb per hand, I seem to have hands which don’t fit in a lot of gloves very well. The Icon gloves are nice, but the fit and size of the ones at NAPS weren’t quite there. These Taichi ones instantly fitted - like a glove. On the bike they let enough air through but don’t feel ‘drafty’ if you know what I mean, and the straps are well made from rubber and fit well. Importantly, there’s enough space around the thumb to allow easy reach to the indicator (blinker) switch - that’s something not to underestimate.

Frogg Toggs ChillyDana
I often wear some kind of head towel, because, to be honest, I sweat a lot. I also like to get out and do stuff - or indeed stay in and cook, so it works there too. Usually I’ll use a large cotton kerchief or a towel solution, but we found this.

Camelbak
If you like going out on these hot, humid days for any amount of time and distance, but don’t want to keep dipping into the (plentiful) vending machines, taking your own water with you, I’ve found, is a really good move, especially if you’re on two wheels. I decided to invest in one of Camelbak’s most basic products - the classic 2 litre water bag, in a simple backpack mount. It does seem to keep that water a little bit cooler, and the tube dispenser means there’s less mucking about with lids and cumbersome bottles. You can also put the bag itself into most backpacks on the market, so there’s no doubling up on baggage.

Keen sandals
Since where we live has sea, sand, rivers, stone and pavement, I like to have a decent pair of sandals for just walking around with the family - something which can go in and out of water without it being an issue. Previously I’d had a pair of Teva sandals, but since their distribution in Japan seems to have fallen apart at the same time as those long serving sandals, I decided to try Crocs last year to see if the low price was worth it, and frankly they just annoyed me for the whole Summer.

This year then, I’m giving the Keen Newport sandals a go, and so far they’ve been fantastic for all surfaces - very comfortable, and you can even jog in them if you’re so inclined for short distances. They’re not cheap though at 9,500en for my pair, though it looks like they’ll last a significant amount of time, and feel good at the same time.

Time for a Tyre Change

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:23:34 +0000

I’ve been the fairly proud owner of a basic GT Aggressor 2 ‘mountain’ bike for about seven years, and it’s provided me with plenty of hassle free and cheap transportation. I like two wheels. I also don’t mind getting my hands dirty doing work on it, but surprisingly, I’ve never had need to do any tyre work on it. Until now. Recently, it’s been obvious those seven year old tyres just aren’t what they used to be. They’re by a company called Cheng Shin Rubber and honestly, the tyres and the inner tubes have been great - but normal wear on the tread has left it a bit soft and thin, so it’s well past time for a tyre change.

Although they’ve been great tyres - never succumbing to a puncture even - they were slightly more suitable for off road than on, so in the wet, when cornering on tarmac I was always a little cautious - mainly as I came off once for being a bit overly ambitious on a very smooth cycle track in a typhoon.

I finally decided this week to get some new tyres on the bike, some new inner tubes and move over to slicker, more commuter type tyres. After asking around, I plumped for the Maxxis Detonator. Now, I don’t know who does marketing for Maxxis, but really, a name from the same general area as ’explosion’ for something which is to be filled with air?

Naming aside, it’s a great tyre - simple to fit and in the brief piece of testing I gave it it was a complete change from the rumble of the CSTs - basically because it’s a real road tyre. Cornering, breaking and everything feels much better now, so all in all I’m very happy with them.

For the record, I also picked up some Schwalbe inner tubes.

Cable Cull

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:24:36 +0000

Like most people with an enthusiasm for the technical, I seem to amass, attract, or otherwise acquire cables, connectors, converters, other paraphernalia of a mobile life, forming the skeletal remains of previous generations of technology and other items which end up in boxes and on shelves. To my family this is known as ’the cable junk pile’. Tonight then, in an effort to procrastinate over doing some real household chores, I took it upon myself to go through the back storeroom, which is home to most of the computing equipment, and through some boxes and decide what things I need, and what I don’t. The Great Cable Cull.

Actually, I’m quite practical and ruthless when I have these clear-outs. There’s almost no emotional attachment involved, except when it comes to my old Palm IIIe which I will keep in a box near me forever, you hear me? Forever!

After about an hour I had no visible cables on the shelf and places, and was down to my one small cardboard box and toolbox again. All the things I might need are in the former, and the day to day items like chargers and such are in the latter.

The big losers this time were: S-video cables, a joystick which has been broken for at least 4 years, some RCA cables, about 3 USB -> mini USB cables, of which I have many, some coax cable I didn’t know I had, a fan I will never use in my PC and various other things which I just don’t have the devices to use (old Canon Ixy charger) or have duplicates of (the aforementioned cables).

Anyway, it’s done and I’ve pruned my burgeoning cable nest sufficiently that the rest of my family are satiated with the sacrifice for now.

Bicycle light

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:27:22 +0000

Last week I left the front light on my bicycle, and overnight it went ‘missing’ (OK, it was stolen), so as I spend a fait bit of time cycling at night, I decided to get a new one - I stuck with the same manufacturer though, and bought a new 5-LED Cat Eye model. I have to say, it’s like having a searchlight on the front of the bike. Excellent.

Tomorrow I’m also taking my bicycle in for a long overdue service - mainly for the brakes which need recabling. I usually look after my bike myself, making adjustments as required, degreasing/oiling and all that, but after nearly 4 years, I thought I’d get it serviced at the local bike otaku place, called ‘Guava Jelly’. No idea where they got the name, but it’s a pretty good shop. I’m also looking into getting a little computer which calulates speed, distance etc.. More news as I get it!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

neal — 2004-08-03

Somehow I now have two bikes both of which need some urgent care and attention. Will need to sort at least one of them out so I can make the most of the British summer…. ah when it gets here! So much for the regular exercise! Might do the same and treat myself to a service at the bike shop and then I’ll have no excuses.