Fixing the
parking brake:
I managed to get a new bolt for the parking brake from Aird's, it was about £2 including postage. Fitting was straight forward and I got both sides of the handbrake caliper adjusted and it now seems to work fine. I did have a good look around for the missing nut and bolt underneath the engine and gearbox but I didn't find it and in the end only one bolt was missing. So this is all sorted and a feel a lot happier now that it can be parked on a hill and not have to worry about it running away
So to the
oil change:
The oil drain plug is on the side of the engine (the big bolt just above the drive belt in first picture above) . Draining the oil from here looked like a horrible job as a lot of oil was bound to miss any collection vessel and go all over the floor of the Argo. So after some thought, I decided to buy a oil pump and suck the oil out of the dipstick tube. The unit I bought came with two tube sizes but neither were small enough, but I happen to have a smaller tube in stock and so used this with the others all joined up to get down to the size required. Getting the tube down the dip stick tube wasn't that easy as it seemed to get stuck some way from the bottom but I eventually managed by using the dipstick as a guide as I pushed the tube down. I think I might buy a length of solid tubing for the next oil change to get over this problem.
Anyway the oil sucker worked a treat, very quick and no mess. I only got about 1.5 litre of oil out and the manual says it needs 1.8 litre, so I wasn't sure I'd got it all at first. However the oil filter is mounted horizontally on the front of the engine and when I started to loosen this I soon realised where the rest of the oil was. The thread is so long that it takes quite a while to get the filter off and effectively all the oil in the filter runs down the engine. Fortunately I had plenty of rags underneath it which caught most of the oil. A very messy job but the oil was warm so it gave a strange warming feeling to my fingers. Definitely worth wearing latex gloves. I then fitted the new filter and added the new oil. Job done.
Oil filter at the front of the engine. Not the easiest of places to work. Kawasaki part number 49065-2071
The next job was to replace the
fuel filter. This is a semi transparent unit and the filter element was a brown rusty colo
ur. I removed the front seat and undid the jubilee clips. The fuel pipes were quite hard and it was very difficult to get them off the old filter. With a lot of gentle easing, a small screwdriver and twisting both ends eventually came free. Alas with all this messing around the jubilee clip on the tank end had vanished down the pipe into a crevice on top of the tank and out of sight. It seemed to take ages messing around to get it back up the tube for re-connection of the new filter. Next time I'll undo this clip, move it down the pipe a little and then tighten it up so does not vanish out of sight again.
So almost finished with the servicing, the last job was to have a look at the
tyres and rims. Some didn't seem to be holding pressure for long so I took them off one by one and put soapy water on the tyre, rim and valve to find out where the problems were. It was quite obvious really, the rims were knocked about a lot and the bead seals were foaming up. These are 5 hole rims and not easy to find but I did give Aird's a phone and they had them in stock. They are about £40 each but they did offer to include fitting the tyre for this price. Some of the tyres don't have much tread left so I think I'll just live with this for the moment. When I get fed up with pumping them up I'll have to bite the bullet.
So all the servicing is now done and ready to go.
After various ideas, we bought a “small car cover” for £20. This looked OK apart from the fact that the box says it isn’t waterproof, which rather defeats the object. However, this does seem to be an overly defensive statement as maybe you couldn’t carry water in it, but it does seem to provide plenty of protection. To be on the safe side, we’re putting a plastic tarpaulin underneath it.
Within 24 hours of taking the Argo and its cover up to the wood, we had some heavy snowfall followed by several days of rain. The cover is in fact a bit too large and so was liable to sag and pond. Two strategies to solve this: a couple of tucks in it using cable ties to make it fit better, plus a patent hoop construction - two bits of wood and two bits of plastic piping - provide a frame to sit in the back and raise the cover so water won’t collect in.
