DIY disasters: ‘The brake lines were a total jumble’
Jason Atreides couldn’t believe the state of an SV owned by a mechanic
Just because a mechanic owns a bike, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. But even so Jason Atreides at M and M Motorcycles, Waterbeach, near Cambridge, was surprised at just how much was wrong with an SV650 brought in by a professional car spannerman. Even the brakes were an accident waiting to happen. Jason said: “The chap told us the SV had some electrical issues, but the first thing we noticed was that the carbs had stale petrol clogging up the jets. But we soon found the electrical issue as well. “When I tried to remove the bodywork, I couldn’t because he’d fitted aftermarket mirrors with LED indicators built in and he hadn’t used crimped connectors so I couldn’t separate the upper fairing from the bike. “Instead he’d hardwired them into the loom.
I wasn’t going to start hacking into that, so I had to hang the fairing upper from the workshop ceiling in order to get to the carbs.” And there was another horror. The SV’s brake lines are laid out with a single pipe from the master cylinder to a splitter above the front mudguard, then a line goes to each caliper for a three-line design. The owner had decided to upgrade to braided lines, but he hadn’t bought all the components he needed. “A two-line kit needs a longer master cylinder banjo bolt to take two longer lines to the calipers. But instead of doing that he’d simply bolted each longer line down at the splitter so the lines were curling around themselves like jungle creepers, which would have limited the braking power considerably.
“Sorting that out as well as the other obstacles meant that by the time we finished on that SV a twohour job had taken about six, costing the owner more than £300.”
‘I had to hang the fairing from the workshop ceiling’