Boneheaded….dumb….lucky….funny….Whew!

These are the terms that come to mind about 20 minutes ago.

After I buttoned the nose back up on the FJR last month I had noticed that the nose bounced around a bit more than I liked after moving the various ballasts around in them. I wasn’t overly alarmed until I rode home last night from the Desert Valley Powersports Grand Opening and hit a section of I-184 that had an uneven section of concrete.  I’m sure oncoming traffic thought I was a beady-eyed cop with wig-wags on or a slammed Honda with worn out shocks.
It was bad enough that I started playing scenarios in my mind that I had not gotten one or all four screws to the headlight reflector tight enough….or that my new choice of ballast placement was sub-optimal and I’d have to undo what I did. Demoralizing thoughts as the evening air of 65 degrees felt so good and signaled the beginning of the prime motocycling season.
Missing a bolt or a nut does happen from time to time and I had even had a mini-drama at work where I found a nut on the ground where I usually park my bike last week. I thought I recognized it as the tank pivot bolt nut and put it in my pocket. This is one of those that’s not totally critical, but I chastised myself for not cinching it down last month.

As I went to put it back on that evening it wasn’t the tank nut afterall.  It was happily torqued and my confidence was restored.  I chalked it up to being my buddy McCabe’s FZ-6 as it had what I’ve learned to be a Yamaha fastener patina…..or one of the other motorcycles at work. Whatever.  So it sat in a bin at home.

Back to the independent issue of the nose…..I grabbed hold of the whole assembly and flexed it up and down. What I noticed was more movement than I remembered last week. Hmmm. I knew there was a steel nose structure that held the nose to the frame.  Ugh.  Had I broken something?

Coincidentally I had changed to my clear windshied Friday evening so I looked down through it as I flexed the bike’s droopy snout and I could easily see that it was moving almost half an inch!

I rooted around in under the handlebars and find a nut was so loose that it had about three turns before it was going to fall off. I shouted the proverbial, “Aha!” The last 45,000 miles has either just loosened things up or maybe the increase nose weight had exacerbated things.   I whipped out the mini-socket, a 14mm socket, and went to town tightening up the  wayward nut.

Much less flex!

There’s a second companion bolt about 4 inches down that I can’t really photograph and couldn’t even really see. I felt around with my hand and in a split second the giant mystery of the extra nut was solved. There was no nut…I grabbed open thread. That nut I had found in the parking lot was this magic missing fastener and Yamaha had used the same nut as the tank.

Spinning the sucker back on I torqued it back down and breathed a big sigh of relief.  I wasn’t guilty of not retorquing a fastener…..just not keeping a closer eye on tightness of existing fasteners.

…..I cogitated a little more though unresolved.  I muttered to myself in my best Clint Eastwood voice, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.“  So, I took the nuts back off and Loctited them.

The bike is now ready to invade Greneda.