Inazuma 1200 oil-cooled Katana self-point maintenance 30 is underway.
First, we start with the easy stuff: chain cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment.
While we’re at it, using up the shop rags to their limit is probably more eco-friendly?
We really dig in deep and scrub hard. With gloves on, your hands won’t get rough or cut, and you can really get into those dirty spots.
Time to check the fuses!
They’re not blown and you don’t usually look at them, but there’s been some concern lately.
They used to be shiny silver, but they’ve developed a coating and turned brownish.
We polish them all and reinstall.
Thankfully, many owners reduce the tank capacity so much that they can’t fill it all the way.
We add fuel stabilizer—it’s nice if it helps the carburetor resist rot better than just carbon buildup.
The throttle cable is something you want to use hard until it breaks—or better yet, never breaks. We removed it and lubricated it.
We applied rust preventative on top and lubricant on the bottom. Make sure to wipe it down thoroughly, or it’ll get covered in dirt!
While lubricating the side stand, we also cut off an unused stopper.
Lever lubrication. When the controls operate smoothly, you can focus entirely on riding.
Same here.
We lift the front and bleed the forks to atmospheric pressure. If you don’t open them enough, you get a hissing sound and a rotten egg smell.
We clean the calipers. Everything looked clean, and operation should be fine.
CCI MR20 metal rubber is easy to apply with a brush, and you don’t use much, so very good.
Fluid work three times over. We switched to Golden Cruiser DOT4.
For those troubled by leaks from the nipple:
• Tighten the nipple
• Wrap it with a shop rag
• Protect with the rag and lightly spray parts cleaner
• Hold the rag and blow air through the nipple hole with an air gun
Seeping around the nipple comes from fluid trapped deep in the nipple hole and in the threads, which gets pressurized by the cap and oozes out. (This is different from people who leak while riding.)
If you blow it all out, not a drop will come out, so you won’t damage the paint.
The Yoshimura spring has flown off, so we’re replacing all of them.
Keep the old ones as spares.
We had a limiter cut installed—it was already there—so we replaced it with a new one anyway.
We re-tightened all the pop rivets. Basically, pop rivets are…
After a test ride, we’re done.
