How about that Mother's Metal Polish?!? The bike was clean, but after getting into that magic potion, I was truly shocked. A bit of elbow grease and the dam thing shines like glass!

I had a 3" or 4" stain on the pipes from the former owner. She had hung the saddlebags centred over the rear fender so once something was added to the the bag it rested on and melted into the pipe. Easy to do, hell I almost did it myself. A buddy at work saw it and suggested 00 steel wool to clean it off. Worked great!!

Because there was no manual with the bike I ordered one through Amazon.ca I made the order late Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend and it was in my mailbox on the Tuesday morning. Truly amazing delivery! It was a Clymer book, but I must admit, the few things I have done were not quite right in the book. For instance, the book stated during an oil change you had to drop the exhaust in order to get at the filter. Not true on the 650!

My birthday is in November, so my wife bought me a nice rain cover for the bike. And then for Christmas she bought me a bike jack that was on sale at Crappy Tire. Dam heavy thing. I put it together and the wife and I slugged it out to the shed. In the house when I checked out how to use the jack it lowered very slowly ( I know, I know...that's 'cause it has no weight on it stupid). I had raised the bike up, but when I got down on all fours to check the "level" it was only on 3 of 4 points. So I stepped on the release pedal. Well, let me tell you, it came down a lot faster than I had expected. Almost flattened the wife!