Murphy’s Law & Motorcycles

Ugh. I was going to perform routine maintenance as well as a gearing change and new tires this afternoon when all went to hell. The reason for my mishaps plagues many motorcycle owners: “while I’m at it, I might as well do this and this too…”. The extra job was to give my Caponord a “cannisterectomy” to aid in the next oil change.

There is an charcoal vapor collector cannister mounted to the right bottom side of the engine that interferes slightly with the oil change process. The whole system can be removed in a couple of hours fairly easily. You end up removing the cannister, a bunch of vacuum line and a couple check valves.

Since this was the most internal job I wanted to do (it involves fuel tank removal and synching the throttle bodies), I chose this to knock off first. Everything went well as I followed the very detailed instructions a fellow Caponord owner wrote up and posted on the Aprilia Forum. The reassembly was almost done except to connect the fuel lines. These use the plastic quick connect fittings…you can see where I’m going with this. Yep – one snapped in half, the one that is threaded into the tank.

Three MAJOR problems:

1. My local Aprilia dealers are more a skeleton operation for the Aprilia brand. Its actually typical for Aprilia dealers, but let’s just say that they don’t stock anything


2. Aprilia USA is relocating from Atlanta to New York and is not accepting parts orders for another week.


3. I have a friend flying in next weekend to borrow my bike for a 5-day trip!

I located a part this afternoon in San Francisco and it will be shipped Monday likely to reach my door Wednesday. I really wanted to have the bike turn-key ready by the end of this weekend as to not have to rush anything for next weekend. We’ll see what happens, but I can still get the new rubber and gearing installed, but since I cannot ride it to heat the engine up, the oil change will have to wait.

This never happens where there is no vital schedule ahead…

Is there any irony to this story??? Aprilia USA just announced (news to me as of today in my search for the part) a recall on this plastic quick-connect fitting because “it can crack upon installation and removal”. Did I say “ugh” yet?