A disadvantage of choosing an orphaned bike like the TR650 is that very few shops stock any parts for them, so requires patience to gather everything. The SW Motech centre stands took several weeks to be delivered. But we knew what we were getting ourselves into when buying these bikes, so I won’t complain about that. I do reserve the right to a rant about the engineer that decided to use red Loctite on the bolts for the foot peg holders. That caused me some headaches when installing the centre stand.
To install the centre stand these foot peg holders need to come off so the SW mounting plates can be wedged behind them. As shown on the pic below.
But first those dreaded Torx bolts need to be removed. It took a lot of pain, sweat and tears and even more patience to get even the slightest movement out of them. Copious amounts of WD40 and penetrating oil did absolutely nothing. Heat should help with red loctite, but the intelligent engineer referred to above also mounted the rear brake pump on the same foot peg mounting plate, so I am hesitant to put the creme brulee torch to the bolts. On the other hand, the frame acts as a gigantic heat sink so it takes a very long time to get any heat into the bolt anyway. So I ended up alternating the blow torch and giving the bolts about 1 full turn, as that was all I could get out of them before the loctite hardened again. Even with a well fitting key, the Torx heads suffered a bit. I dread to think what would have become of Allan-head bolts in these circumstances. I takes a lot of patience, but I finally manage to remove all 4 bolts.
Once the mounting plates are on, with regular external hex bolts and regular blue loctite by the way, installing the stand in between is a cakewalk. But the pain is not over yet. Getting the springs on a centre stand is always a challenge and the SW Motech stand for our TR650s is no different.
There are several techniques to do it, including specialist tools, shimming the springs out, using a strong wire to pull, … but I’ll have none of that. Real men just use a simple flat head screwdriver. First the easy inner spring, then the much tougher outer spring. Bonus points for not injuring yourself!
The effort is worth it though as the stand makes maintenance and changing tyres on the roadside a lot more convenient.
