Stripping down your ignition lock

[Hooli]

I found the intermittent electrical fault causing rough running & the clocks to occasionally reset. That small earth connector off the battery was manky as hell, so I filled it with contact cleaner, plugged it in & unplugged it multiple times, flushed it again with cleaner, tightened the female bit, let it dry, added a drop of ACF50 to it & plugged it back in.

Then as I was in that sort of mood, I opened the clocks & cleaned the microswitches for the buttons. It's much easier to set the time now.

Before finally stripping the ignition lock down as I was there & had got bored with fighting the lock to turn the key at times. It's not perfect & I can still take the key out with the bike running, but that's because the brass tumblers are so worn. With the key in the tumblers should sit level with the barrel, which is what allows it to rotate. As you can see they don't until I press the key to the side a bit. At least now it's not full of crud & just has a light smear of grease in there it's a lot smoother to use.

Yeah ideally I should use dry graphite lube, but I wasn't planning to do the job so didn't have any to hand.

Then finally I went shopping on it twice, couldn't get a full shop in the topbox & didn't bother taking the panniers. I won the 'apocalypse lottery' while out & got a 12 pack of bog roll!

[Hooli]

To put a bit more flesh on the pics.

Take the top yoke off.
Drill/punch/whatever Undo the two security bolts out from underneath to remove the lock assembly from the yoke. I replaced these with normal machine screws (M5 maybe?M4 x 8mm) and threadlock, they are red threadlocked from the factory.
Two small screws lift the cover off the barrel, the sliver disc that has the flap to keep water out comes out at this point too.
Put the key in & turn it 'on' the barrel will now lift out.
Once out you can remove the key.
The tumblers will pull out the sides of the barrel, keep them the same way up & in order - important or your key won't fit afterwards.
Clean them up, flush the crap out the barrel.
Lube it with dry graphite (I used a tiny smear of normal grease as I hadn't planned to do the job).
Put it all back together & test it works before refitting it to the yoke.

[Hooli]

One mistake in the above having seen more pics.

They aren't security bolts to drill out, just undo them. The bolts I was thinking of are for the ignition switch.

They aren't M5 either.                no,    M4 x 8mm (Thx Andre)

EDIT by ADMIN: I've applied these changes to the description above Hooli 

[Dusty ST]

Take the top yoke off.

Good guide. I should do this at some point.
Out of interest, is this OK to do (remove the top yoke) without removing the forks/front wheel etc?

[seth]

You don't need to strip the whole front end to remove the top yoke .

[Hooli]

Very true @seth just the tank off & then you've got room to take the yoke off.

You'll have to wiggle the forks a bit to get it back but nothing major. Personally I'd drop the lower yoke & regrease the steering bearings while in there if they've not been done for a while. But you don't need too.