Hello again everyone. Thank you for your support. I want to inspire others to risk breaking things, indeed. But never forget that breaking things is the real price sometimes, and the money you have to spend there is the price of the school. You must pay for learning, it can be going to a professional that broke things before, spending absurd amount of time looking for others breaking things properly who wanted to share their work (sometimes they don't show the real process of breaking and messing up and only show you how it's supposed to be) or breaking things yourself. I've tried every one of those options. The best quality/price balance is into doing it one by itself, as I have found in my experience (could be not yours...). The key thing you learn that way is how NOT to mess up when fingering stuff. You learn that the first and fast, as it is what really cost you money and time and makes you suffer. And that's accumulative, so really fast you learn to get touchy with things you don't know without really messing up that bad, and that's pretty profitable. You learn to fix things you never did before, as you learn to face the unknown stuff, you learn to face problems outside your comfort zone. And that's pretty cool.
ABOUT MY STANDARDS:
I want you to know about them so you can have a proper sight of what I'm doing.
I am deeply and properly BORED inside so I express myself joking a lot, have this on mind. I make up words and expressions sometimes trying to be expressive of some kind of point I want to emphasize. Sometimes I make grammar mistakes, I'm sorry about that, I'm doing my best.
I like to follow the workshop manual, but I am NOT buying absurdly expensive tools for one time use, so sometimes I improvise similar solutions, having in mind the risk I'm facing with that. Other times I make the tools by myself. I'm a proud owner of a 800 Nm wrench I made myself, saving me like 500€ for it, and it cost me like 20€ of parts and a couple hours of work. What I really have in mind is respecting the physics and chemistry in the process when working. At the end of everything it doesn't matter if your tool had the Honda logo on it, but if you did it exactly as needed for the parts to get the proper result without risks, overprices or damaging anything, among other minor things.
And that's why I don't check the brand of my tools and parts, but its quality. I buy a lot on Aliexpress. I've bought copies of things for this bike there. My motorcycle will not be cursed or lose value because of it. It will do if the parts are BAD or worse than the original, more or less, or if I'm creating risks or getting worse output from the bike.
e.g. I bought the small rubber boot for the front brake lever piston in Aliexpress. It was like 3€ for FIVE of them. It was an impressive exact copy of the original, which was like 15€ only ONE. Maybe more expensive than that. Its a rubber part for stopping dust getting in there and grease to come out. That's it. There are NO risks of killing anyone or breaking the bike in half (I'm NOT talking about the main piston seal, NOPE). It's not reasonable in that specific situation to overspend my money, having a lot of other things that are important for real where to put my money (a new original alternator, as I told before, that is perfectly justified in my opinion!).
Other example. I bought a couple of footrests for the driver on Aliexpress, a copy of the CBR600 ones, that fit amazing, as they were original of it. Around 8€ I think? Hey, better than having only one, as it was in my case! I'm not spending 50€ each for the original ones, it's absurd.
For the mechanical parts, I like to use the correct torques. I use the torque wrench a lot. I like good quality screws, those are the most weak parts I know, so I like them in good condition and in good material. The same for washers, somehow. I like good quality for grease and oils, and I respect the kind of grease intended for each moving part, sometimes I try to put better ones than the original. Checking out how it was before cleaning gives you a good tip about if it was correctly selected or not.
Automotive brands are NOT magicians, they can fail and are not superwise extra-powered gods. You can improve their designs, sometimes very easily. I do not worship them, and having your own mind is OK. You can also think stuff, don't be a sheep.
I also like good quality for bearings and seals. I use some french online store (123rodamiento.es in my location) where I found the most exquisite variety of bearings and seals of any brand and settings you could desire. I chose to get pretty better bearings for my bike than the original ones, and I'm paying less than half for them. e.g. And I checked them and compared them, the old original ones and the new ones from that store that I selected specifically from all the options, and damn it they are better! We are 24 years ahead the desing of the ST1300. You can't expect less than a brutal improvement in everything. Getting the original ones, with 24 years of technology outdating (sometimes is not that way), cannot be better.
