Glad to hear it's going well, though feeling a little guilty at suggesting a purchase that may have been unnecessary. Kind of assumed some WD40 (or whatever brand of water displacement fluid you prefer) would have been sprayed at the likely problem areas already!
At least you found the caps at a lower price than I paid.

When I changed my rear disc last year I had similar difficulties undoing the bolts. The screwlock Yamaha used on assembly seems to gain strength with time... I'd had minimal difficulty with the front discs, but have needed to change those every 3 or 4 years so the bolts hadn't had so much time to bond to the hub.


Cooking the rear wheel to about 50ºC softened the compound sufficiently on 4 of the bolts. The last two were really stubborn, I ended up taking U-channels of 3mm scrap steel with a 12mm hole near the end and welding them to the bolt heads. The higher temperature and extra torque I could apply was enough to shift them.





I was a bit concerned that the high temperature could have weakened the alloy, but was able to torque the replacement bolts up OK without the threads stripping so figured that the heat that did reach the alloy was conducted away fast enough to avoid damage.

(Apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs with that last suggestion, but some folks aren't aware of the value of the rear brake other than as "the one that can't throw you over the handlebars". )

I would (and do) use A4 s/s bolts on the rear and would feel less comfortable about using them on the front.
Temperature considerations are not the issue: the rear does only a fraction of the work of the fronts so the slightly better conduction to the bolts is not a significant factor.
Shear strength is what matters. Most readily available s/s bolts have a thread that extends all the way up to the head of the bolt whereas the OEM bolts have a plain shank of a depth that matches the disc thickness. So the replacement bolts are effectively a smaller diameter.
Back-of-an-envelope calculations suggest that there is still a big safety margin for the rear, particularly since braking forces there are relatively small compared to the fronts. Even so, and despite the fact that the braking loads are shared across the two front discs, I'd err on the side of caution and stick to OEM bolts at that end.
http://foc-u.co.uk/index.php/topic,2361.msg18102.html

Obviously it's preferable to replace before the trip, but if you can ride with a gentle right hand, particularly in lower gears, and keep the speed down to legal levels you'll probably be OK.
As V. Bodysnatcher says, modern chains are pretty tough: I've done a far greater distance than you're planning on a chain which actually had a broken side-plate! (In my defence, I had inspected it several times to investigate the slight rhythmic clunk I could feel before the crack became wide enough to see.)

Got home a bit late for wildlife spotting.
I certainly didn't spot the large snail my boot discovered as I walked up the garden path.

You don't need any fancy equipment to check this. If the leak does only occur under pressure, then running the engine until it's hot will achieve that.
I'd look closely around the radiator as a first place to check, it's wafer thin aluminium and subject to corrosion and impacts.
But, as Darrsi says, top up the coolant level before investigating.

I'm not a heating engineer, but wouldn't expect the level check valve to cut off flow to the pump. It's purpose is simply to isolate the transparent column when not in use.
This sounds more like an airlock at the pump or a faulty pump.
Is the level of oil above that of the pump? If not it may need some sort of priming procedure.

Just clean up the surfaces and bolt it back together, the gasket doesn't do anything useful.
You may find the clutch needs a slight adjustment as without the gasket the pushrod will be closer to the actuating mechanism on the sprocket cover.

Most people find the over-temperature light only ever comes on when riding in heavy rain: not 'cos the engine's too hot, but the sensor terminal isn't well insulated so gives misleading results when wet.
Additionally, the sensor is mounted in the wrong place: it's not measuring engine temperature but that of the coolant. The most common reason for a Fazer to overheat is loss of coolant (usually due to a leaking radiator). The thermostat housing (where the sensor is) is at the top of the coolant circuit so stays cool as the engine cooks.
So the light on the console is best regarded as a guide to the weather, it's feck all use for anything else.

Nah, mine lay on the floor, flapped about a bit then got squished by a bus following me.

I'm sure we all appreciate your efforts to help the evolution of pigeons with road sense.


I've been lucky, the largest direct hit I've had was a collared dove (about half the weight of a pigeon) on the chin of my helmet at 40mph. Nasty jolt to the neck, that.
A pheasant hit the handlebar when I was on my GPZ305 many years ago and that very nearly had me in the ditch...  fortunately, the only damage was a crack on the fairing, but at least I got a meal out of the bird.
Swans have a habit of flying across the M3 at Teddington at a very low altitude, that makes me kinda nervous... those things are fecking big!

Voted... and found it a hard choice. There were six contributors I'd have liked to give points to this month.