Just picked up an 83 night hawk 650, my first motorcycle and have just a few questions. The bike doesn't ride right now, when I had it dropped off the bars were sitting way too low for me on the forks, so first things first I tried to raise them up. With a Jack under the oil pan I loosened the torx heads that hold the frame to the forks, and the hydraulic Jack underneath gave out unfortunately. The bike is now sitting as low on the forks as possible, and i can't for the life of me get them back up. Anyone have any advice? I have basically zero knowledge of working on bikes but work as an auto tech so I know I should be able to figure it out.

 

#1 Get a factory service manual. That will tell you the proper procedures for everything on the bike, you WILL need it.

#2 Working on a motorcycle is a mechanical process just as working on a car, don't psych yourself out because you've never worked on one, at the end of the day it's still a machine, almost all your automotive repair processes cross over.

 

Probably going to need to buy a headstand




When you buy the head stand, make sure you select the proper pin size. There's a hole in the bottom of the triple clamp which the stand plugs into, but the hole is a different size on each bike.

If you don't want to buy a head stand, you can keep it up the same way you've been doing it with a jack, but I'd get a milk crate or something to use as a jack stand instead of relying on the seals of the hydraulic jack to hold it up for a prolonged period of time.

Once you've got your stand, raise the bike up to where it was when you first loosened it. If the bike doesn't slide down the tubes, you can lube the tubes with some PB Blaster/WD40 and with a rubber mallet, lightly tap on the triple clamp until it slides down. Be sure to throughly wipe the top of the tubes before doing this though because dust and debris can cause damage. It's not a good idea lower the bike down the forks to lift the bars up because you'll ruin your suspension geometry. They sell aftermarket handle bars and risers to fix your issue, but to me it sounds like you've already got aftermarket clip on bars. Do you have pics of the bars on your bike?

Anyway, if you do a search for Honda CB bars, you can find all sorts of different options and if you've got regular bars (bars not bolted onto the forks), then you can just buy a pair of risers for around 20 bucks and throw em on to raise the bars. Whatever you do, stop messing with the fork tubes because that is the absolute wrong way to go about it.