After 25000 miles the R1 has developed a bit of high frequency vibration. Doesn't seem as if anything important has failed but it's enough to make the hands and feet tingle and go a bit numb. It seemed to happen quite suddenly, but it may just be that it's reached a point where it's become a nuisance.

The problem is definitely engine related and not really dependant on engine revs, only disappearing when chugging along at 2000 rpm or so.

First logical idea was to check carburettor balance as the tickover was a bit uneven. Not at all sure imbalance of the carbs would cause such high frequency vibration but no harm in balancing them anyway. How to do it? The easiest bit of kit is the Carbtune by Morgans, a brilliant design employing four stainless steel rods in plastic tubes. Simple, robust and accurate. £52 delivered to your door.

A quick bit of fiddling needed to start with. Cut 10cm off each of the metre long connecting tubes, insert a damping restrictor cut from a supplied bit of narrower tube and push the bits of tube back together. So we wind up with four tubes again, but now with restrictors in. These stop the rods from oscillating wildly about when taking the pressure readings.

The gauge is marked in centimetres of mercury pressure. Your bike specs should tell you what pressure your carbs should be at tickover. The R1 is 22 cm/hg at 1100 rpm.

OK, the slightly tricky bit - getting to the blanking screws in the intake manifold, between carbs and head. So lift the fuel tank, remove the airbox and shove a torch down behind the engine so you can see what you are doing. Getting at the blanking screws is not too bad on the R1, but make sure you don't lose the screws or copper washers.

Then insert a supplied adapters into the end of each rubber tube and simply screw them hand tight into the manifold - rubber washers make sure the seal is good without having to overtighten. You can use the tube to guide the adaptor in as the chances are you won't be able to get your hand in there and it saves the extra work of having to pull the carbs off to gain access.

Start the engine, set tickover to around 1100 rpm and watch the rods bouncing gently in the Carbtune gauge. As you can see from the pic, my number 1 cylinder was way out, which was encouraging. It took all of 5 minutes to adjust the stop screws to get the rods all lined up. Firstly adjust the screw between carbs 1 and 2 - this balances 1 to 2. Then adjust the screw between 3 and 4 and balance those two carbs and finally the centre screw which balances 1 and 2 with 3 and 4.

If you can't get to the stop screws easily simply stop the engine and twist the throttle to bring the screw into a more easily reached position. An eighth turn or so of the screw is usually enough, and then retest. If the reading's worse just turn the screw the other way.

Once everything is within one cm/hg then you're finished. Let the engine cool down and the adapters can easily be unscrewed by twisting the connecting tubes. Replace the blanking screws and do a final test. If you want to make life really easy next time you can get a kit of adapters and heatproof tubing which fits permanently in place, well worth the £10 it costs if your carbs are a bugger to get at.

Did it help? Yup, tickover is super smooth now.

You can use the Carbtune on fuel injection units as well to ensure that the butterflies are opening together.