Knocked off the first page in the Garage.............whats going on
Haha! Well I guess a little update is in order then!
I’ve been out of the garage a lot here lately, life gets in the way. I’ll tell you getting all the little fine details ironed out has been really time consuming, and I wind up going over a lot of the same ground over and over, I wasn’t sure if you guys were interested in such things.
But here we go,
First thing today I worked on getting my front brakes done. I started that two weeks ago but got sidelined with a persistent leak at one of the hose connections , which in turn led to a search for a new steel brake line. One was ultimately supplied to me by forum member Ken Hansen, Thanks Ken! His old XS2 is living on in my bike and many others, he’s a good guy!
When I got his brake line it was a little corroded, but not bad. I threw it in my ultrasonic cleaner for a hot soak, rinsed it off and then shot carburetor cleaner through the inside of the line. It cleaned up pretty nice.
A while back when I was trying to get this leak fixed, just as a backup, I went to the hardware store and bought a bunch of small copper washers. I intend to use one in this trouble spot just for insurance. Before I used it I took some of the diameter off, so it would fit inside the hose fitting and I sanded it, until it was nice and thin.
When I tightened the line up in there you could feel the copper compressing, and it sealed up really nice!
Thanks to Jim for that suggestion, that’s a keeper!
And , just like that, Presto! No more leak, and the brakes have been bled. There is still a little air in the line, so I’ve tied the brake lever tight and angled everything uphill to the master, it should self bleed.
Speaking of the master cylinder, I’m really not crazy about it. It was very crudely machined. When I bought it the threads for the cap are really course and had lots of sharp and rough edges. And the way they machined the threads all the way up to the top, you wind up with an edge that isn’t flat all around for your cap to seal against.
There is literally at least a third of the top edge that has a knife edge on it for the gasket to seal against. Third photo has two arrows, between the arrows is that knife edge.
I’m worried about potential leakage of brake fluid from the cap not sealing properly.
Then I worked on my clutch cable some more. I really wanted to try 2Ms torque wrench test to see ho much force was required to turn the clutch worm, but since you have to turn it counter clockwise, all I kept doing was loosening the lock nut. So I wanted to try something else. I took the cable loose and let it flow unrestricted in a large arc from the clutch lever to the left side cover.
Taking all the curves and bends out of the cable, really did help make the pull easier, so that tells me that this is mostly a cable issue. I re routed it , yet again, keeping the flow as straight as possible, and it’s still pretty heavy , but I can live with it until some later point.
Next up, I really needed to do a test fit of the gas tank to see if where I mounted the coil for the Pamco ignition was going to be ok. I used a flashlight and mirror to check up underneath the gas tank tunnel to make sure that nothing was going to hit or rub. We’re all good here!
While I had the gas tank on I also checked the relationship of the filters to the location of the petcocks.
Yeah, this ain’t gonna work. They’re ay too close. I’m going to have to pull the airboxes and carburetors off again and redo all of this. I might as well get some decent fuel line while I’m at it, this stuff is way too hard to work with.
As you can see from the photo above, my gas tank will need work before mounting it. They didn’t mask the petcock area or plug the bolt holes. The bolt holes have not only paint, but also tank liner in the threads. The business that did my paint is a well known company that advertises in Classic Bike magazine and his work was expensive. They made several mistakes, some in the finish. The bike will look nice, but it is no show quality paint job. And don’t even bother telling me to confront the guy, I did, and it didn’t end well.
I got the decompression cable mounted , as well as the left side foot peg and shifter.
So, the tank is back off and stowed away. I still have the throttle cables to install. As I said, lots of detail stuff right now and kind of slow going. As of right now I’m not real sure when my next garage day will be. I don’t know what I did today but I jacked up my back, I’m sitting here with a heating pad and having muscle spasms.
Nothing that being 30 years old again wouldn’t cure I’m sure.
Till next time,
Bob