I now have a garage at home I can work in, a bit cramped but in easy distance of the fridge/kettle and has electricity (!) so I don’t have to work outside when it’s freezing bloody cold.
So, for my next trick, Ill attempt the Winter Upgrade Project, the idea being to
• fit LED tail/stop light and indicators
• get rid of as much extraneous electrical crap as reasonably possible
• clean up the temporary bodge job I did with the fuse block so I could get riding
• fit a proper headlight switch that I’m in control of
• fit the goodies I bought from Heiden Tuning and others some months ago
◦ stainless downpipes + torque inserts
◦ shorty reverse-cone megas
◦ main, pilot and float needle jets
◦ reed valve crankcase breather doodah
◦ Uni pod filters
• fit the Scottoiler
• remodel the seat
plus the usual cleaning and polishing, of course – it’s still wearing quite a bit of South Dakota dust in all the nooks and crannies and the ally has suffered a bit in the cold, damp 5-miles-away lockup before I was able to bring her home.
But first, a quick cautionary tale. Regarding my Dremelling above, I discovered that a bit more force goes through the clutch actuator arm than I thought and I’d removed too much metal:
So I had to buy a new replacement from Yambits, which has the closer-to-the-pivot-point pull I was after. Not that it made any discernible difference. So, that’s a pile of dosh spent on ‘improvements’ to achieve diddly squat. Bugger.
On, then, to the current work. I started with the LED stuff and I’m reasonably happy with the results.
The necessary diodes are dirt cheap, I got a pack of 5 on eBay for less than 2 quid including postage. And the 2-prong LED flasher unit was cheap too – came from Hong Kong, took a while to arrive, but works perfectly.
I’m always very careful when cutting into a wiring loom, especially when everything is actually working, and try to do things in way I can easily reverse if all goes tits up. Lots of research on this site and poring over the wiring diagram before I touch anything … Happily, all the elctrical changes are now complete and everything works. It might not be terribly pretty, but until I’m in the position to do a ground-up rebuild and rewire from scratch, it’ll have to do. Here’s the RHS showing the relocated flasher relay and fuse block (if I’d taken out the starter lockout relay before fitting the LED stuff, I could have used its bracket to mount the flasher relay. Oh, the wisdom of hindsight):
I bought an aftermarket RH switchblock …
… so I could have a proper light switch, but had to adjust the wiring, unsoldering the R/Y and connecting it to the screw by the L/W. Lots of head scratching and
testing with a multimeter, but I couldn’t understand what it was supposed to be doing, but now it’s working properly as half of the starter button circuit. Here it is being pointed to by the centrepunch:
I had quite a job getting the headlight back in, it’s a very tight fit with all the crap that lives in the shell. Here’s the state of it before I’d finished hooking up the wires from the new handlebar switch:
Now, I have the carbs off and have fitted 145 mains and 45 pilots at Jerry from Heiden Tuning’s recommendation. Next I’ll fit the new float needle kits … I’ve read all the warnings abut the weakness of the posts holding the float hinge pins and admit this bit worries me somewhat. I’ll warm things up using the old Black & Decker hot-air paint stripper I used on the heat shrink, and hopefully that will help.
I’ve also fitted the crankcase breather, which looks nice and neat. I have a catch tank in the post for the pipe to vent into – dunno where I’ll mount that, guess I’ll work that out once the thing’s arrived, but I won’t end up with oil where I don’t want it
I’m really enjoying having a garage I can just pop into and fiddle about in for an hour or two in the evenings. The miussus is happy watching endless property programs or whatever, and I’m happy with a mug of tea, the radio/CD and my bike. Love it.
More pics to follow at some point