Miss November XS2 tribute

That's all for your centerstand, just a paint job? You should take it to your welder and have the tang braced. It will eventually break off if you don't .....

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You should also install grease fittings on the pivot tubes. It's amazing how much easier the stand will deploy if the pivots are kept well greased .....

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But, to install the grease nipples, you'll need another little "mod" from your welder. The pivot tubing isn't quite thick enough. The grease fitting will stick through, contacting and rubbing on the pivot bolt. So, you'll need your welder to build up a little blob of weld right where the leg meets the pivot tube, right on top of the weld that's already there .....

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Then you can grind a flat on it, center-punch, drill, and tap it for the fitting .....

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Then the stand can be sent out for blasting and you can paint it, lol.

Hi 5T,
Agree that tang stiffener is a great idea.
So is adding grease points but swapping in the aftermarket pivot pins that have built-in grease nipples
instead of utilizing your DIY method is way easier.
 
That's all for your centerstand, just a paint job?

Well, actually no! The bike is parked up on the lift to let me do a few jobs, including the swing arm. Just thinking what else I can do at the same time. And there's plenty, of course!

Gentlemen, interesting discussion - I was thinking about the idea of bolts with grease nipples and wondering if I could drill down, tap for a grease nipple, make one cross-wise hole? Or ask the engineer to do that? But your discussion above has inspired me to have a look and I discover Jerry Heiden offers those in stainless for £12.71 each. Tempting . . .

Going to see the engineer soon to have a tab welded on. Made carboard templates for the centre stand tab and a headlamp steady bracket:

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I'll take the bolts as well and discuss. My prime contact is their welder - the genius who managed to repair a broken cylinder fin with alloy welding, see post http://www.xs650.com/threads/miss-november-xs2-tribute.55057/page-13#post-603925 above. But drilling and tapping the bolts would be a job for the firm's machinist and he's a tad more expensive.

Fred - Heiden warns that orders may take longer during the present plague conditions but he's still trading. And 5T, unfortunately I'm not made of money either. So, things to think about.

Onwards and upwards.
 
Gentlemen, interesting discussion - I was thinking about the idea of bolts with grease nipples and wondering if I could drill down, tap for a grease nipple, make one cross-wise hole? Or ask the engineer to do that?
Like this? Have a read here.

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Yes, Jim modded his centerstand bolts. Info is in his big thread somewhere, lol. But, having a little welder, it was just much easier to do what I did, and cheap too, about $2 for a couple grease fittings as opposed to $20+ for those fancy stainless bolts. The way I look at it, stuff like this makes my welder "earn it's keep", offsetting it's cost and basically making it pay for itself. It's done that many times over since I got it years ago. Not that it cost much to begin with anyway. I bought it used from a guy I was working with for something like $70 or $75. And I'd say it's literally saved me hundreds and hundreds of dollars over the years.
 
5twins' way needs a welder, mine wants a drill press. So it mostly depends on tooling availability and what tickles ya. I'd say the effectiveness is a wash....
 
Gentlemen, as always thank you for taking an interest in my bike!

I would love to have the facilities to do the job meself. And the ability. To quote Jim's sign-out, "Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not." I probably fit in the second category. No welder, thought about whether I could clamp the bolts in a vice and drill down with a hand-held drill, took a look at them and decided 'No!'

Instead I've ordered a pair of stainless bolts with grease nipples (hmmm) from Yambits. *

And taken the centre-stand to Galashiels to have a tab welded on as illustrated by 5T. They will also cut & fold me a headlamp stay, probably from the same 3mm mild steel. I'll drill the holes once I check the fit.

* Mrs stopped asking me how much I spend on the Yamaha quite a long time ago. But for extra cover, I bought her a nice little purple Mini Cooper S a bit like this last weekend:

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* Mrs stopped asking me how much I spend on the Yamaha quite a long time ago. But for extra cover, I bought her a nice little purple Mini Cooper S a bit like this last weekend:

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Had an early Cooper S back in the 70's. Lovely little car. :D
 
Supercharged cast iron ? Or Turbo ?
Like it ! Except purple clashes with my hair.
;)

Nah, it's 1.6 normally aspirated. But she loves it!

Had an early Cooper S back in the 70's. Lovely little car. :D

Yes, Jim, but that was a proper Mini Cooper S. They stopped building old-style Minis about, maybe, fifteen years ago? Now it's the BMW Mini. Which is actually longer, wider and higher than the old British Leyland Maxi. Too add further insult to the Mini name, the new Mini Countryman is an enormous car. Stories that an original Issigonis Mini would fit in the back of a Countryman are perhaps a pardonable exaggeration.
 
I guess it really doesn't matter how you go about getting the ability to grease those pivots, just that you do. It makes an amazing difference in how easy the stand will deploy, I kid you not. The braced tang will also make stand deployment easier. When you step on the tang now, less of that force will be wasted through tang flex, more applied to getting the bike up on the stand. And of course, not to mention, it will keep the tang from breaking off. Mine broke off, so did my buddy's, and now a "freebie" his pal just acquired has the tang broke right off and M.I.A.
 
Embarrassed to ask this.

Are grease nipples self-tapping? Bought a little packet of 6x1 mm thread grease nipples - seem to be referred to as zerks in the US? - do I just drill a 6 mm hole and thread one in? Or will I need to beg/borrow/steal/buy a thread tap and prepare the hole?

It's for the swing arm pivot.
 
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You'll have to drill and tap the hole, as if you were installing an M6 bolt there .....

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Normally, you use a drill size 1mm smaller than the tap, so that would be a 5mm drill for a 6mm tap. The commonly used inch size for an M6 tap is 13/64".
 
Thank you, 5T, exactly the information I was looking for.

Tried the internet but no matter how I rephrased the question How do I install a 6 mm grease nipple? Google refused to return anything except adverts for grease nipples.

Tried searching for Youtube videos on installing grease nipples but only found those terrible time wasters. You know:

Hi, yall! Thanks for toonin' in to my video channel how to do any job in your garage now don't forget to hit that subscribe button before you move along now this is my truck which I bought in 2018 no it might have been in 2017 now which year was it I bought this truck but anyhow today we're going' a look at how to fit zerk so's you can keep all those linkages properly lubed but not just on your truck but also on your quad or on your jet ski but some of those have different fittings but I can't remember all the different sizes of all those fittings right now but I have here some grease fittings the size I need for mah truck because that's what we're here to do today now you can see now where did I put them oh they were right here now while I look for those zerks just don't you forget to hit that subscribe button now here are the grease fittings for mah truck which I bought in 2017 yes it definitely was in 2017 unless it was in 2018 but no it was in 2017 now you can see I bought a packet of now lets see how many are there in the packet now it doesn't say how many there are in there but there's a good few in there maybe twenty but you can buy them in smaller packets but I buy them in this size because that works out cheaper now you can buy them even cheaper if you buy in bigger packets than this but ah guess ah don't need that many so this here is the size of pack I buy them in this is the pack I bought just last week or was it the week before now don't forget to hit that subscribe button because if you're ever feeling kinda lonely or just want to waste half a day listening to some dumbass who can't get their brain in gear but feels he gonna teach you while avoiding giving out the one piece of information you were looking for . . .

By this time I always cut my losses and give up.
 
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