A DISORGANIZED UPDATE,
Well it seems like I’m working on a lot of fronts simultaneously and progress is kinda slow....
I’ll just run through what I’ve been up to and not all of it is completed, some things just pointed to the need for more parts.
The first thing I started, and I’ve been messing around with this for a stupid amount of time, is my front brake assembly. It 99% new parts, which would make you believe it would just go together in a jiffy. If I had it to do all over again, I would just put a stainless braided one piece brake line on it and call it done. But I was really trying to keep it original looking and the whole front brake line is pretty distinctive , but I gotta say.....
I DONT LIKE IT.
It’s too many pieces, too many connections for potential leaks, too fiddly to assemble, and it has these special rubber bushings that go around the fittings and are then held by brackets, and the rubber I have is rotted and they are obsolete and this whole setup is getting on my nerves! Here you can see all the connections and the arrows point to the rubber bushings.
The last part (#16) that screws into the caliper is a specially bent steel line, that is obsolete and Gawd awfully expensive if you can find one on eBay and the threads were buggered on one end and it kept wanting to cross thread. I worked on it forever to carefully make it fit.
I tried and tried to improvise something to substitute for those bushings, but no joy. I’m throwing in the towel and ordering replacements, either NOS I found on eBay or some universal substitutes I found at HVCycles.
So for now, the whole front brake assembly is just loosely assembled until I get new bushings. I will be using a pressure activated front brake light switch. It will be covered by a rubber boot when I’m done and I’ve already replaced the black wiring loom with silver to match the rest of my bike. I’ll tie that wire into the handlebar control wiring and I don’t think it’ll be that noticeable when I’m done.
Pay no attention to that wiring hanging down by the brake line. That will be up on the handlebar later.
I also worked on torquing down my head bolts and motor mounts. I never fully torqued down my head bolts after my rebuild, so today I backed them all off and began from the beginning, working my way up following the torque recommendations set forth in Jim’s rebuild guide.
After that I installed new spark plugs and worked on the head stays. I did not paint these, they are a central ground connection and I wanted these clean, in fact I sanded the mounting points on the frame to bare metal and anywhere the brackets touched together I shined them up too.
I then worked on removing the original grip off of my throttle tube and cleaned that up, then just kinda loosely assembled my new switchgear and throttle and master cylinder onto the handlebar. ( I know I’m telling this out of order, as I said I was jumping around from job to job). I was surprised to find that throttle tube is VERY thin walled aluminum. I’m sure glad I was gentle in removing that old grip which was glued on with something really hard to remove. I have some Grand Tourismo knock offs I’ll install later.
I also went ahead and JB Welded a couple of machine nuts in my breather and re installed that.
Then I worked on my rear brake linkage, and this only created more questions in my mind.
I greased up all the pivot points and got it installed, but here is what is baffling me. It’s the pedal return spring.
Here you can see the spring and the post it is supposed to hook to when the brake pedal is all the way up.
It is completely off of the post. Here it is when the brake pedal is fully applied downward, still no contact.
At first I thought I must’ve installed it wrong, so I went to my reference photos and sure shit, that’s exactly the way it was before, the spring doesn’t contact the post and there is no return tension to pull the brake pedal up in the deactivated position.
The way it is now, the rear drum would continually drag. I think I’m going to look for a shorter spring.
Here’s everything installed, for now.....it’ll all have to come back off to put a new spring on it.
So it’s this kind of stuff that makes the going slow now, I’m getting into the details and realizing what’s working and what will have to be replaced, then order, then wait, then take things back apart and on and on......
This is what was bogging me down and made me walk away for a while. But I’ll get there, I’m nothing if not persistent.
Later,
Bob