Coil Bracket

The old one broke...

so I made a new one. Lost a little bit of riding time on Sunday but saved a little coin by using some scrap on the work bench. All in a day's work.

Parts Shelf

So the parts shelf is looking a little thin. A lot of stuff went out with the Shovel so now it is mostly Nightster take offs and mini-bike plastics. I need to unload all those old magazine back issues. I always keep them thinking I will flip back through them at some point but really they are just collecting dust. Maybe waiting for the last of winter to leave I can make some time to clean out the whole garage and get that shelf clear of garbage and in better order.

Death Cart

     Nick got his hands on an old, beat up, inoperable Chinese scooter and stripped it down to nothing and brought it over to the garage so we could get it running again. It took a little more disassembly but we got it to run. It's a bit janky though...like turn the ignition with a screwdriver, bridge the solenoid, try not to kick the battery off the frame and no front or rear brakes janky. It also wanted to take right off without even the slightest touch of the throttle. It's actually a small miracle it didn't hit and domino the 6 bikes in the garage.
    Since it left Nick says he got a brake on it and got it to stay running for a bit and even rode it. I saw a video but I am pretty sure it was doctored with a little CGI. I'll believe it when that SOB is back here and I can wreck it in to something. Which needs to happen...soon.

Last Saturday

Well lets just say this isn't how I wanted to spend it. Nick was in the house to help with a few other issues that needed attention and after, we were going to try and finish the reassembly on the Shovel clutch. I knew that I really needed to give the kicker cover some attention as I knew for certain that the mopar clip was missing from the clutch release lever allowing it to be pulled up out of the top. Again, not an expert but that ain't how its supposed to be.

Lets just say we put together the clutch with the new clutch tamer and...it didn't work. Yeah Wes, you called it: basically during the process of trying to remove the hub by tapping, we managed to knock the guts off the end of the clutch push rod. So...that attention that the kicker cover needed came sooner than I thought.

After draining the tranny and getting the cover off I found all the washers and clips which I will replace. I've got a new gasket already so at least that is easy. I also found out my oil slinger is no bueno and  the stop on my kicker gear was about to break off. This isn't what I wanted to find under the cover and definitely not when I wanted to do it but like I told Nick, much better to find this stuff out in the garage than on the road.  So...more parts are ordered and again we wait.

Rewiring The Wonder Shovel

     Idle hands do the Devil's work. Nick has had a little time to burn and to keep his head and hands busy, he's been trying to take the shovel where he wants it. In stripping things down, he realized there was a bunch of excess wiring, fuses and relays that needed gone. It was getting later in the afternoon so we moved from one shovel to the other.

   

    
 



After doing most of the reassembly on the top end, we proceeded on with several spools of colored wire and a couple pairs of snippers. I grabbed a simple wiring diagram from the excellent roadratroberts.com.If this site looks a bit dated by current standards, it is probably because it hasn't changed much since I first stumbled upon in in 2003. Anyhow, from B-movie reviews to killer old school photos to the rad drawn out photo wiring diagrams, this site is worth a look. The first time I saw wiring diagrams like this was here. 





   
      So we stripped off wires as we went and used the old pieces to judge the length we would need for the new pieces. One by one we made the new wires, added connectors as needed and put it all together. We tried to use some sort of consistency in the colors and Nick had done a good job of marking things when he did his initial tear-down. Cold beers in a hot garage on a Saturday night is a pretty great thing. It was getting late and somehow the idea of twisted yellow and blue wiring held together with green zip ties was too good to pass up. We're dumb and we laughed really hard about it.

     In the end, we hooked it up to the battery and an old switch I had lying around and held our breath. Low and behold, the headlight and tail light lit up and nothing caught on fire! The brake light even worked and everything. Nick was pretty excited as that hadn't been the case in quite some time. As the motor is still apart, we didn't get the satisfaction of hearing it run again but we made some solid advances in just half a day and barring other issues (fingers crossed) the bike should live again sooner than later.

You smell that?

Pretty sure the petcock shouldn't be dripping gas. Luckily it is only happening in the "off" position. Guess that sucker is going to be left on 24/7. Just another item for the ever growing parts list...

Abandoned Country Club

A buddy of mine lives near an abandoned country club. There isn't anything keeping people out...so we went in.