I've been round at John's a couple more times since my last post about this. Initially (about 3 weeks ago) we put the gearbox back together. We replaced a couple of slightly corroded gears, but apart from that we didn't change much, so I'm really hoping we might have corrected whatever was causing the kickstart to pull down. There was the o ring I mentioned in the earlier post here, that was on the primary side. That could be it? Anyway John seems happy with how the gearbox went back together. Here it is with all the gears back in...
We had some trouble with the gear order, and with the set up and placement of the selector forks, but it was quite good for me to see how John dealt with problems, and to realise that even someone with a lot of experience runs into problems! The other plus here, was that because we took it all in and out a few times, I really got my head around how the gearbox works, and how it is set up, etc. The way gears are selected was really interesting in terms of the engineering. The cam plate in particular really amazed me. Genius!
Anyway, because that took a while I took off later that day and we left the primary side til next weekend.
The primary contains the clutch basket, which I've pulled apart and fucked with a few times. One thing I've always wanted to do with the clutch since I put the flat handlebars on the bike was to shorten the clutch cable. I'd put it off for ages, and the clutch has been so heavy I get a really sore hand on even the shortest ride. So... john showed me how to shorten a clutch cable. Important knowledge for anyone wanting to make cafe racers!
Need a good solid soldering iron first! Then cut the cable and melt out the previous solder from the ball end on the cable.
We next cut the cable to the right length, put it into the vice, and put the end back onto the cable... with the end of the cable sitting only slightly out from the end, like this:
John then used a punch to splay out the wire in the cable...
Then solder is dropped back into the hole on the end. Quite a bit is used as you should see it coming out the bottom of the hole on the cable end. There's then a bit work filing off the extra solder and getting the thing nice and round again, but yeah that's basically that.
Things didn't go so smooth form there unfortunately...
We had real trouble with the alternator not fitting back on properly. We couldn't get the correct clearance around the rotor, and then realised that the stator (aftermarket) was not actually sitting properly on the mount on the inner primary case. We fucked around with this for AGES! And eventually left it for the day. I've heard from John since that he's filed down the mount on the inner chain case, and has mounted the alternator successfully. He's had the bike running again, but thinks the timing is still a little out, and also wants to tune the carb properly. We'll be into it again this coming Saturday...
And hopefully I'll be riding away on the bloody thing?
No comments:
Post a Comment