Finally on the Road
I’ve finally been able to get the bike out and ride it a bit. There are a few things left to do yet, but it’s rideable while I work on it now!
Author Archive: wae
Last of the Orange
Last night I finally was able to do it: The last remaining orange part on the bike was the front fender and I yanked it out, replacing it with the wrapped blue fender. That was the very last orange bit on the bike (other than the atrocious overspray, of course) and it is finally gone.
Other things that needed work: There was some sort of relay or something that was wired in to the rear trunk brake lighting that caused the bulb on the right side not to light. I ripped that out and returned the wiring to stock and everything works. The seat and the faux tank are bolted in securely, and I applied some more PVC cement to the left side cover mounting pegs.
The front wheel swapped fairly easily but I found some weirdness along the way. The speedometer gear on the ’84 Aspencade wheel appears to be totally identical to the one of the ’87 Interstate. I don’t know if going to the digital box was a later change or what, but I left the ’84 wheel as it was and mounted it up. Getting it to mount, however, was a slight challenge as the brake rotors on the ’84 wheel were both vented discs which made them much thicker than the ones on the ’87. The caliper brackets have grooves cut in them to clear the rotor, but the ’87 brackets needed some clearancing to fit the older rotors. Fortunately, the ’84 caliper brackets were tucked away in the corner, still attached to the forks of the ’84, so I pulled them off and swapped out the brackets. Worked like a champ.
The radiator is refilled with new coolant, and I’ve begun to re-assemble the front fairing. I need to swap the locks on the faux tank and the fairing compartment — but I’m not sure if the lock from the ’84 fairing compartment is still functional. I may just wind up having two keys on the ring. We shall see. It certainly isn’t a priority.
Next up, I need to get the oil changed and swap out that seal. After that, it’s just getting the other mirror on and playing with the fairing. I am short one of the windscreen bolts so I need to source a new one, and then I can put the front together. Still left to color change, though, are the fairing edge trim bits and the little vent covers for the lower fairings. I don’t need either of those to be able to move the title and register the bike, though! I’m fairly confident that I will be getting a license plate for the bike in the early part of next week.
Successful Event!
Mud. There was so. Much. Mud.
PE4 was a success for the car. I took home first in MF (out of 2) and 2nd overall (out of 13 or 14). The car held together very well and is feeling much more solid. I haven’t had a chance to try to perfect the alignment, though, because the entire car is just coated in clumps of dirt.
The biggest problem I had was with tires. The old mud tires just don’t want to hold a bead, so I’m going to need to do something about that. Otherwise, though, everything is running five-by-five!
Baby Steps
Since I needed to get the front end re-built on the Rallycross Neon in order to be ready to run in WOR PE#4, I had to temporarily pause work on the motorcycle, so there hasn’t been as much progress as I would have liked.
I got out the PVC/ABS cement and put the replacement mounting pegs onto the left side cover. One of them needs a little more just to make sure, but overall that seems to be working well.
The ground wire for the front left turn signal was pulled off, so I soldered that back together as well, so I think that everything is good electrically on the front half of the bike. I need to double-check the brake lights, though, to ensure that they are functional.
Ready to Race
The hubs came back from the shop and we got everything bolted back up. The front of the car is nice and tight with no play anywhere and no rattles or funny noises.
The alignment was waaaaaaaay off and I was going to take it to Sears but I thought it was worth giving it a try myself to see if I could save about a hundred bucks. Turns out that an alignment is pretty easy to do when the parts are all brand new!
Right now, the toe is still off, but it’s close enough to race tomorrow. I just need to spend a little more time with it to get it all finalized and perfect, but I made it a ton better in about 45 minutes.
Finally Getting the Front-End Work Done
After the last event, I had a tremendous shimmy in the front-end during acceleration at pretty much any speed. I noticed that the front motor mount and the transmission mount were both destroyed so I tried replacing those, but to no effect. I’m guessing the problem is related to axles and CV joints, so I decided to replace those, but in order to do it right, I’d go ahead and put on all the new bits I had waiting in the wings.
So far, I have the control arms with the Prothane bushings installed in the car, the sway bar is hooked back up, and the new tie rod ends are on. I picked up some new brake rotors and I have them sitting, ready to go on. The right axle was weeping a bit of fluid from the seal and the left seal didn’t look so great either, so I replaced it. When I pulled the left axle out, the joints were extremely notchy and felt like they had a lot of play, so I popped in a replacement that I had on the shelf. I’m not 100% sure about the replacement, but we’re going to give it a try since just swapping an axle isn’t that big of a deal.
While we had everything apart, though, I found a ton of play in the wheel bearings, so the knuckles and new National bearings have been sent to a local shop for press work. Once those come back, it should be a quick matter of popping them on, getting the new rotors on, putting in the new brake pads, and bolting the wheels back on. At some point, I’m going to need to look at the alignment, but I want to see if I’ve fixed the problem first and, if so, I may source that work to a pro.
Right now, though, the car is sitting with the new axles seals in, the control arms and tie rods attached, and the axles securely in the OBX with the transmission filled with Synchromesh.
On the topic of the control arms, we had some slight troubles with the horizontal bolts in the front. They got rusted together with the metal bushing and didn’t want to pop out. We were able to remove them by heating and hammering, but in the process we destroyed the nut on the left side. I didn’t notice that the nut was damaged so when I went to bolt it together, there was too much force on the tab that’s supposed to hold the bolt head still inside the K-member so it tore off. In order to hold it in place (once I got a new nut, of course), I chopped about an inch off a 21mm deepwell socket and put it on a universal joint. Worked perfectly.
I also have all new brake hardware (springs, pins, drums, shoes) and the rear bushing set, but I’m not going to do that just yet. The brakes wouldn’t be a huge deal, but I can’t really replace the rear control arms until I cut and move the exhaust out of the way. And I’m too lazy for that! I may wait until I do the motor swap — I have the exhaust in so tight to prevent it from falling off that there’s no play in it for easy removal and installation.
One More Step
I got the new boots and bushings installed on the rear shocks and got them put back on the bike. I filled them with a synthetic ATF (because it’s what I had on the shelf) after installing them on the bike by sitting backwards where the seat goes and pushing down then pouring in fluid as I lifted off the bike. I’m not 100% sure that I wound up getting the same amount in both sides (there was some spillage), but it should be close. I aired them up to about 45psi and they seem to be holding and not leaking.
I also got the old brake fluid drained out and filled it with new synthetic DOT4 fluid. Pedal and lever both feel pretty solid, but I can always bleed it later if I need to. While I was back there, I drained out final drive and re-filled it with fresh gear oil. It was hard to tell exactly how much drained out, but it didn’t seem to drain very much out.
With the shocks installed, I got the sidebag mounting bracket re-installed and started put the left bag on. Before I put the right bag on, I have to put the latch hardware on, but once that is done the back half of the bike will be ready to go.
I got the wiring re-wrapped and tucked in place, so now I need to get the oil drained, replace the shifter bushing, fill the oil and the coolant, swap the speedo gear, swap the fender and front tire, fix the front left turn signal, put the front faring back together, and get all the bodywork bolted back down. Getting real close now!
Back for more parts
I took apart the rear shocks from both the ’84 and the ’87. Kinda different on the inside, so I went with the ’87 shocks because that matches my parts diagram better. The bushings were no good and the boots were completely destroyed, so I’ve got those on order again. It took a little doing to disassemble: After getting the boot off, there is a little snap ring/c-clip in a groove and it’s the type without the little holes for the snap ring pliers. After messing around with it for what seemed to be forever, I discovered via the internet that you can tap the bottom washer up into the body of the shock a bit which gives you the space needed to lever out the wire. Once that was done it wasa simple matter of popping them open with air and then draining the fluid and replacing the oil seal. I found that for some reason I could not get the oil seal to drive in to the shock with that metal bottom washer in place. Taking that out and pressing it in with a section of black iron pipe and a hammer worked perfectly, though. Go figure.
While I wait on those parts, I’ll go ahead and continue on to see what I find. Scary fact: One of the reasons that the bike was rattling and clattering so much over bumps was that the right shock wasn’t actually bolted to the bike on its top mount. The nut that is supposed to hold that and the frame for the luggage was missing and everything was just kind of banging around. Isn’t that great?
Ignition Fixed
I took apart the wire tape to see if I could find the source of the starter relay problem. It was pretty messy, but not really wrong:
After doing some testing, I discovered that the problem was in one of the connectors up near the handlebars. Apparently one of the wires was a bit loose and squeezing it together seems to have it fixed. For now, at least.
I went ahead and got the top box put together and bolted on. I decided to give it a mock up as I wait for parts to arrive tomorrow:
Coming Along Nicely
Everything is coming along nicely. The bodywork is wrapped in blue, the timing belt is changed, and I’m just waiting on the last few parts from BikeBandit.com to seal up all the various leaks.
One of the “while I wait” projects was to get the cooling fan working. I bought a universal thermostatic switch from Advance and was working on getting it hooked up when I discovered that there is no power at all to the cooling fan. According to the wiring diagram, the cooling fan is supposed to have +12V whenever the ignition is in the “run” position and the thermostatic switch in the water pump housing is supposed to ground the fan when things get too hot. Tracing things back, though, I discovered that there was no power at the fuse box, so I dug in to the wiring harness a bit. What I found was that the original GL1200 ignition switch was replaced with switch from some other Honda motorcycle. While the GL1200 switch has 7 wires, this one only had 6 so good old Cleetus did what any redneck would do and just didn’t hook up the last wire. That last wire just happened to be the blue-orange for the cooling fan.
I pulled this mess out and replaced it with the ignition switch from the ’84 Aspencade which eliminated all the electrical tape and crimp connectors:
(The black switch is the GL1200 while the silver one is from some unknown other Honda motorcycle)
With the new switch in place, I buttoned up the radiator and went to give the bike a test start. Nothing. The lights go out as though it is going to start, but nothing from the starter. I seem to recall that when I installed the replacement solenoid the wiring was wrong but when I wired it the right way it wouldn’t start. I suspect that there are some other shenanigans going on with the wiring harness and it might all stem from trying to make the wrong ignition switch work. My next step is to pull out the wiring diagram and start looking at the starting circuit.
In good news, though, I did find that the tires from the ’84 have 2012 and 2011 date codes and aren’t dry-rotted or worn so I’m going to just use those for now any maybe look to new tires for next year.
Next steps (in no particular order):
– Rebuild rear air shocks
– Rebuild front forks
– Change oil
– Change front brake pads
– Change rear brake pads
– Change front brake fluid
– Change rear brake fluid
– Change coolant
– Install new tires/wheels
– Swap speedometer sensor
– Swap luggage
– Swap fender
– Bolt up bodywork
– Glue on new side panel mounting nubs
– Assemble front fairing and windshield
– Get orange and blue paint off engine guards
– Bolt left engine guard to the frame
– Replace left front turn signal assembly
– Install hardware on luggage
Once those things are done, it’ll be time to get it registered and tagged. Then I can worry about getting a radio installed while I’m riding it. I also think there will be a number of rattles and such that I’ll need to run down plus I need to make sure the cooling fan really does work.