Boring yokes of Tom's RD400

My mate Tom recently passed by and asked me for a favour: He had just bought a RD400, but the original forks were completely shot. But as a true Yamaha-connoisseur he used to own several SR500s and had some good fork legs sitting around. The only problem: RD400s run 34mm forks and SR500s 35mm forks. Which is exactly where I came into play.

 

The thing with such jobs is, that it takes longer to have everything centered under the boring head than the actual boring job and even that takes quite a while. All in all it took the better part of two hours to have the yokes bored out to size.

There'll be an update on my XS Sidecar very soon, but I've been working a lot on my other XS Triple Sidecar and the XT to get them ready for their respective sales and had to do some fixing up on my car. So there's not that much to show as of yet.

XS250/360/400/500 rearwheel into XS650(SE)

Now one would assume (lightheartedly nonetheless), that if your XS650SE runs on a 16" rear, that the simillar looking 18" from the XS250/360/400/500 should bolt right in ... more or less. Less. The chainrun is about 7mm off and needs to be closer to the wheel.

The idea behind this adapter was two-fold: Space the sprocket out by 7mm and reinforce the sprocket studs with some POM-rings to stiffen up the whole lot. The major dimensions, in case you want to copy it:

Now the fun started, when my mate Alex came round with a 10mm piece of flat aluminium, so the first hour was spent in actually transferring the all the basic dimensions onto the flat stock and then cut it down far enough so I could actually chuck it up in my lathe...

Things are starting to take shape...

Came out nicely and should explain the drawing.

The XS500 wheel and as you can see, the studs have been milled down on two sides, as to align the sprocket. 

It fits!

Four more POM-spacers to stiffen things up.

Et voilá: The finished product. There's six hours between the first and the last picture... 

SR500 hack - swapping an ignition (pitfalls only)

Smug-grin time.

Thanks to my friend Manuel, I was allowed (again) to borrow a complete SR500 ignition to make sure this was really the matter with the old girl.  If you follow the steps outline in this post, it should take you about 30-40 minutes to swap out both the rotor and stator of the ignition.

Marking her territory like a boss.

As you can see in the pictures above and below, the sprocket cover has already been removed and there's a late 48T-ignition sitting on the tarp. 

The only special tool required is the correct alternator rotor puller, which can be bought via Kedo (and probably some others!) When using it, make sure you put a softer copper washer between the puller and the end of the crank (a 1 cent coin is perfect) to prevent it from galling. Also be aware, that between the rotor and the crankshaft nut are TWO washers.

Once the rotor is removed, the stator is only held on with three bolts and you're pretty much on the home-stretch. The factory manual now claims, that you have to remove the oil-feed line from the engine in order to get the harness out. This is not true, it is sufficient to undo the single bolt holding on the oil and then GENTLY bend the hardline outwards a bit. 

Make sure you've put some threadlock on the end of the crankshaft, as a loose rotor will ruin the crank's taper for sure.

All reassembled and I even cleaned away the oil underneath!

Mr. Strangewayz GSX 7/11

Every now and then you run into bikes, people, etc that inspire you. It was just that with me and this bike's build, which I saw about a decade ago on the old OSS. It inspired me to start building bikes like that, even though back then the legal side of it wasn't as comparatively easy as it is nowadays in Austria.

I'll simply put the pictures in here without huge comments, mainly because I am led to believe that they both speak for themselves and if I point out all the brilliant engineering, you won't have any chance of going through the pictures and spotting it for yourself.

Ed Buell's exhaust repair

It's always nice, when friends pop in at your workshop and say hello. I still don't get it, why certain people always have to pretend they suffer from failures on their bikes, I mean, seriously, you can just simply come round for a chat, if you want. ;-)

That said, the fierce vibrations on the old Harley-based 984cc V-twin can crack pretty much everything.

So here we have Mr. Ed in full touring trim.

And the problem in full view. (The camera gratiously ignored all the hairline-cracks)

Roughly, what felt like 1kg of stainless TIG-welding rod later and it's mo' solid than ever.

Bye, bye (for now) Mr. Ed! 

A friend in need is...

... a poor sod on a Honda 500 Four. I do not even remotely intend to hide the fact, that I am led to believe, that the small Honda Fours are amongst the most overrated motorcycles in the world, but still, if it's owned by a friend and he broke down near your workshop, it's kind of an obligation to get the tools out.

This one was interesting though. It turned out, that the actual clutch cable holder must have been broken for quite a while and now finally had a hot date with the chain, when the two of the got a bit more intimate than was to be desirable for Mr. clutch lever.

So after a bit of bending and hammering the whole lot looked substantially better than before. A little drop of the magic blue-glue (aka. TIG-welding) and then a bit of grinding with a die grinder returned  the cable mount back to usable shape.

 I do admit that the candy-colour-paintjob still appeals.