what did you wrench on today??

[Rich82GS750TZ]

I know to most of you guys, all this stuff is just regular maintenance. To me, if was my first time for everything but changing the oil. I'm learning a lot from everyone here on the forum.

Just got back from a test ride after all of this winter maintenance:
Removed 1 broken exhaust bolt, fixed two buggered holes.(1st time)
Rebuilt forks w/new seals, polished lowers.(1st time)
Rebuilt caliper, new piston, seals, boots.(1st time)
Rebuilt MC, including new piston/cup set, new sight glass.(1st time)
New Venhill SS brake line.(1st time)
Valve adjustment (1st time)
Oil Change
Even took the time to remove the TSCC circle badges and mildly polish all the engine covers. Will get new badges eventually.
Happy to report, the test drive went awesome. After testing the new front brake on my street for a bit, I took off down the road for some fresh gas. After putting new gas in the tank, headed home. I know I need to take it easy on the new front brake pads, but the bike just sounded so good after getting warm and drinking some fresh fuel. I opened up the throttle. WOW. My speedo went to 85 quicker than ever. Checked everything out when I got home, and as far as I can tell, nothing's leaking. YAY! COME ON SPRING!

[Guest]

Last three days I did a number of repair items that have been on the "to-do" list for a while, finally getting around to them.
1. Replaced and lubed clutch cable.
2. Synced carbs and adjusted idle (cleaned them and re-installed last week)
3. Installed Braided SS brake lines front and rear (Earls), Replaced front master cylinder (think the return port is clogged on the original unit, will take it apart and inspect)
4. Replaced crappy sportbike style rear turn indicators back to stock, repaired botched wiring from PO installing said turn signals.
5. Tach cable seal replacement

Need to get an oil change done and swap new tires on before riding season starts.

[GSXR7ED]

I know to most of you guys, all this stuff is just regular maintenance. To me, if was my first time for everything but changing the oil. I'm learning a lot from everyone here on the forum.

Just got back from a test ride after all of this winter maintenance:
Removed 1 broken exhaust bolt, fixed two buggered holes.(1st time)
Rebuilt forks w/new seals, polished lowers.(1st time)
Rebuilt caliper, new piston, seals, boots.(1st time)
Rebuilt MC, including new piston/cup set, new sight glass.(1st time)
New Venhill SS brake line.(1st time)
Valve adjustment (1st time)
Oil Change
Even took the time to remove the TSCC circle badges and mildly polish all the engine covers. Will get new badges eventually.
Happy to report, the test drive went awesome. After testing the new front brake on my street for a bit, I took off down the road for some fresh gas. After putting new gas in the tank, headed home. I know I need to take it easy on the new front brake pads, but the bike just sounded so good after getting warm and drinking some fresh fuel. I opened up the throttle. WOW. My speedo went to 85 quicker than ever. Checked everything out when I got home, and as far as I can tell, nothing's leaking. YAY! COME ON SPRING!

Fantastic Reporting Sir!


Ed

[Guest]

76C20DD7-99EA-4EF8-8A3B-470E74FA1B81.jpg

Tonight I painted my emblems flat black to match my side covers accent color. Really like the fire engine red and flat black combo, much better than maroon and flaking chrome.

[Dogma]

Vemco Mark VII

[Let's hope the Google Photos links don't have any stupid problems. Editing... What a pain. Here's a link to the album... Ugh, why does Google suck so hard at this. I made a Flickr account, because Google, whose storage I pay for, can't do this.]

I finally got around to digging into my Vemco Mark VII drafing machine. I bought it mostly because I wanted it, but I actually found use for it several weeks ago laying out some small sheet metal parts I wanted to bend. That was fabulous, but the action was kinda chunky. I thought maybe the rollers had developed flat spots, or the grease in the bearings had turned to varnish. It turns out, the tracks and rollers collect random chunks of schmoo. A little brass brush action cleaned everything right up. It's silky smooth now. What a joy it is to work on a device that was designed to be serviced. The manual even describes how to disassemble it. (Downloaded from the Wayback Machine.)





I was taught drafting on the board in high school, just before it became mainly obsolete. The T-square and triangle are fine until you know better. Later in that year I got to use the school's elbow-type drafting machine, and that's the difference between a Suzuki and a Schwinn. I was aware of the V-track machines but I never had a chance to try one. I'm not sure this isn't the first one I've ever actually seen. I spotted this on eBay and nabbed it for cheap. Fortunately, it survived the seller's packaging (a couple wraps of newspaper). The extra benefit of the V-track machines is that you can lock either axis for drawing really long lines. Up to 4' horizontally, and I have room for about 28" of the 36" it can do vertically.

It came with a single 18" scale, a Vemco P-2 in full and half scale sixteenths. I scoured the 'Net and found some metric scales. NOT easy. I found a 300 mm Rumold (German?) in full and half scale mm, and a 450 mm Mutoh (Japanese) in full scale mm and full scale inches in 50ths. Strange combination. The machine also arrived with the Model 3 (Civil Engineer's) protractor head. This thing has a Vernier scale good for 1 arc minute. But it doesn't have the 15? indexing I remembered from school. So I tracked down the Model 4 "Versagraphic" Protractor head shown in the pics.

I think I understand now how some people feel about their cameras or guitars. Well made equipment is just a beautiful thing.

I could do without the wood-grain Vinyl veneer.

[Buffalo Bill]

Vemco drafting machine

Your images aren't working for me, so I found this:

[Boriqua]

Does working up the energy and desire to do a valve adjustment qualify as wrenching today? I mean .. thinking about having to go out and do it has been laborious!

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Your images aren't working for me, so I found this:

I had (or maybe still have) one similar to this. But mine had (has) an arm with and elbow instead of the beam. I eventually replaced it with a sliding parallel drafting bar and triangles that I have in my office and still use from time to time. I should look and see if I still have the drafting machine. It might be worth something to someone.

[Dogma]

I got a request to see the sheet metal parts I laid out using the drafting machine.

The white and brown bent aluminum pieces are what I was working on. The aluminum is from a roll you would get at a lumber yard to bend and wrap around the exterior of doors, windows, fascia boards, etc. It's pretty close to half a mm thick, and for small parts like this I can easily work it with hand tools and a jig I 3D printed.

What is it? It's a heater and fan assembly for an enclosure I'm working on for the 3D Printer. The bent pieces are mounting brackets and a fan shroud.





Here's one of the early attempts at one of the simpler parts. You can see the pen marks from the layout and a little of the trouble I had getting hte bends aligned well in the tools. It was really difficult to assemble this design, so I flipped one of the bends the other way. Visible above.


The design work was done in SolidWorks, since I have access to that through work. Onshape could do this too, and maybe Fusion360. Anyhow, CAD tools have special features that make it easy to add a lot of complexity to a part, and I maybe got carried away. It's hard to see in the pics, but the fan shroud is made of two pieces with a lot of bends. That's why I need to print a jig. I got a little excited about that too, and didn't realize that the fully bent part would wrap around the jig. I had to unbend it a little to free it.

[Grimly]

Spent a couple of hours filing and grinding the weld blobs from the inside of the silencer, so that it's nice tight sliding fit onto the Delko collector, and there's a good inch of overlap to seal with.. I did the first few by hand, but thought sod this, there must be an easier way.
Dug out the Cheap 'n Cheerful air tool kit that I'd bought at the market yonks back and discovered an air die grinder that is, surprisingly, not as crap as I thought. The job went easily after that, but by 'eck it's a greedy sod for air demand. The compressor was running constantly for at least half an hour.
I'd venture to suggest the compressor is well run-in by now.
I cut the Hardly internals in half, so that there's still plenty of wadding and perforations in place, but ran a 10mm drill through the baffle, just because I could.
Fitted the silencer, after having to drill and tap the Harley bracket to M10, from its funny UNC thread (I recall when those were perfectly normal, but haven't even got any UNF or UNC nuts and bolts in stock, nor had for years).
The securing collar is temporary for now - a proper SS exhaust clamp is on its way, and the support strut at the rear can be re-done with something that looks a bit less hokey.
The AFR bung is in the right position, too. Which is nice.
Discovered that some toerag has nicked my Coppaslip.
All in all though, it works.
I'll start it tomorrow and see what it sounds like with half the guts it came from Hardly with.

[Dogma]

I had (or maybe still have) one similar to this. But mine had (has) an arm with and elbow instead of the beam. I eventually replaced it with a sliding parallel drafting bar and triangles that I have in my office and still use from time to time. I should look and see if I still have the drafting machine. It might be worth something to someone.

One of those sliding bar jobs was in the package with my drafting machine. Whoever was selling it or packing it didn't understand what they were dealing with. I should figure out if it's complete enough for someone to use and put it back on eBay. I saw some of the elbow type drafting machines on eBay, for not a lot of money. Something like 80-180 USD. Depending on condition, of course. Cheap-looking ones can be had new. If I was in the market, I'd be looking for a good old one. The nice thing about those is, they're easy to set up and take down for occasional use, and they don't have to take up a lot of room when not in use.

[Guest]

Does working up the energy and desire to do a valve adjustment qualify as wrenching today? I mean .. thinking about having to go out and do it has been laborious!

For me, working up the energy is usually the hardest step. After starting, the rest is down hill.

[Burque73]

I checked and reset the fuel level in my carbs yesterday. The small tubing tapered and screwed into the threads didn't hold for me, but clamping a section of 3/8 ID tubing to the outside of the bowl drain worked. I heated it up and flared it out for a nice tight fit.



They were all a little low so minor tweak to the floats brought the levels back up to the lock washers on the bowl, which is about in the middle of the shop manual spec. No. 2 carb has an ugly repair from the PO. but is holding solid.



I figured out a neat way to get the choke cable out and back into the 90 degree bent tube. It always binds up in there somehow and that proves to be a frustrating step in the job. Anyway, I used a straw from a spray can of brake cleaner to push the cable end out, while tugging on the cable. Also, for re-inserting the cable it helped to poke the straw in to where it touched the cable end putting a little pressure on it with a push/ pull motion and this kept the cable end from binding up in the 90, and it slid right through.



Adjusting the float levels didn't smooth out the idle as I'd hoped, so today i'll check the current at the coils and possibly install a relay I found in a drawer here.

[Guest]

Worked on my throttle issues, finally got my random reving problem fixed thanks to some longtime forum masters!! Thanks to them it's almost ready to hit the road!
20190317_141706.jpg

[Buffalo Bill]

Track bike redo

Ok, 2 months 'til next track day:
Working on fiberglass tailpiece/seat.
Built a support structure that will support my weight and is securely bolted to the frame.
Added some to the shell so it covers the gap mo-betta. This is a 93 GSXR Yoshi design tailpiece adapted to a '90 GSX750F Katana.