Sunday, April 20, 2008

Battery Box Refurb

The bike's been running great so that means it's time to go back and re-do a few minor details that didn't get finished to my satisfaction the first time around. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I like to make sure everything's done just right.

One of those things was the battery box. It's kind of buried in the center of the bike so I didn't mess with it when I was working on the electrical system. It was pretty rusty, though, and I was worried that the sheet metal would crack and dump my battery out onto the swingarm.

I also wanted an excuse to get one of those non-vented AGM batteries they have now, so I sold the old battery to my friend Dan and ripped out the box.

It was rusty but not all the way through - A quick soak in my favorite Phosphoric Acid solution removed the rust and left it ready for sanding and paint. My preferred rustoleum hard-hat did it's usual good job, and I threw it in the oven for an hour at 175 degrees to get it rock hard.

Back in the bike no-one can see it, but I know it's there.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Jetting

So not much to report - I've put a few miles on the bike and been playing with the jetting some more. The main jet I installed at first - 117.5 - seems a bit fat, actually, but the midrange is kinda lean.

I don't want to spend much time with it because I plan to either install K&N "pod" filters or swap a set of VM29 smoothbores onto the motor. Either approach will require some serious jet swapping, so I don't plan to spend a lot of time on this interim setup. I managed to brown the ends of the header pipes while I was tweaking the mixture screws, of course, but most of the color polished out. I've heard it's an inevitable process with aftermarket pipes.

In the meantime, I was annoyed by the top end rattle that I hoped was an exhaust leak. It wasn't. I pulled the valve cover off yet again and measured all of the clearances - I swapped around the shims some more to get them all on the tight side. The clatter seems to have gone away, but I have yet to ride the bike any distance. Hopefully the noise was just a sloppy valve adjustment on my part.

If not, I'm not sure the valve cover gasket will survive another removal, but we'll see, won't we?