It exploded...

Turns out pulling the engine gave me quite a bit of motivation.

Things I've ordered since the last post:

• Not-cracked 23" front wheel from an XR250 (basically the same bike)
• All Balls Racing tapered roller style steering head bearings
• Tusk front and rear wheel bearing kits
• Rear brake cable, undetermined brand
• Trail Tech 12V regulator/rectifier

My eldest and I stripped the bike down to a bare rolling chassis with just the shocks, forks, and wheels installed, loaded it into the minivan, and went to town on it at the local DIY carwash:

We got most of the 40+ year old caked-on dirt, grease, and grime cleaned up, but some was just too stubborn to come off:

No matter though, because I ended up tearing the bike completely apart. I had pulled the front wheel off to see if the XR250 drum would fit on the XR500 hub (it does, but the XR500 drum has cooling fins, so I'm gonna swap it over), and decided to keep pulling the front end apart. I pulled the triple tree (fork clamps), only to discover that the bearings did not have a cage - they all fell out. Whoops. No going back now.

Did you know that an A-frame ladder and some ratchet straps makes for a great temporary motorcycle hoist? I didn't know that until recently. Wouldn't recommend it for heavier bikes, but for a sub-300lb dirtbike, it works well.

All of the loose parts are labeled, and smaller parts such as bolts, brackets, and whatnot are also bagged. 

I reached out to a couple places for quotes on blasting and powdercoating, we're looking at around $250-300 all said and done, but the steering stop tab on the front of the head tube needs to be fixed before that happens.

Summer Progress

I was hoping to have it titled and registered by this point, but life happens, and that's OK. The important part is that I made more progress!!

All new taillights and a license plate bracket:

Couple things here:

• The rear blinkers (Tusk brand, from Rocky Mountain ATV) double as brake lights, adding to the OEM-style center-mounted brake light. I also discovered that these blinkers do not require a flasher unit; like the front blinkers, they are a "sequential" type, and automatically repeat the sequence so long as +12V is applied.
• The license plate bracket is held on by screws right into the plastic, but they will get nuts and washers soon.
• I've been working on "refreshing" the red plastics with a blowtorch. These are hard to find, but mine are still perfectly functional and in one piece (maybe a bit bent, but that's ok), so we're gonna restore them as best as possible. You can see the progress I made on the front fender - I need a bigger torch.
• Still working on the wiring. I can get extremely picky when it comes to my wiring projects. 

Next up - speedometer! I may have mentioned this before, but I've been eyeballing the Trail Tech Vapor as a potential candidate for speedo/odo functions. Only problem is that it costs $200 for a full setup, the battery dies reliably within 6 months, and the speed sensor can be finicky. In my search, I came across a very nice metric unit for $30 that uses the OEM cable, so I jumped on it. I have a pretty solid grasp of metric units, so this isn't an issue for me:

As a bonus, I already had the mounting bracket for the bike's original speedometer; just no speedometer haha. 

Back in January, I had ordered new exhaust hardware (header studs, gaskets, clamp bolts, heat shield screws) intending to replace all of it, as the two header studs on the left exhaust port were bent and some of the existing hardware was mismatched, or outright missing. 

The first stud came out without too much fuss, vice grips made easy work of it. The second stud, however, became stuck and was such a headache that I ended up pulling the engine out just to have room to work. I attempted to weld a nut to the end of the stud, but ultimately just got a glob of metal that allowed my vice grips to really bite and wrench the stud out for good. Caught my toolbox on fire a little bit. Enjoy the visuals below:

 

  

 

 

  

Some items that still need to be done: 

• Clean up and repaint muffler
• Install new 14T/46T sprockets to replace the shark-finned 13T/53T sprockets (also for better road manners)
• Install new D.I.D. 520VX3 chain
• Replace front wheel (cracked)
• Replace tires 
• Replace gas tank (also cracked) 
• Replace front/rear brake cables
• Replace clutch cable
• Replace throttle cables 

And at some point before the engine goes back in, both it and the chassis need a serious bath. 

More progress! But no registration yet...

It's been a bit, again. Kids and school and work will do that. But I've been chipping away and made a little progress.

We have a lot to catch up on, so buckle up and hold tight:

In need of a way to properly power the lighting system (the bike will run without a battery), I looked around my garage and realized that one of my Milwaukee 18V drill batteries would work really well for this application. I jumped on Amazon, ordered a PowerWheels/Milwaukee 18V adapter and a 12V regulator, and wired everything up.

All said and done, with the entire electrical system energized (low + high beams, blinkers, tail + brake lights, and even the horn), the total draw came out to be a whopping.... 0.958 amps, max. Measured on the 18V side, of course, which translates to barely 18W of power draw. 

I'm not complaining one bit. The stator on this bike is capable of ~45W, which will eventually be the main power source for everything, including a small battery pack. Until that time, though, the drill battery is what will power things.

Pay no attention to the negative reading here... I had the leads backwards.

Next up - a keyed switch for the ignition system! No, I'm not going to install a starter - this is remaining as a kickstart-only machine. I like the simplicity, and it fires right up with little effort (ran it today with no choke and only two kicks after sitting outside for several months). But it needs at least a little bit of security when out and about, and having a key 

The key and switch came courtesy of Rocky Mountain ATV, and is a "Sicass Racing" brand, costing $40 shipped to my door. It does what I need it to do, and I'll leave it at that.

Now... My eldest daughter, Hannah, had decided earlier in the school year that her science project would be to de-rust the header pipe using a vinegar bath. We got the necessary supplies and went to work....promptly forgetting about it for two months. Hannah faithfully documented the process, taking pictures and notes for her class. Last week, we finally pulled it out of the bath to find that every bit of rust is gone or falling off. A flap disc on my angle grinder and a wire brush handled any surface rust that flashed on from the rinsing process. We let the parts dry in the sun (in January of all times), then hit everything with a few coats of black Rustoleum VHT paint (basically BBQ paint).

Before:

After:

Hannah blasting off any remaining paint from the heat shield using compressed air (note the hearing protection):

Painted and mounted:

Final thoughts for this post:

• I recently learned that Utah does *not* require a speedometer in order to register a motorcycle. However: Utah *does* require an odometer.

 

Vacation!

My wife and I got some alone time to ourselves for a couple weeks, so all projects got put on hold while we went out and enjoyed ourselves.

God, she's so gorgeous 😳🥰

Coming back to it, We got a few things accomplished:

• Front brake lever, from a 1982 XL500, is mounted and functioning
• Headlight (just some cheap $45 no-name LED unit from Amazon) and Tusk blinkers temporarily mounted:

• Rear tail/brake/turn combo light, meant for a Yamaha R1, is also finally wired up and functioning (testing the wiring using my Metropolitan for battery power 😅)

• And finally, a rear brake switch is mounted and functional:

We're at the point where all it needs to be street-legal and ready for inspection is a speedometer (going for a Trail Tech Vapor, same unit I have on my Metropolitan) and a battery pack, which should be sufficient to get it titled and plated. Once that happens, the real fun starts!

Stay tuned....

New handlebars and first ride

The time has come... For new handlebars! 

I ordered a set of Rocky Mountain ATV's "Tusk" brand T-10 aluminum 7/8" handlebars, in the "CR High-bend" variety, and shockingly they arrived within 2 days. Grips were purchased as well, just some basic Tusk waffle style grips.

Old handlebars (what's left of them) vs new handlebars:

New handlebars installed with the hand controls:

After these were installed, I decided to see if the engine would still kick over on whatever swill was left in the gas tank, and of course it did, because Honda. Naturally I took it for a test ride, and WOW is it responsive; this thing is rowdy! Don't worry, I geared up. Every time.

Next up is a handful of maintenance items, wiring the stock electrical to the new wiring harness through a 12V regulator/rectifier (likely the Trail Tech unit), purchasing a speedometer (also Trail Tech), and locating a set of Honda Ruckus headlights.

Electrical work Pt. 1

My favorite! 

Seriously. I have a degree in electrical engineering. I eat, drink, and breath electrical work.

The Tusk wiring harness I ordered last week finally came in today. Now, this is not a plug-and-play deal. The bike is currently running on strictly AC voltage straight off the stator, including the headlight and taillight (back when they existed, probably well before my FIL bought it).

In order to figure out how to run the new harness, I needed to remove the existing wiring to see exactly what stays and what goes. 

Here is the original bike harness in it's entirety: 

Keep in mind that includes the CDI and coil, which are going back on the bike in order to, well, run.

Here is the new Tusk lighting harness:

After checking over the bike's original wiring diagram, I was able to remove all of the unneeded wiring used for lighting from the original harness and temporarily install the Tusk harness to rough out where everything is going to go. Unfortunately I don't have any pics, but it's fairly unremarkable as it's hidden from view anyway. 

As for function check, that will likely be done once I trace the wiring. The supplied diagram from Tusk isn't totally useful, nor does it explain why the brake/tail light connector has two grounds and one positive when my new taillight has one ground and two positive inputs... Oh well, not a huge deal, I'll figure that one out.

Speaking of taillight, check this out: 

That is an R6 taillight with integrated turn signals. I originally had it installed on my Metropolitan, but wasn't a fan of how it looked on that bike. This works out better.

Next up: Handlebars, clutch lever repair, and maybe even a test ride!

IT LIVES!!

She's alive! 

I reassembled the carb (with all the old seals), reinstalled it into the bike, shot some starting fluid into the intake, and kicked it over a couple times... Fired right up.

After that initial endorphin rush, I got a wild hair up my butt and installed the gas tank full of 16 year old fuel, and with some more starting fluid sprayed into the intake, it fired up and actually ran on the old gas. Progress!

Next up, getting it rideable! Handlebars, front/rear tires, front rim, and the clutch lever assembly (whole thing)...

Carb problems

So when we pulled this out of my FIL's shed, he told me why it wrecked and why he parked it: he was riding it around, the throttle stuck wide open causing uncontrolled acceleration, so he tried to pull it up into a wheelie and jumped off the back, letting it crash itself.

I pulled apart the carb earlier and found almost immediately that the slide itself would get good and stuck in the bore at wide open throttle position. Somehow I managed to get the slide out, but not without worrying if I was ever gonna get it back together again. 

Let's check out the carb. It's a Keihin "PD11A", and I can't find a lick of info about it online 🫤

This is the slide bore:

Note the "polished" areas inside and around the top edge - these are high spots that prevented the slide from being able to move up and down freely.

Here is the slide itself:

I was able to sand down the high spots inside the bore with 220 and 400 grit sandpaper (wet sand + dry sand on both grits) and give the slide itself a nice finish. It now moves freely in and out of the bore without sticking at all. Now I just need to find a rebuild kit... Wish me luck.

It's 2024, why are we still blogging?

You may be wondering what this is and why it looks like 2007 is back in style... I'm old school, and this blog is honestly more for me than anything else. Plus, this is how we documented the VW restoration, and I reference it quite often to show friends and coworkers.

Anyway, back to work sleep...

And so it begins...

Nearly 20 years ago, me, my parents, and my siblings embarked on a journey to restore a classic 1963 VW Bug. I learned a lot about the restoration process, and that car really boosted my interest in anything that had an engine.

Long story short, today, May 4, 2024, we brought home my FIL's 1980 Honda XR500 motorcycle. It's a 500cc "thumper" competition dirt bike that has sat for 16 years in the back of a shed. It's in pretty rough shape, and may need a new carburetor to even get it started. But we'll get into that later.

For now, here it is in all its busted-up glory:

 

We had to get creative in order to get it home. Here we have it stuffed into the back of the family minivan: