brakes

The weather has got a bit milder, so I headed out to my garage to try to get the brake calipers finally stripped down.
Getting the pistons out from the calipers has been a bit of a saga! I went on-line and asked for tips about removing them without rebuilding the calipers and re-rigging them in order to pump the pistons out enough to get a grip on them to pull them out of the body. The general concensus was that using air would be the best bet, preferably from an air-line.
As I don't have access to a high pressure line and I didn't fancy taking the calipers along to use a filling station air hose, I tried it with a foot pump. It actually worked and moved the pistons out enough for me to fit a pair of vice grips and then wiggle them clear.
Now I can get the calipers cleaned and then will decide if I'm going to get them powder-coated or just use paint.

weather or not

I've got a back-log of things needing done and it's piling up day on day.

It's been so cold I've not been out to the garage and even the delays in the postal/courier services hasn't helped much. Spare parts have been arriving and with them, things needing done.

I've got the wiring to the bars to finish. I have to fit the bars in order to get a correct measure of the length of cables I need. I have the horn to re-locate. I've got the pistons to remove from the calipers in order to get on with that re-build. Then there's the front forks which need to be re-built.

I've also ordered V&H black shortshots so I could be getting the stock exhausts off. That would make it easier to remove the back wheel which I need to do to re-locate the horn.

So much waiting on the weather turning milder.

xmas time's a coming ...

... and with it the usual round of xmassy things.
The cheesy and persistent TV adverts. Spend, spend, spend! The shops full of tinsel since November. The one that gets me most though, is the corporate christmas cards. You know the ones. From your electricity company or from some finance or insurance company that has you on a data base because you once sent in an enquiry about some offer which turned out too good to be true.
So I was surprised when I opened an envelope and the card was a Harley Davidson one. I was about to bin it with the rest of the junk mail when I opened it up. I actually got a pleasant surprise. The card was from my local HD dealership and yes, it is a corporate HD advert but the fact that all the staff had written in it made a big difference.
The owner could quite easily have got address labels printed off, stuffed the cards from HD back into their envelopes and shipped them all to the post office without a second thought.
I've not even been that big a spender this past year and it's two years since I bought my bike from them.
The personal touch does work!

forks and brakes

I got the fork oil I ordered this morning.
I can now think about re-building the forks as I've now got everything I need. I bought the seal set, the stainless bolts for the clamp and the damper screws a few weeks back so I'm all ready to go.

The brake calipers may take a bit longer. I've bought a tool for pulling the pistons from the caliper body but haven't worked out how to use it properly yet. Maybe there's a knack to it but I just can't get the pistons to budge. This is another instance where hind-sight has twenty-twenty vision! Had I thought about replacing the cylinders before beginning to dismantle them I'd have connected them up to the brake lever and pumped the pistons out of the body a bit first.
I may have to resort to that but will try using air from a foot-pump first.

Just hoping for some warmer weather to get all this done!

hidden wiring

I made a start on re-wiring my bars last night. Like many things you try for the first time, it was just not going to go easy.

everything ready to get started

I stripped the insulation and cut the connector off the wires, staggering the cuts so I wouldn't end up with a clump of joins. I was sure that I would have enough length to make the join away from the bars. Ideally it would sit where the loom runs alongside the frame.

connectors cut from the loom

I then taped the wires onto a length of cord which I had previously threaded through the bars, hooking it out with a straightened coat-hanger. I used this to pull and push the wiring through the bars. Care has to be taken in order not to strip any of the wires on the sharp edges of the holes in the bars. When I got the wire through I realised that the bends in the handle-bars make the length of wires needed to go through longer than I had allowed for.
Luckily I had a wiring extension kit so I could use that to get me out of a hole. I had bought this when I first considered putting on the higher bars but decided against using it when I did some research and discovered that most folk who have extended their wiring recommend that you cut and solder the wires rather than to dismantle the connector. Having tried to do that, unsuccessfully, with the rear indicators I fully concur with them.

extension wires soldered on and fed through the bars

Using the same technique of staggering where I cut the wires, I snipped them closer to the switchgear. I then soldered on the new wires, covered the soldered joints with heat-shrink tubing, partly covered them in cable wrap and fed them through the bars again. As the extension wires don't exactly match the colours of the original loom I had to mark which was which to ensure I connect them correctly at the other end.
This time it worked. The joins are safely tucked inside the bars between the top hole and the first bend and the wires inside the bars are covered in cable wrap. All I have to do now is measure how long I need the cable to be cut it and re-solder the wires with the connector back on.

one half fed through

Then do the other side of course!