Leaderboard

So a full week of playing with the bird has yielded some fairly decent results. Currently all that is left is to bleed the brakes, revisit the petrol tank hoses, mount the cans, change the oil, and fit the Side panels, V-Panel, Rear cowl, and seat. It's been a week of highs and lows, getting to Thursday and finding I was missing 3 slider pins for the caliper mounting plates was not my finest hour but in fairness to Honda they manage to ship them from the UK to the Isle of Man overnight, no mean feat with our postal services and the challenges associated with living on an island in the middle of the Irish sea, had I been a day later I would still be waiting as stormy conditions since early hours of Saturday morning have blocked the boats from sailing, so very little is getting here, and the supermarkets will be low on stock by now. I must say, there have been many times over the last week when I've consciously doubted my own abilities and whether completion of this project would ever happen but I'm cautiously optimistic now that I'm nearly done, my toolkit has grown massively as well . So on Monday we started here... First job was to clean both wheels and fit the new front disks. Then the clocks went on Followed by the upper cowl on to the stay. And the mirrors... All fitted with new stainless steel bolts from Biker Bling And to protect the bolts I also have stainless steel bits. Not cheap, but typical high quality from Wera. Infill panels went in next, those of you who've done this before will notice the glaring error at this point. Yep, they had to come back out so I could fit the airbox 🙄. New Accessories infill fitted, wires have since been wrapped So at this point we're quite a bit further on, airbox and tank are now in place. One of the carb vacuum screws had been removed to fit a scottoiler at some point in the past, when the oiler was removed, the vacuum pipe was left in place and open and it could suck air in, this has now been removed and a new blanking screw fitted. One of the tasks I hadn't looked forward to was plastic welding the side panel to V-panel mounting point. It was completely detached with virtually nothing left on the side panel to mount to. Paperclips enter stage left... I used cable tie offcuts as welding rods, not a pretty job, but very strong now. Rear wheel mounted and aligned, and new chain tensioned. Back to an original chain guard instead of the poorly fitting hugger that was installed, at some point I'll invest in a decent hugger. Chain monkey laser alignment tool and tensioner, absolutely brilliant. The wires still need a little tidying but the new relay and fusebox are in and connected, I've fused the line to the accessory fusebox at 30A (Fusebox rated at 40A), currently using 26A of fuses in total, I could reduce the USB sockets fuse to 5A which would leave me 9A of capacity for future use, cameras are on a 1A fuse. 4 of the 6 ways are currently in use so there is space for some low power future additions if required, a rear accessory port comes to mind for passenger use. A few extra battery connections were required, (Reg Rec / CTek Port / Relay) so I have fitted slightly longer screws to the battery terminals and they sit fine. Cameras have been set up and located. Front and rear brakelines done, calipers fitted and awaiting bleeding. Fancy clutch fluid reservoir cover, have the same for the brakes. Cans are polished and awaiting fitment. Far from perfect but way better than when they started. So a fair bit of progress this last week, a few hiccups, having to tear stuff down and rebuild because I forgot to fit other parts first, but in general I'm happy with where I've got to. Very close to completion now, it's been a long road to get here but I'm happy with where I am. This build has been a huge learning experience for me, cars I'm comfortable with, bikes I've done very little with until now and this has been rather a baptism by fire, for a job that started off as just changing the front disks it's mushroomed somewhat, but overall I'm pleased that I did this. The last bit for now, the Abba Skylift has been tremendous, it wasn't cheap by any means but I couldn't realistically have done this rebuild without it. The box to the right of the bike in the above picture is the Abba front wheel chock, that's another new toy for me to play with . The only other work I feel is needed is the bodywork restoration, this will come in time, for now I'll be happy to have a bike with everything else sorted. Mechanically I think she's sound now, I'm going to do the CCT as a precaution, and possibly next year replace the clutch.