Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
It finally looks like a bike again
I spent most of today out in the garage, working on the CL175. It's been sitting, patiently awaiting parts and free time, for over a week now. The parts arrived last week (and I was able to sneak away from my theatrical duties long enough on Saturday to retrieve them), and today, finally, I wasn't under pressure to get anything done or meet any deadlines.
Wrenching time.
I think I made a much bigger deal out of the steering bearings than I really needed to. I chilled the steering stem/lower clamp overnight in the freezer, along with two of the bearing races. The heat gun came out and warmed up the lower bearing, so that it would expand a bit. The freezing temperature shrunk the stem a little bit, and when I dropped the hot bearing onto the cold stem, it dropped perfectly into place. No hammering required. Beautiful!
The shells went into the frame using a similar method, and within an hour I had the stem and bearings re-assembled and (mostly) happy. And indeed, most of that hour was spent fretting over the pieces, checking and double-checking that I was doing things in the right order, with the right parts, in the right orientation. The nature of the beast is that if you do it the wrong way around, you basically have to destroy the part to remove it, and this was a $50 set of bearings. Don't want to blow that kind of cash on rushing.
The rest of the day was spent slowly re-assembling the rest of the bike. I got new handlebars, but that's a project for another day. I cleaned up the fork tubes (one of which was pretty heavily rusted, but fortunately clean where it needs to be clean for the slider to work right), and got them reinstalled. Back went the headlight and turn signals. Back on went the handlebar, and it finally started to look like a motorcycle again, instead of some kind of modern-art-with-engine.
As long as I had the front wheel off, I pulled off the crusty old front tire, and levered on the shiny new one, a process which took me much less time this time around than it has in the past. Even so I had to re-do it a couple of times until I got everything together in the right order. The new tube had a pesky support washer on the valve stem that liked to drop off and into the tire at inopportune moments.
By the time evening rolled around, not only did it look like a motorcycle again, but I actually felt confident enough to try riding it. I pulled it out to the shoulder in front of my house and took a couple of test runs in first gear. The steering was beautiful, but the clutch certainly didn't feel like it was at full strength.
I pulled on the riding clothes, and took it out for a proper spin. The clutch was (and is) indeed a bit weak. I think now that maybe the 1973 model year got a very slightly different set of clutch parts, resulting in new clutch springs for "a CL175" being a bit too short. Fortunately, I have an excellent plan to turn some spacers on the lathe to solve that problem, although I would have been perfectly happy to not have to open up that engine cover again: it means draining the engine oil yet again, which is getting tiresome, and resulting in distressing quantities of oil-soaked cat litter on the ground.
One of the problems revealed by the test ride was that the steering bearing wasn't adjusted properly, and that was my final task of the evening. It required a depressing number of iterations to get everything right, although it included one hilarious moment where I pulled off the adjuster nut, not quite thinking straight, and the entire front end dropped out of the frame. I was glad I wasn't filming that moment, but it's funny in hindsight.
The final tally for the day is one new set of steering bearings (correctly adjusted), one new tire, and a basically-functional bike. I just have to create and install those spacers on the clutch springs, and it'll be ready to go ride around. That's how I'll discover whatever's really wrong with the bike...
Posted at 22:33 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater