How to Build a Sportster
(from a pile of junk)
Chapter Seven
Progress to date, Monday, May 15, 2006. Well
let's see... Exhaust pipes. Yeah, that's the ticket. So I had a
couple of sets of beat up old drag pipes
and some big ol' mufflers off a Softtail. Being the socially responsible guy
that I am I decided to use mufflers on this project. Oh muffler
cores??? Cores, we don't need no stinking muffler cores. So a bunch
of cutting and a little welding and the Softtail mufflers fit right
on. The only problem being the chrome on the beat up old drag pipes
is all fucked up. So, being as the theme of the bike is all black,
I decided to get me some of that high temp powder and coat the
exhaust. The high temp powder has a satin finish.
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The die cast air cleaner came in, I just had to drill
one hole in the backing plate for the carb brace. Always brace
the carb, no matter what kind of clamps you use the carb will loosen
and the intake will start leaking. Always brace the carb. Just
about any old hunk of steel strap will work. The rocker box oil
feeder lines also came in, and god dammit, you'd think those would
be a couple of parts that are pretty easy for our Chinese friends
to make cheap copies of. But, dammit, I've bought several sets
of those over the last couple of years and the god damn tubes are
a 1/4 inch too short. Do you hear that you Chinese manufacturer
of cheap knock off parts? Buy your selves a new fucking ruler and
learn how to use it and start making the god damn tubes 1/4 inch
longer. Until that happens you'll need to get a 1/8 NPT male to
female extension to make up for the fact that the damn tube is
too short.
The gas tank came in also, I powder coated it too.
It does not have the finish quality of a good paint job, but powder
coat is cheap and durable. I put heli-coils in the rear tank mounting
hole so I can use button heads stainless bolts instead of the thru
bolt. I also made a couple of bushings for the front tank mount
that are threaded internally, the bushings have shoulders on them
to keep them centered in the hole drilled in the frame casting
and are held together with a little hunk of threaded rod. Now I
can use stainless button head bolts on the front mount too. I did
all this because it is a pain in the ass to stuff a thru bolt thru
the coil mount, tank mount lugs and spacers. The bushings take
the place of the spacers and are fixed to the frame, making it
a whole bunch easier to get the front bolts for the tank installed.
So this is it so far.
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Progress to date, Friday, May 19, 2006. Over
the last couple of days I've started taking care of a bunch of
little stuff, like chain adjustment, tightening the rear wheel
axle, brake adjustment, clutch adjustment etc. A couple of words
on a couple of things. Clutch adjustment is a two step process,
first you adjust the cable. Back the cable adjuster out just about
all the way, screw the adjuster on the primary cover in all the
way, this fully releases the clutch. Now use the cable adjuster
and take all the slack out of the cable, leave just a gnat's ass
of free play in the cable. And that would be a tiny gnat's ass.
You want the cable to be just barely loaded. Now, tighten the cable
adjuster jamb nut. The cable is adjusted, don't fuck with it any
more. Second part is the free play adjustment, back out the clutch
adjuster on the primary until it is completely loose, now turn
it in until there is just a slight amount of free play at the clutch
lever. Tighten the jamb nut on the adjuster screw and you are done.
You should be able to put the bike in gear, pull in the clutch
and roll the bike back and forth, it should roll freely. If you
can't roll the bike without feeling the clutch drag, repeat the
adjustment process. If you still can't roll the bike freely while
it is in gear after re-doing the adjustment your spring spacers
are too short or you springs are adjusted too tight (on those clutches
that don't use the spacers). Pull the primary off and get the longer
spacers (different length spacers used to be available, you may
be able to find them) or put a washer on each stud. If your washers
are too thick, the clutch will slip. Oh course you won't find that
out until everything is back together and you've driven the bike.
Yeah, I know it is a pain in the ass. The Sportster clutch sucks
when compared to old flathead clutches or old panhead clutches
for a couple of reasons. On those bikes the kickstart drove through
the clutch, if a clutch didn't slip while you were kicking, generally
it would hold while you were driving. So you didn't have to put
the whole thing together and drive it only to find out that the
clutch slipped. On a Sportster the kick start drives through the
clutch basket, not through the clutch plates, so when you kick
the engine over you are not even using the clutch. Plus, on the
old pans and flatheads you could pop the derby cover off the primary
and adjust the clutch springs in about 2 minutes. No need to disassemble
the primary.
Rear wheel, chain and brake adjustment. I like to
keep the rear chain a little on the loose side. Your chain adjustment
changes as the swingarm bounces up and down. If the swingarm pivot
was exactly in line with the drive sprocket the adjustment would
stay the same. But it isn't. So as the swingarm bounces up and
down the effect is to make the chain a little shorter with each
bounce. Anyway a chain that is too tight will put excessive loading
on the trans mainshaft bearing and could cause that bearing to
fail. So I keep my chain a little on the loose side. So, after
you have the cain adjusted and the wheel centered you can cinch
down the rear axle nut. Next is the brake adjustment. The first
step is to center the shoes in the drum, unfortunately people
often skip this step, which is really too bad because it does help
what is a crappy brake to begin with work a lot better. Loosen
the shoe pivot stud, that would be the bolt on the front side of
the brake, the one the anchors the brake in the slot in the swingarm.
Now put a wrench on the brake actuator arm nut and apply the brake
as hard as you can. The shoe pivot stud mounting hole is a little
bigger than the stud, when you apply the brake with the shoe pivot
bolt loosened, you center the shoes in the drum thus maximizing
the contact area between the shoes and the drum and correspondingly
increasing the efficiency of the brake. While applying the brake,
tighten the shoe pivot stud bolt. Next you adjust the brake peddle
height, that is that bolt on the brake crossover shaft, a lot of
bikes I've seen are missing that adjustment bolt. Turn the bolt
to move the peddle up or down, set it where you like it. And finally,
the brake peddle free play is set with that nut on the end of the
brake rod. Set it so that the brake does not drag and there is
just a little movement before the brake starts to grab.
I like to hide the brake light switch under the frame,
if you ask me a switch hanging from the swingarm hooked to the
brake rod with a spring really looks like crap. I bolt mine to
the frame and use a chunk of steel bolted to the crossover shaft
to actuate the switch. I also wire mine backwards from most people.
Usually people wire the switch to be normally open, when you step
on the brake, you pull on a spring that pulls on the switch and
closes the contacts. I use a switch that is normally closed, the
actuator keeps the switch open (brake light off) until you step
on the brake, then the actuator moves away from the switch and
the contacts close (brake light on). It works for me.
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And, lastly for now, the lines for the front brake
came in last week, I got them hooked up and bled out the brake.
This one bled out pretty easy. I usually use a pump oil can filled
with brake fluid and hose connected to the bleeder screw to fill
the master cylinder from the bottom up. But this time I just filled
the master cylinder and used the conventional technique and it
worked fine, didn't even make a mess.
One more thing, I bought some different shocks on
eBay a couple of weeks ago, they finally came. I swapped the springs
from those shocks onto the shocks I already had to fix my mushy
spring problem. The new springs work good, nice and firm.
One more thing, I sat down and ordered what will
hopefully be may last load of stuff from J&P. I've got wiring to
do and timing to set and then... Will it run???
Progress to date, Saturday, May 20, 2006. Time
to start thinking about electricity. Generators from hell. Generally
speaking, if a generator will run as motor when hooked up to a
battery it will also generate electricity. I have two old generators
the idea being to resurrect one, no sweat right? So I took one,
hooked the “A” terminal up to the positive battery post, grounded
the field and hooked it up to the negative, tried to motor it and
of course nothing happened. Then again I didn't really expect anything
would happen, although it would have been nice if something did
happen. Specifically, it would have been nice if the generator
motored, on the other hand, it didn't melt down or go up in flames.
What to do? Try another generator of course, hooked it up and tried
to motor it. Well in the back of my mind I must have known that
it wouldn't work either, and, so as not to disappoint me, the generator
obliged by not working. This one also managed not to go up in a
ball of flame either. So at least no parts were destroyed beyond
repair.
Well, I took both of them apart to see what kind of shape they
were in, neither one of them looked too bad on the inside and one
actually looked liked it had a reconditioned armature in it and
fairly new field coils. Whoever cut the segments on the armature
slipped and cut an extra groove partway through a segment, the
armature looked like it should still work though. Oh yeah, one
of the field coils was a little loose on the shoe. I took one generator,
cleaned up put, it back together and tried it again. Still nothing.
I tried it with the armature out of the other one, nope, still
nada. Checked continuity of the coils, they were OK, replaced a
questionable splice between the coils, try again, still nada. Hmmmm.
Cleaned up the other generator, put it back together, tried motoring
it, nope, still nada. Tried it with the armature from the other
generator, you guessed it, nada.
Well it was time to more accurately reproduce the configuration
of an operating generator. I could bolt one of these generators
to one of my other bikes, but that’s a lot of work. But I needed
an engine to spin the generators for further troubleshooting. An
engine, or a motor, well my lathe is a motor. It was easy to clamp
the generators in a drill press vise bolted to the cross slide,
couple the input shaft to the lathe chuck with a piece of stiff
rubber hose. Hook up a regulator, battery and electrical load (head
light) with alligator clips and presto the bikes electrical system
is reproduced. Now I can take my volt-ohm meter and make some measurements
to track down what is going wrong.
Now test spin both generators and find out they are actually
putting out negative voltage. How can that be? Well I had flashed
the field to establish the correct polarity way back when I started
messing with this project, so that wasn't the problem. Now I began
swapping field coils, field shoes, armatures, generator frames
and brush assemblies in every conceivable combination. Nothing
works. I spend 12 hours swapping parts around, all with no help
and each time cleaning things up carefully, checking the connections
and looking for anything that might not be quite right. It all
looks good, yet it don’t work. I start checking parts catalogs
for how much a new generator costs, I find out it is more than
I want to spend. Besides that, I’ve got two generators, both with
seemingly good parts. I ought to be able to make one good one or
I ain’t a mechanic. This is starting to piss me off.
Harley generators are not complicated pieces of machinery. An
armature rotates between two soft iron shoes that are wrapped with
the fine wire comprising the field coils. The soft iron shoes retain
some residual magnetism to get the ball rolling, then as the coils
of wire on the armature pass through the magnetic field of the
field shoes an electric current is generated in the armature, the
current is then conducted from the rotating armature to the rest
of the motorcycle’s electrical system through the brushes. The
current is regulated by controlling the strength of the magnetic
field in the field shoes, a job that falls to the voltage regulator.
One down and dirty test for an HD generator is to bypass the regulator
by grounding the field. Harley generators don’t put out a helluva
lot of juice to begin with so it is usually safe to bypass the
voltage regulator by grounding the field, just don’t rev the engine
up or you'll blow the light bulbs. Not much to the system. Pretty
much 8th grade science class theory. So here I am, all seemingly
good parts, but no goddamn electricity.
As much as I hate to, I’m buying a new one with a built in regulator.
So after I get the generator how will this bike be wired up? I
think I have here a diagram for using just about the absolute minimum
wiring for a street legal XL in Texas. In Texas you have to have
a high/low beam and a horn and, of course, a brake light. The generator
with the built regulator gets rid of the regulator and associated
wiring, so that cleans things up quite a bit too.
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Progress to date, Wednesday, May 24, 2006.
What hopefully will be the last box of goodies from
J&P Cycles arrived yesterday. So a went about bolting the
goodies on. I laid the bike on its side to install the kickstart
spring. The point mounting plate studs also came, so I set the
points and timing. The point plate came out of a
bike I was working on a couple of years ago, it had new points
and a new condenser bolted to it. Believe it or not I did not
have to re-adjust the point gap. It was good to go as is. I used
an ohm meter to check for the point opening and used the ohm
meter to statically set the engine timing. This method works
best if the coil wire and condenser are disconnected. You also
have to rotate the point cam against the advance mechanism to
get the cam into the full advance position.
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So now it is on to wiring, which means I'm going
to do a little more preaching. I use only aircraft type mil spec
crimp connectors. If you look closely at the typical crimp connector
bought at an auto parts store you will see that the crimp barrel
is split down the middle, you will also notice that there is no
provision incorporated for strain relief for the wire. The aircraft
type crimps are known as restricted entry PIDG (pre insulated diamond
grip), the barrels are not split, hence the connector will not
split down the middle when it is crimped. Secondly the crimpers
are calibrated (certification of calibration required when used
on aircraft) so as to crimp the wire sufficiently tight so that
the wire will break before it pulls out of the connector. The connector
also has a thin metal shell which is designed to crimp around
the insulation of the wire to support the wire and thus relieve
the strain on the conductor. The "restricted entry" part of the
name means that the connector is sized so that the insulated part
of the wire can not be inserted into the part of the conductor
that is supposed to grip the bare wire. I bought the crimper used
years ago up at Osh Kosh, I think it was about 70 bucks. Kind of
expensive but I have probably crimped thousands of connectors with
it. The crimp connectors themselves cost about 20 cents each, I
get them from an outfit called Mouser
Electronics. Also kind of expensive, but cheap when compared
to the hassle of a broken wire at 3 AM on a country road in the
middle of nowhere. In case I haven't made myself clear, them automotive
type connectors you crimp with a pliers like device are junk of
the worst kind. Avoid them at all costs. Now let me bitch about
soldier joints, they also suck. Soldier wicks up the wire and makes
it stiff, thus making it more likely to break. Soldier also corrodes
and work hardens. Nonetheless there are a few instances where you
have to use it, like when wiring handlebar switches. I also use
something called "snakeskin" to sleeve the wire bundles. This stuff
is a woven sleeve, it keeps the wires together and offers some
protection against abrasion. I use a lighter to fuse the ends of
the snakeskin sleeving to keep it from unraveling.
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Also in the box of goodies was the petcock, so I
screwed it into the bottom of the tank and bolted the tank down
for keeps... after I finished running the wiring. There was also
a battery in the box, battery hold down strap and battery top.
All I need to do is run the battery down to the local lawn mower
shop to be filled up with acid. The new built in regulator generator
was also in the box along with a generator drive gear. Unfortunately
the drive gear fits so loose on the generator shaft so as to be
useless. Right now I am trying to hunt up a new source for the
drive gear. This gear happens to be a V-Twin part, generally I'm
usually satisfied with V-Twin stuff, but this gear is junk.
Right now all I have left to do is weld a little
crack in the headlight eyebrow, mount the headlight, mount the
battery and put gas in it.
Progress to date, Tuesday, June 13, 2006. Miss
me? Wondering where I've been? I've been looking for generator
drive gears. Remember my previous bitch on how the V-Twin gear
from J&P was looser than a crack whore on Saturday night in front
of a pile of rock? Well maybe those weren't my exact words. In
any case I called my Local HD dealer wondering if per chance he
maybe had a NOS HD gear sitting on the shelf. Of course not, but
that is the answer I expected. The friendly parts girl volunteered
to special order me an after market one since the HD gear is obsolete.
She guaranteed the after market gear she would get would be a high
quality made in the good old USA part. The gear came in a week
later later. Guess what? Same piece of Taiwanese crap I already
had. I asked her if HD had a computer system with which she could
query other HD dealers to see if another dealer had a NOS genuine
HD gear sitting on shelf and have it shipped over. The nice parts
girl made a few calls and found a supposedly NOS HD gear at another
dealer. A few days later gear number three arrived. I came in
a sealed plastic bag with no markings whatsoever. It was maybe
a little tighter than the previous two gears but still basically
as loose as a crack whore on Saturday night in front of a pile
of rock. I stopped at a chopper shop and the guy had a used drive
gear, make that gear number four. I bought it. It was possibly
useable. I took one more look at eBay and finally found a guy selling
a NOS HD drive gear. I won the auction and few days later the gear
showed up in a sealed HD plastic bag. My hands trembling with anticipation,
I opened the bag and tried it on my new 300 dollar plus generator
with built in regulator... and... success!!! I went from gears
looser than a crack whore to one tighter than a nun. Finally, on
the fifth try, I found a good gear. At last I was able to bolt
a gear to the generator and plug that big hole in the side of the
engine. That all happened two days ago. Why was the drive gear
such a big deal? I put together a lot of generators and never really
paid much attention to the drive gear and I probably wouldn't
have this time. Except... that my new 300 dollar plus change generator
has a big warning in the box that the two year warranty would be
null and void if the armature was damaged by a loose fitting drive
gear. I wasn't about to fuck up a 300 dollar part by putting a
bad gear on it.
So that was the last stumbling block. I hooked up
the battery, hooked up the generator, put gas in the tank and
kicked it over and kicked it over and kicked it a few more times.
Nothing, not a damn fart, nothing. I pulled the plugs and checked
for spark, yep, plenty of spark. I pulled the air cleaner and checked
for gas, no gas. None. I pulled the float bowl, dry... How can
that be? The float was grossly out of adjustment that's how. Adjusted
the float, put the carb back together, kicked... and she fired
right up. Ran crappy as all get out. Did a little tweaking on
the carb and got it running a little better and took it for a drive
around the block.
Not bad. The carb will need some work, jetting. But
not bad. The tranny shifted fine, the clutch worked great, no oil
leaks, the rods and pistons stayed attached to the flywheels, the
brakes worked, the high temp powder didn't melt off the pipers.
Really not too bad for the first ride. I like it. So I am calling
this project done. I will probably get a front fender eventually,
if you've ever driven a bike without one in rain or through a puddle,
you know why. And the carb will need some more tweaking. But stick
a fork in it and turn it over, it's done.
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