December 19, 2010

Most of the work this month was done here and there - mostly cleaning parts, prepping them for painting. I've painted the frame, swingarm, and exhaust. This weekend I started buying parts to get this thing back together. The first item and most important was the wiring harness. I had a line on one in New Zealand at EconoHonda, but Malcolm was having trouble locating it (thanks for trying Malcolm, I'll be back for other things). But I found one on Ebay that should work. The same guy had some tank mount rubber bushings, so I grabbed those too. Then today I bought a speedometer/instrument panel combo. It's off of a 1984, but there's not enough difference for me to care. In fact, the headlight/visor that was on the bike may actually be useable. It appears to be the right size and shape to cover the instruments. I'll find out for sure when it gets here.

So I'm quickly coming to the point of starting to reassemble the bike. I'll be needing to buy new bearings and such because there's no sense putting it together with old bearings when the whole thing's apart. I'll post some pictures after Christmas - the garage is kind of packed right now.

One thing that's going to slow me down is knee surgery in the first week of January. But better now in the winter than later in the spring when I'm going to want to be out riding!

December 22, 2010

My Ebay order arrived today: wiring harness, speedometer, tank bushings, and headlight. The headlight and tank bushings just get placed on my parts shelf for when I need them. The speedometer was in pretty good condition, so all I did with it was clean the dirt off. Because it's going on a 1982 top triple clamp which centers the ignition key, I cut the offset part off of the mounting. I'll create a mounting bracket for it later. Next was the wiring harness. It was off a 1983 bike but everything matched up with the schematic, so I spent time labeling everything now so I don't have to worry about it later. One thing I'm going to have to do is either find some correct connectors or buy new ones and rewire the ones I need. Most of the connections won't need special connectors but a few will. Because the speedometer is newer it will definitely need a new connector as it doesn't match with the one on the harness. I'll first get the external parts I need and then see if I need to get new connectors. If I get the correct year I won't have to do anything.