Shovel rebirth

Man, that headlight "eyelid" is cool! Reminds me of 50's cars that had 'em on their headlights.

my goodness...what a weekend. finished all the wiring...yea !

spent half the day repairing saddlebag guard. when i tore it down, one of the 5/16 bolts that hold the siderail against the rear dividers snapped off. easy-out was a no go. ended up drilling out and re-tapping...success...

installed new masterlink and was adjusting chain, did not like the results.
one spot will be perfect tension, but 20' either way and there is excessive play. dad says he remembered it always being that way. and that i had rode it that way too. i suspect i have sprockets that are wore...will change from the 49 rear that is on it to a 51 stock. also change drive sprocket next winter.

scheduled start-up is 5/5/12

I have a 51 tooth rear sprocket and the motor seems to be winding out just a bit too much at 65 MPH. I'm thinking of going to a 48 or 49.

dang...i thought slipping my exhaust on would be one of the easiest steps of the build. it's been a pill getting the flanges to line up just perfect, so that when i tighten the one and only bolt there is no exhaust leak. that's what burnt some of the wiring up before. also had to customize the floorboard rear mount, it hit the front pipe. but it looks good. wraps around the pipe now with 1/4" clearance.

installed my new horn, and found that i needed to change petcock too. they kinda bumped heads. found a good high volume, rear discharge valve...looks and works well.

two more nights to wrap up loose ends. start up saturday at 11am is scheduled.

crashbars are on, but saddlebags are not assembled yet. still need to put fairing and windshield together.

can't stand it...weather is so good, and not riding...bummer. was planning on a relay for life ride on the 12th, but now i am "on call" that weekend due to a service tech quitting. sucks to be me. but the following weekend i plan on burning up quit-a-bit of that "evil" fossil fuel. oboom-boom will hate me, but i don't care.

pix and video (?) this weekend.

Nothing went together on my build that didn't require reworking, so I feel your pain, brother. But it will be finished soon enough. Don't rush things now that you're near the end . . .

Excellent. Why don't you fire it up at 7 am on Saturday! :roflmao:

when they say "must remove floorboard" on your dragpipes...break out the grinder, dremel and plenty of determination. i didn't care what they said...pipes are on. reworked floorboard mount, and now i have 1/4" clearance all around pipe. front and rear flanges mate up perfectly. my buddy produced the master cylinder banjo bolt i needed...thank you gene-o at custom coaters. he is my start-up man. he said 6am or 11am, i live an hour away, so 11 it is. i will pull an all niter tomorrow so that i have saddlebags.
yes, i plan on a video of the first crank on her...also some nice bikes in the shop.

Looking forward to see the start up

well, after a stuck float and a very few minor adjustments...it lives.

MVI_0008.AVI - YouTube

NIIICE. Sounds / Looks great

Good job!!! Looks good,sounds real good!!

Congratulations! All that blood, sweat and tears man it looks and sounds especially good!

only put 23 miles on her today. spent forever going back over the clutch adjustment. funny thing...followed the s.m. step by step, and now it's perfect. don't know what i did while it was all wide open and easy, but it was wrong enough to cause me headaches today. it grabs really well now.
second issue is gears...my shifter linkage binds on the case acorn nut going down, and rubs the inner primary going up. both ways it rubs enough to hold my shifter lever. this is enough to be very aggrivating. the acorn nut i understand, because it had a flat nut before, but the primary hasn't changed.
other than that, it feels great to be back on the road. slight bounce at 55, but there are no balancing weights on it. been meaning to get dynabeads...they are on the punch list.