Last weekend I got to spend a lot of time working on the bike and catching up with podcasts. I suppose most people listen to music while working away, but I love catching up on podcasts. Here's a few of my favorites:
No Agenda - lots of interesting political discusses and media dissection
Wheel Nerds - motorcycle guys with lots of interesting discussions
This American Life - really, really unique and interesting stories about people and life
DH Unplugged - financial market discussions
Rebel FM - video games
Daddy on Board - what's new and interesting for fathers
Stop Podcasting Yourself - Vancouver comedians and really, really funny.
Laser Time - sometimes video games, sometimes weird 80's stuff...quirky, but great.
So, last weekend I got to listen to all of that while I installed new shocks in the rear. I had a hell of a time with the rubber grommets...they didn't quite fit nicely, so I had to "work" them on bit by bit. I sure love the look of the black on black shocks, though. Anyone have any idea if that plastic insert between the coils can be removed and how?
Nothing a little WD40 won't take care of.
The final product - shiny new black shocks.
Next up was a complete replacement of the wiring harness. I love playing around with electrical stuff, so this was pretty fun. I took pics of every single connection just to be sure and cleaned every wire, too. It took a good couple of hours to replace the entire thing...I did the front half first, then worked on the back half. It's actually a lot easier than I thought...you're just matching up similar colored wires over and over again. Plus, half of the connections are those little plastic clips and they only connect to the other similar shaped plastic clip. Easy stuff. Let's hope it starts when I'm ready for that in a couple weeks.
It makes sense to hide the front wiring for everything in the headlight, but still...geez...
Wires heading to the coils.
Old wire clips are always a challenge to take apart.
I'm glad I took pictures of everything...made the re-assembly much easier, including this flasher unit.
Wires, wires, everywhere. These are the brake switch and the points/condensers.
Now, that's one good looking battery box. I cleaned it up a lot before re-installing.
The rear part of the wiring harness installed and cleaned up.
Anyone need an old used, but much loved, wiring harness?
I also installed new progressive springs in the front forks after reading all about how to do in the forum. It was actually a LOT easier than I thought. I took off the fork from the frame, unscrewed the top of the fork, poured out the old oil and took out the old spring. Then I pried off the dust seal with my fingers and used some pliers to take out the little clip easily. The seal was pretty tough to get out. I wrapped a big screw driver in some rags and just worked it all around the sides to eventually free it...took about 5 minutes of work on each one. I also let them soak in boiling water for 5 minutes, but I don't really think it helped. Reinstalling that top screw was a bugger, but basically I just called on the strength of the gods as I compressed the spring and screwed it back on....leaving welts in my hand, though.
Installed brand new springs which didn't require any special tools.
The auto store didn't have any fancy fork oil, so I just used 10W30.
I replaced the steering bearings with those AllBalls ones that everyone talks about. I remember reading in Hondaman's book to unscrew the top bolt and then go find all the bearings that fall. Determined not to have this happen to me, I unscrewed the top bolt sooooo carefully...and then the bottom of the triple tree falls out and I go hunting for bearings. Thanks Hondaman, thanks.
This thing sure makes a loud CLANG when you drop it...not that I dropped it...twice.
Getting the races out of the steering neck (is that what it's called??) was pretty easy. I stuck a screw driver down there and just hammered it out with ease. The hardest part was getting the race off of the triple tree bar thing....if you've done this, you know what I mean. The way I did it was to spray WD-40 in it and then hammer down on a screw driver over and over and over for about 20 minutes. I hammered down on a prybar for the part that I couldn't get the screwdriver to hit. In all of this, I forgot to get pics...sorry.
It didn't look like the old bearings were too bad, but they felt very "chunky" when turning.
After looking at some other CB750s that have those gator boots on the shocks, I realized that I still need to use the dust caps. So, I had to take the front end apart again to reinstall those. Sounds like a noob move, but I swear that it looked ok without the dust caps having the gator boots installed. Lucky that I caught that.
I forgot to put the dust seals back on.
And this is the latest mockup before I start painting some parts.
So, now it sits...still disassembled, but for good reason. I picked up some metal paint and I'm going to paint some of the parts black. No point in putting the bike back together until I do that first. Maybe this coming weekend.
All of these past posts were done from memory weeks after the fact, so for now on I'll try to be a bit more timely with the updates. They might not come as quickly, but that's cause I work slow.....I online shop fast, but I work slow.
