Author Topic: Noblehops makes a 400F pretty for his wife (Read 102810 times)

NobleHops · « **Reply #125 on:** January 28, 2014, 12:43:31 PM »

By all means, thread-jack at will. This is a big help. Would you care to share the details of your craftsman Dave, including his contact info? Can't see from your profile where you are, USA?

neevo · « **Reply #126 on:** January 28, 2014, 12:52:30 PM »

Sorry Dude, I'm in Sydney Australia. However I am happy to recommend Dave to anyone as you can tell when you talk to him he's a passionate and skilled craftsman:

Dave Mac
vapourblasting@yahoo.com.au

Edit: I paid $350 for all my motor to be done, however prices will vary as I did a load of the prep work for Dave.

NobleHops · « **Reply #127 on:** January 28, 2014, 12:54:54 PM »

Quote from: neevo on January 28, 2014, 12:52:30 PM

Sorry Dude, I'm in Sydney Australia. However I am happy to recommend Dave to anyone as you can tell when you talk to him he's a passionate and skilled craftsman:

Dave Mac
vapourblasting@yahoo.com.au

RAFster122s · « **Reply #128 on:** January 28, 2014, 02:03:03 PM »

Be very diligent on chasing the threads and cleaning the holes...you want to back off often on the tap so it doesn't load up and potentially break when chasing the threads...

David

Just4fun · « **Reply #129 on:** January 28, 2014, 04:34:30 PM »

Noblehops

I am sending out a couple of 400f cases in the next month or so.

I have not decided who to use. Can you share who did your vapor blasting? There is a guy in OR and I think I heard of one in NM.

Did you use either of them?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

NobleHops · « **Reply #130 on:** January 28, 2014, 04:40:31 PM »

Quote from: Just4fun on January 28, 2014, 04:34:30 PM

Noblehops

I am sending out a couple of 400f cases in the next month or so.

I have not decided who to use. Can you share who did your vapor blasting? There is a guy in OR and I think I heard of one in NM.

Did you use either of them?

I used the guy in New Mexico. He was prompt, professional, packed my stuff carefully, sent me tracking, and I felt it was very reasonable - $84 with shipping. It seems like you'll need to plan on some post-finishing though. Just know that ahead of time and you'll probably be happy.

http://vaporblastsolutions.com/

The guy in OR (if it's who I think it is) is kind-of surly-sounding from his website and says he doesn't do diecast stuff, only sandcast. I have no first-hand experience with him though.

EDIT: This guy? http://www.vaporblasting.biz/

NobleHops · « **Reply #131 on:** January 29, 2014, 11:11:23 PM »

OK, we had a spasm of progress.

My replacement bearing came in and so I was able to finish the steering head, with the needed 5mm spacer this time.

Bought a nice used drill press I have needed for a while, got a 3M rolloc disc on the advice of another poster here:

Goal for the evening was to see if we could make these metal parts look like metal again:

NobleHops · « **Reply #132 on:** January 29, 2014, 11:25:18 PM »

Chucked-up the Rolloc, played around with the speeds on the drill press, still a little unsure what's best. I started out pretty fast, 2000 RPM, seemed like it was polishing it a bit too much, backed it down to 1000 to do some more. It made short work of the powdery-looking surface I got post vapour blasting, but I found it a challenge to keep the part at the same angle and apply the same pressure with such a small contact area. This will take more practice and skill to get good at.

Here's a before and after on each side of the front hub:

YMMV but I just feel like metal should have a bit of sparkle and it just didn't look like metal. I like this better. I do not recall if I took this picture before the final metal (liquid/microfiber) polish, that actually darkened up the scuffed aluminum a tad, and restored some of the patina of a metal part too.

Fork legs before and after:

Fork leg on left, after Rolloc but before Scotchbrite:

I tried green and red Scotchbrite, I actually think the red is too fine for this and too slow to work. Chucked the legs up in a soft vise, and worked both ends of the Scotchbrite around the legs like a shoeshine.

...

NobleHops · « **Reply #133 on:** January 29, 2014, 11:37:30 PM »

Calling these done. Before:

After:

I could make myself crazy trying to get these to a perfect unmarred surface but as I was polishing them up at the very end and the luster and look of old metal started to return, so did a little of the machine's history. That may sound like BS but I don't mean it to. I could see a bit of the old bike assert herself and that was cool. I came by my nicks and scuffs honestly for the most part too.

Ready for lacing to a new rim with stainless spokes.

bofud · « **Reply #134 on:** January 29, 2014, 11:44:46 PM »

Very nice .
Bofud

NobleHops · « **Reply #135 on:** January 29, 2014, 11:49:00 PM »

Calling these done too:

And my new fork tubes have arrived, along with a full setup from Racetech, springs, cartridge emulators, spacers, seals, and I have new hardware for the bottom end too. Trying to decide what to do next, get my learnin' on trying to relace my wheels (first time), or rebuild the fork and install the Racetech stuff. Very psyched that my momentary logjam is broken and I can resume reassembly.

One more little bit of OCD insanity for today. Staring at this for a week or two was starting to get on my nerves when I thought of how expensive all this stuff was.

OE hardware is really nice though, and I really swore off wire-wheeling fasteners after having a bunch rust on a prior project.

So I bought this stuff:

...and I'm going to setup and learn how to replate my parts in zinc. Should be fun.

More in a few days.

NobleHops · « **Reply #136 on:** January 31, 2014, 12:04:42 AM »

OK, it was Fork Night around the garage tonight. On the agenda was rebuilding the forks, installing new seals, re-annealing the copper washers on the damper bolts, and installing RaceTech Gold Valve Cartridge Emulators. Everything in hand, everything is spotless and good to go.

First up, scratch my a$$ for a bit and think of the best sequence to do it in.

First, loosen up the gold valves and verify their state of tune. I settled on 3 1/2 turns on the spring after reading the tuning guide. You hold the screw with a hex driver, loosen the jam nut, then back out the screw till the spring is just barely slack, then screw in the appropriate amount of turns on the screw into the body of the valve to tension the spring, then tighten the jam nut while holding the screw to lock it in place.

These bushings are furnished to adapt the gold valves to the top of the damper rods.

With the valves ready, time to drill and chamfer the damper rods.

RaceTech calls for the existing two holes to be drilled out to 1/4" and then two more holes to be drilled 10mm up the damper rod, at a right angle. Then chamfer and deburr the edges, get them good and clean.

Minorly fiddly without v-blocks and a vise for the drill press, no big.

...

NobleHops · « **Reply #137 on:** January 31, 2014, 12:05:03 AM »

These little copper sealing washers are NLA from Honda and besides, it's easy enough to re-anneal them, so we did. Pulled them off the bolt by sneaking a razor knife in the edge to pop them free...

Heat them till red hot with the MAPP gas torch, no more than 5 seconds.

...and drop them into cold water to quench them.

Touch them with the wire wheel to get the scale off, and they are good to go.

NobleHops · « **Reply #138 on:** January 31, 2014, 12:05:12 AM »

I think these are called "oil control rings" and they sit in that slot on the damper rods. Old one at left. Replaced these...

Blast the fork legs and new fork tubes clean one last time, drop the damper rods into the fork tubes with the new oil rings, wiggle them through the bottoms, and then use the fork spring to hold them there while pressing on that T-shaped piece that sandwiches between the damper rod and the fork leg.

Now, carefully slide the fork tube down the leg, once gain using the spring to hold pressure on the damper rod. hold the assembluy upside down on the bench, pressing the spring against the damper rod, install the damper rod bolt and the re-annealed copper washer, and tighten. Turn it back over, remove the spring.

Chuck it up on the soft-jaw vise, clean the tube one more time, slide the seal onto the tube, and install it with a seal driver. I raided my hardware store's cut-offs bin for a half-dozen different sizes of PVC pipe, found one of them a perfect match for this seal, cut it square with my miter box, sanded it smooth and deburred it. Worked well.

Sorry no photos of driving the seals, but I had to wail on it to get it all the way in there and expose the clip groove.

NobleHops · « **Reply #139 on:** January 31, 2014, 12:05:19 AM »

Grab the GoldValve and adapter stack, slide it together into the fork tube and try to slide it together down the fork tube using the spring, on it's side. Easier than it sounds.

With the spring and Gold Valve installed, extend the fork all the way, and measure/calculate the distance that will be from the bottom of the fork cap to the top of the spring, then add 5-10mm for spring preload per Racetech, and cut the PVC spacer material to length. 30mm in my case.

Smooth and deburr these well, you don't want PVC chips floating around your fork.

Now is a good time ti install the fork oil. I went with Honda SS8 (10 wt) at 160cc. Pour it in slowly and carefully pump the fork a little to pump the air out from the bottom.

...

NobleHops · « **Reply #140 on:** January 31, 2014, 12:05:26 AM »

Home stretch - drop a washer in on top of the spring, then the spacer, then another washer, then the fork cap.

Install the dust seals:

Get rid of your greasy fingerprints...

Declare victory.

Next!

thirsty 1 · « **Reply #141 on:** January 31, 2014, 08:14:41 AM »

Quote from: NobleHops on January 31, 2014, 12:05:26 AM

Home stretch - drop a washer in on top of the spring, then the spacer, then another washer, then the fork cap.

Install the dust seals:

Get rid of your greasy fingerprints...

Declare victory.

Next!

Nice work! Thumbs Up.

NobleHops · « **Reply #142 on:** February 03, 2014, 11:04:45 PM »

Alright, with a medium-sized ass-kicking I got my wheels laced tonight, big thanks to Thirsty1 for some crucial coaching to get me started correctly. Once you get started it's actually fast and easy, the 5th time you do it, that is. The rear wheel went fast - 20 min? Go figure.

Sort the spokes, prep:

First side of inside spokes:

Flip it over, second side of inside spokes - your wife said it was OK to use the bowls, I already asked her.

First row of outside spokes, opposite direction from the inside spokes:

and done:

Again, big props to Thirsty, for the tutorial he linked me to, and the clutch coaching tonight. Much appreciated.

thirsty 1 · « **Reply #143 on:** February 04, 2014, 07:16:11 AM »

NO worries, your more then welcome! Anytime.

NobleHops · « **Reply #144 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:03:05 PM »

Alright, I had some guests for a week and couldn't lay a wrench on the bike but they've gone back east and so we're back at it. With the wheels laced it was time to finish assembling them and the brakes, and then true them.

First off, because I was learning how to lace wheels and watching the SuperBowl at the same time, I did not dare to bring antiseize into the living room with me. No big deal I thought, I'll just take the nipples back off later and brush on some copper antiseize, then put them back on. Dumb idea. I'd say it took me every bit of an hour to remove 72 nipples, brush copper antiseize on the threads and reinstall. Don't do that

.

Once those were all done, it was on to the bearings and retainers et al. I like to pop the top of these sealed bearings and see how much grease there is. It can vary really widely to 50% full (just right) to 20% full (not enough).

I filled them all halfway, popped the covers back on.

...

NobleHops · « **Reply #145 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:17:45 PM »

Alright on to the bearings and retainers. I think I finally understand the engineering around the bearing retainers on one side of the wheels in these SOHC bikes - someone correct me if I have this wrong please: The critical alignment of the wheel is on the left side. and so that side has a square, solid 'pocket' for the bearing to install into, and then the bearing retainer is screwed diwn till snug and then staked to ensure no movement. That becomes the fixed point for alignment in the wheel, and the spacer/beariing stack to the other side will always be correct, despite and manufacturing variance in the wheels. (no bearing 'pocket' on the right side). Something like that?

Left side bearing on front:

Install the bearing retainer to preserve the alignment:

Flip over, drop the spacer in:

Install the second bearing. Then the speedo o-ring, speedo drive, rotor bolts, brake rotor, locktiting the nuts.

Done.

NobleHops · « **Reply #146 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:24:08 PM »

Onto the rear wheel.

Had new cush rubbers to install. Note to the next person that does this: Don't bother. The new ones seem just as hard as the old did, and IMO it was not worth the time and energy it took to replace these.

I used the copper antiseize on them, just to make myself feel better about pounding steel collars into aluminum wheels:

Heat 'em up (put gloves on!)

Pound 'em in:

Done

NobleHops · « **Reply #147 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:27:49 PM »

Install the left-side bearing:

Bearing retainer:

Pack the lip of the seal with grease to waterproof the hub:

Fancy tool again:

Done:

NobleHops · « **Reply #148 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:35:48 PM »

Now for the brake side. Drop the (cleaned, greased) spacer aka 'distance collar; in:

New bearing:

Install the brake shoes REMEMBERING TO PUT THE WASHER AND COTTER PIN IN PLACE AT THE PIVOT (not shown because I didn't):

Flip it over install the sprocket lugs in the cush rubbers, the washer, sprocket and circlip (locktite and torque to specs here on the sprocket nuts).

Done:

NobleHops · « **Reply #149 on:** February 16, 2014, 07:44:50 PM »

Last for tonight: I was a little intimidated about the prospect of truing my wheels - I shoudn't have been - it was no big deal and it was fun and zen-like.

This video helped a lot:

How To True A Motorcycle Wheel

I got them running very straight and true, althougth both wheels have a teeny hop at the manufacturing weld where the circle was closed - I don't think there's any way to eliminate this and so I am not going to try. I did order a spoke torque wrench to check the tightness after they've run a bit, but for now they all make a musical 'ping' when I tap them with a screwdriver and they're all good and snug.

News:

Author Topic: Noblehops makes a 400F pretty for his wife (Read 102810 times)

bofud