Finished up the carb control cable hanger yesterday, just needs a bit of paint since it's made out of steel that was braized together. Buber reminded me that you can use radiator hose to make carb boots in a pinch so I went down to the local hose supplier, gave them my old hose, told them what it was for and let them suggest what to use. The gentleman came back with this industrial looking marine fuel/exhaust hose that I have to say I'm not ashamed to have on the bike, looks pretty cool I think
This stuff has metal wire reinforcement so I won't get the boot pulsation some have written about. I had some difficulty getting the airbox side to mount up properly since the 650 stock carbs are about 10mm larger in diameter on that side than the 750 carbs I'm using. Soos suggested using smaller clamps, and after some digging I found some that were for the engine side of a cb500 (prime example of why you don't throw away spare parts from old bikes!) After some serious wrestling with the boots I was able to clamp them on, but the way they wrinkle up has me concerned that they will either leak, or else when they get hard, crack. Fortunately I have spares from my parts bike, so I have time to decide. If i actually get around to painting the carb cable hanger I might get some radiator tube and make a ring that the boots can clamp onto.
I also had to make an adaptor for the fuel line since the line from the petcock on the 650 is bigger, and only one, whereas the nipples on the carb for the 750 were smaller and 2. I'll take some pics of that, it was interesting to make.
Plans this week are, get the wiring harness sorted out tonight along with the controls (hopefully). Tomorrow I'm taking a half day from work, and I'm going to try and get the headlight bucket mount fabbed up and welded, then get as much of this put back together as I can. I'm hoping to get enough momentum that I can get the bike mostly back together, at least with the wheels and such mounted.
I've decided to do the saddlebags and trunk a bit differently than I had originally planned. I'm going to paint the lids to match the tank and fenders, but the bottoms will be black with the grey and black stripe. I just don't have enough of the candy and gunmetal to do everything, but if I do it this way I should now have enough to do everything. But I need to have the bike mostly reassembled to fab this all up. I'm just going to make the saddlebag hangers out of .250" flat bar stock, it's cheap but the saddlebags would fail before these suckers would. This and painting the saddlebags is going to be hopefully tues-fri work. I'm racing the weather now since all the reducer I have won't work properly below 80F. Fortunately the clear coat is more forgiving. I'm going to hopefully spray the clear on all the parts wednesday, let it cure for a week, cut and polish and install. At least thats the plans, we'll see how it all goes.
I'll post pics in a bit.
Brandon
