Hey Bender, I'm usually hovering right around the SC boarder anyways, and would love to meet up sometime. I ride down Marshville, NC 3-4 days a week, that's the shop where my other bike is. Now as far as the engine I am still uniformed as its complete history, and I don't know exactly what you mean by "hot rodded" forgive me ignorance I don't know if that is a vintage bike term or just a southern term (I am from New York and just moved here last year). I can tell a few things but I am not 100% sure about. I don't know if its the bikes original motor or if it has ever been rebuilt, but the engines compression was a bit low (but still within spec) on one cylinder, so I doubt it with only 21,000miles on it. The carbs seem to have been rebuilt or slightly modified, I think the jets are larger, but im not sure. And I'm not sure about the exhaust but I think its just a slip on, it is fairly quite. The bike has the power I would expect, but as I have no experience with these bikes or bikes of the area I don't have anything to compare the power to. So it could be faster or slower and I wouldn't really know. But on the same note, I think the clutch is going and is hindering its power output to the wheel. Steve the seat is so so. I have no clue what kind or where its from. It seems pretty good for the passenger though, and does give me a small amount of lower lumbar support. But its the seat it came with so I cant compare it to an original though.
Now that being said I am trying to get rid of it. I let my roommate ride on my bike, he just got his license and I took him to a parking lot to teach him the ropes. But unfortunately he is a poor listener, thinks he knows everything, and basically anything I say he i say he decides I'm wrong and does what he wants anyways. Despite this he begged me for days and assured me over and over that this would not be the case and would follow anything I say to the "T". So after a little while he decided he was a pro and no longer needed to do what I said, and ignored what I told him about staying in a particular part of the lot and roamed around the rest of the lot. To stop my rant and shorten this story a car pulling out of a spot had caused him to panic. He luckily ended up stopping before hitting the car (not that he was going fast enough to hurt himself or anyone else, but I would have been upset to have my insurance go up because of him had he hit it). So to stop fast enough in his panic he must not have been able to remember the brake locations and decided to lay the bike down instead. Again it was slow enough there was no real damage to him or the bike but he did bend the bars, rip the seat, and damage the side markers.
Now none of the damage was a big deal because I wanted to do a "cafe" build this winter anyways. So I figured this was a bit of an excuse to get started early. Although I havent done as much research as I had hopped. I bought a set of clip ons and new OE styled grips to go with them. And I got some cheap bar end circular style mirrors. I removed the broken side markers and the opposite side ones as well, along with the sissy bar. For now Im not running any, but I will figure out some alternative soon. I might get some small led bullet style ones. Or I found a cheap enough LED brake light, license plate light/ bracket, and turn signal. Its small and good looking, but the price is so cheap Im worried about quality and im still not sure its how I want to mount everything. I am trying to find a cafe seat now, I know the style I want but I am a bit hesitant to for a few reasons and I am hoping I can find one already upholstered somewhere. So I can see what it might actually look on a bike like mine and not have to get it done myself (lazy lol). This is basically where I am at now with the bike.
Now I would like to in the near future get a few other things. First I would like to figure out the deal with my clutch. It is only under near or full wide open throttle. And only at high RPMs. It does go away after a bit of driving about 10-15 mins of riding. And the outside temperature affects that time by a lot. The colder it is the longer it takes for it to start working properly. Now once I get that figured out I want to to upgrade the brakes badly. I would love to do a dual disc swap upfront. So Bender if your still reading please keep an eye open for any goldwings out there for me please. Also a rear disc swap would be cool, but I have read they aren't that beneficial. And while the tires are more then fine on my bike I would like to see if there are any good tire recommendations out there for our wheels. And then I would like to just go over everything and update them. Finally I would like to do body work, but this will definitely have to wait until the winter, this was my profession since i was 16 years old. I want to paint the frame and other miscellaneous parts. And hammer in the tank to give some knee and bar cut outs. only other thing i can think of at the moment is bearings and what not to improve handling and over all feel. Im sure there are plenty of other things I would love to do as well that Im not thinking of at this moment.
*****Please read this last bit if you read nothing else as I am stumped and could use recommendations*****
So last Thursday I installed the bars grips and mirrors. Now believe it or not I managed to take my bike that was running fine and make it not even turn on. Long story short (because I have a tendency to go off on rants) is that after the install the throttle was so stiff I could barely turn it. So I adjusted it a few times and then would turn the bike on to see how it felt running. It took a few times because I couldn't seem to do it right and it was not snapping all the way back, but now it seems ok although its still not a hundred percent where I want it. I am in NY right now visiting family but when I get back I will try to remove the cables clean and lube them to see if there is an improvement. So I want to mention, even though it probably has nothing to do with the electrical problem, when I need to move the tank to get to the top of the motor/carbs. I simply pop the seat, lift the tank, turn it side ways, and then let it rest on the seat while i work. I mention this because my initial thoughts were maybe i sat it on a wire and broke it. So anyways after getting the throttle to a point i was happy with it, I turned the key to start the bike and test it one more time but now the lights didn't even come on and i had no power. I didn't have my good multi-meter with me and I only had an hour before I had to clean up and get ready to catch my flight. So I still don't have a lot of info and I might be able to fix this on my own still. But anyways I did the dummy checks. First the battery which is putting out proper voltage (12.something) I did my best to examine the harness be eye for breaks the best I could with the time I had and saw nothing obvious. I didn't have time to pop the headlight out though and check inside there. Now when trying to find the fuses I felt like an idiot, because I looked everywhere and I couldn't find them. A previous owner has removed them and use run the wires straight. Now I cant imagine a good reason for this, so is this a common mod or practice with these kind of bikes or just a owner being lazy? Anyways now with everything being the way it is, I was thinking about simply removing the current harness, since I have already removed the side markers, I am going to wire up my own tail lamp assembly, I want to clean it all up, and tuck the battery/fuse+relay under the seat. Is this a good/bad idea or do you guys have any other suggestions. I am asking here because like I said I haven't had a chance to really look at it yet and figure I will wait till next week if I cant figure it out then I will ask the board.
-Thanks for reading guys.
