Do you know what I hate? My failing memory, that's what. Last week I replaced the crappy home made aluminium side stand because I didn't have a good original. Even worse, I spent 100 bucks on a crappy used EBay USA item, including shipping. I also ordered new sidecover rubbers, and a few other things that I thought I must have missed back in 2018. Well yesterday, when digging through my tub of new items, I found this. Bugger.......
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I was lucky that my big muscle-bound thug of a son was home, because there was no way I could stretch the new spring the half inch or so required to pull it over the peg, so I steadied the bike while "Muscles" easily got the job done. Am I getting too old to be building bikes from scratch? Nah..........
The worst thing about building a hotrod bike, is that you have to rely on the accuracy/fit of aftermarket parts, and unlike OEM items, some sh1t just doesn't fit out of the box. This happened to me yesterday when the retainer for the repro ignition switch was too "shallow" so I had to buy a 50 dollar OEM retainer from England. Today it was the Japanese made rear fender eliminator. Beautifully made, but it didn't fit.
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 b by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 c by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Luckily it was an easy enough fix, a couple of minutes on the bandsaw, and all was well with the world.
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 a by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Well what next? To fit the tail light with this setup I had to first install the ducktail, so I took the shiny new ducktail out of it's wrapper, and spent at least an hour trying to install the tail light into the back of it, as per the instructions. (in Japanese only) Not having tiny hands (maybe Web could have helped me?) I had to disassemble the special tail light bracket and install it piece by piece until it was all there. What a pain in the arse. We've all seen half-arsed engineering where one particular job (fork rebuilding, for instance) is a real chore, well aftermarket assemblies usually rely on squeezing something into somewhere it was never designed to go, and this was a great example. Anyway, it's on, thank fcuk.
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 2 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
And really, that was about all I got done. We'd been expecting a rain storm all day, so when the skies went black and the thunder started, I decided to pack up my mess expecting flood rains. Well, it rained for a minute (no more) so was a waste of time packing up, although my wife got caught in a massive downpour only a couple of miles up the road when she was loading the car with groceries, which I thought (incorrectly, as it turned out) was hilarious, and almost had 6 x 500ml bottles of Ginger joe smashed over my head. Some folks just don't have a sense of humor..........
I decided to throw the seat and tank on (which I discovered I've fcucking dented somehow, bugger it) just to see how it's looking, and I was happy, in fact, I even sat on it and made "Vroom, Vroom" noises, which is perfectly acceptable, even if I will be 60, not 6 soon. Slowly slowly, catchy monkey. Or something like that. More soon.
Sunday lazy Zedding 19 Jan 2020 3 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr