A quiet tale of classic bike ownership...

Or, a tale of (some) bodges.

Job 1:

Speedo cable broke; ie stopped getting speeds registered, rather than
it flapping in the breeze. Arse. Went to local dealer, get new one.
Fine. Unbolt speedo, get cable out at that end. Fine.

Pull cable out of driven end. Isn't that meant to have some
sort of teeth or slot in it? Look in 'ole; the teeth are still
in there. Bugger. Much thinking, and proding later, still nothing
coming out.

Inspiration hits! Go for a ride! So I go for a ride, and
the annoying bit of metal (at some point) falls out. Just what I wanted.
Refit is the reverse of disassembly, and I again know how fast I
isn't going.


Job 2:

In a fit of ebay-inspired preventative maintance, I buy some switchgear,
for a GPz750turbo, to replace the slightly cracked rhs switchgear
on the bike. Turns up, is in good nick, everyone's happy.

Go to bike. Remove tank to get at connectors. Connectors fit, and
there aren't any spare; always a good sign. Connect. Does the bike
start?

....

Yes. Do the lights work?

....

Yes. Right. Lets take the old one off the handlebars and fit the
new one. Look carefully at underside... Hang on, they don't look
the same... The one on the turbo has two 'oles for the throttle cable,
in a push-me-pull-me kind of way. The one what I have just purchased,
has one 'ole for a throttle cable...

Ah well, put back to original. I shall be carefully swapping over
the cracked bit of plastic anyway, but didn't have the required
tools to hand at home.

Paging Champ: Which is the not quite right one?

 

Hmmm. Not sure without looking at mine, but I think that the turbo
has a closing cable as well as an opening one. I suspect the switch
gear you have is for an ordinary GPz750, which probably only had an
opening cable for the CV carbs

[tho, to be honest, I can't see why the turbo FI system needs anything
more than a spring closing the butterflies, which are almost exactly
like the butterflies on CV carbs. It's usually just slide carbs that
have a closing cable, as the slides have been known to jam when fully
open].

 

Fair enough.

I did think of hacking together a spring, but decided against it.
Mainly to do with the lack of springs I have in my toolbox.

 

William Grainger says...

Urm. maybe I'm being a bit thick ere but if the Turbo has 2 throttle
cables then the one with 2 holes is the right one and if it only has
one...

 

A second cable could have been added by A Bodger in the past;
when Champ bought the bike originally it had non-standard
bars, rear indicators, rear lights and an hacked rear mudguard.
Non-standard switchgear may have also been added.

 

bad form, yadda yadda;

Job 3:

Some advice required here...

The tank of the turbo attaches at three points; two rubber
mounting things each side of the frame at the front, and
a rubber mounting thing at the back, which goes into a bracket.
The bracket has two holes in it, which go over two studs.
The two studs are threaded, and there is, naturally, a nut
on each, to hold it down.

Whilst removing the tank last night, I noticed that one
stud has almost no thread left on it. Now, the studs are
basically part of the frame, but offset slightly

Bad ascii art: S for stud; from side...

S
S
+-----+
| |
---+-----+---- <--- frame

The studs are not particularly thick; maybe M6.

Obviously this arrangement of threadless stud is not ideal.
The question is; what's the best thing to do? Options seem
to be:

1) use a die on the stud for an M5 or M4 nut.
2) hacksaw off stud, drill out. Use a bolt with a nut in the
raised area.
3) get a friendly/expensive welder to weld a bigger piece of
metal on, and use a die on that to produce the correct
size thread.

I'm tempted by 1 for preference, but two for security...

Thoughts?

 

4) drill a small hole through the end of the stud, and push an R clip
through it

 

What's an R-clip?

 

we've done this before - he means a bent cotter pin.

http://home.t-online.de/home/pravg/cotterpi.htm

 

See Darsy's post.

Standard mechanism for quick detachment systems.

 

Ah ha!

Makes more sense; I was thinking the small hole went along the
centre of the stud, which confused me...

Good suggestion. I'll do that.