Project BAMSFH™ - Part 9

Project BAMSFH™ - Part 9 - a.k.a Where have I been for 7 months...

Long story... long long painful (sometimes boring) story. 

So, when we last left our intrepid Hero, he was looking forward to the final steps in getting BAMSFH running on road legal. Things were looking up for our guy in greasy coveralls, as I was finally able to get the paperwork in hand and down to the DMV to pay the fees and get the title transferred to me. Albee is now registered, insured, and as far as everyone and DMV is concerned, owned by me. And there was much rejoicing. 

However... (dun dun dun dun)

I hit a bit of a snag around the same time as I was finishing the last bit of the title saga. Since I didn't start with a full on top to bottom fuel system cleaning, I kept pushing more crap back into the carbs. The final straw was once I got the idle smooth and choke off. She rev'ed fine and didn't seem to hesitate at all. I felt confident I could take a ride around the block to the nearest Subway and see how she did. On the way there, she ran like a top, nice and smooth with good power. But as I am pulling into the parking lot, she starts to die. I give her some gas and she starts to recover only to stall out completely as I rolled into the parking spot. I shut her off and take a quick look see and don't see anything obviously wrong. I decide to give her a few minutes to cool off as I head into the Subway to place my dinner order. Back outside, I try to fire her up and she won't go. She's trying but it's definitely a gas thing. I know that is full, and I can't easily get to the filter to check it due to it's location under the battery. After a few cranks an no catches, I start to push her home. Thank the gods for a <500lb bike and only being around the block. Still the longest "around the block" I've been on in a while. 

I get home and into the driveway and go inside to eat and cool down from the effort. I hook up the trickle charger because I know I have been abusing the battery a lot lately. About an hour later, I am back out and trying to get her to start. She tried but sputtered out again. I'm frustrated... I'm tired... I've lost all hope that this bike is fixable by me. I lock everything up and I go inside. 

My plan at this point was to find a local mechanic who would take her in and do the things I couldn't do because of lack of space and no garage. Of course money is tight and other things are going on taking up the spare cash so I keep putting off finding a mechanic. The few I do bother to look up are all very high priced and i'm pretty sure I would spend more than the bike was worth getting it running. So instead she sits. Every so often I remember to hook up the trickle charger again, but for the most part she just sits. I wasn't too terribly worried about gas varnish this time around as I has put in some Stabil stuff into the tank that got run into the carbs before she died so there was that at least. 

Skip forward a few months and still nothing is going right for me to get her into a shop. We ended up having to buy a new truck to replace my aging Jeep which ate into our limited savings. Then I get word from my job that they are letting me go. Well fuck! That puts a damper on paying for bike stuffs. And a good thing I didn't take her in and use up the rest of my savings. But things were looking up. A friend was trying to get rid of two roommates that he was not happy with. We offered to be the replacements and started negotiating the deal. It seemed too good to be true and ended up being a bit of work to make it work out... plus it took much longer than we expected to get the old roommates out before we could move in. Eventually we were able to move in around beginning of May and started to get settled.  

Albee went into the side yard for now while we figure out the garage situation. The friend has his own small metal shop along with a bench setup for making jewelry. The middle of the garage is setup for storage as they never really used it for cars. I was hoping to make use of the garage for Albee, but that was not going to happen due to the layout and everyones needs. So instead I hauled a 10x10 popup out of storage, bought 4 tarp walls and clamps, and setup my own garage in the back yard. Setup a table out there and took my tools and such out as well then rolled Albee into her new home for a few months. 

The garage:

Now that I can actually tear things down and clean everything right, I started taking her down to frame and engine. I was not planning on doing anything major to the engine just yet. I started just like before by draining the tanks, and man was that nasty at first. All that rusty grungy gas was trying to and mostly succeeding in getting into the carbs. Once drained, I pulled the main tank and set that aside. I'm not going to start on the de-rusting until I'm mostly ready to button it all back up since last time I cleaned it too soon and it rusted back up on me. 

Next came taking the rear wheel off to check/clean/replace the read brakes and check the wheel bearings. Turns out the PO before parking her replaced the bearings as they look in great shape and spin very freely, which kinda sucks since I had ordered new front and rear bearings thinking that they haven't been touched for 7+ years if at all. Rear sprocket also looks good but I will get a second opinion on that when I take the wheel in to get the new shoes put on. Chain is also looking good even though a bit rusty. I will pull it off and check the front sprocket so that I can get it nice and clean. The rear wheel was set in pretty far on the tensioner, meaning that the chain is not old and stretched. Unless I see any warning signs during the removal and cleaning, I'm calling the chain good. Brake shoes are definitely worn but not down to any level of concern for the drum surface. I went over the wheel drum with brake cleaner and 0000 steel wool to get it nice and pretty smooth. 

With the rear wheel out, I was able to remove the rear fender and get the reserve tank out. Getting the rear fender out was a pain in the ass, but not totally complicated. My concern will be getting it all back into place correctly later. Fingers crossed I can puzzle it together and thankfully the service manual and fiche all show it going together properly. The reserve tank was nasty... shaking it out poured clumps of crap and rust. I got most of it out and then poured in some Evapo-rust and swished it around a bit then dumped that out. In just the minute or so of swishing it already fouled the evapo-rust. Once I got most of the bigger chunks out I plugged up the holes and filled it with evapo-rust and shook it up good. I'll be letting that sit for quite a while I thing to make sure all the crap gets cleaned. This got me worried about the main tank, so I grabbed it and shook it... rattle rattle rattle... like sand and rocks. Crap. I spent a few minutes shaking the crap out of the main tank to get as much chunk and powder out as I could then set it aside... I'll focus on it later. 

Even when you think you got the tanks cleaned, there is always something left in there. 

Once the reserve tank was setup, I cleaned the brake shoe part of the drum really good and set that aside for the new brake shoes. Then it was on to the clutch slave cylinder. I had picked up a rebuild kit and decided now was the time to replace it. As I was slowly and carefully pumping the clutch to get the piston to work itself out to a position where I could grab it, it reached a point where it wasn't moving any further. I ended up having to bleed the clutch lines to finally get enough pressure to push the piston out. Turns out that I have a slight leak up in the top banjo bolt as I could hear it slurping as I pumped the clutch lever. I added that to the To-Do list for now and went back to the slave cylinder.

It all came apart pretty easy and the replacement parts were all very straight forward to put on. I had a little issue at first getting the piston back in, but then remembered that I am a tool using primate and grabbed the brake fluid and lubed up the cylinder and seals. Then it all slid into place. I pushed air out and did a slight bleed to get it all set and then went to put the slave back on when I noticed the gasket was pretty hosed. Sigh... I went ahead and cleaned up the surfaces and bolted it back on for now. Added a new gasket to the order for that night. 

I was tempted to start the replacement on the site-glass as well, but its been pretty hot and I needed a break plus I knew that I would be replacing the front brake pistons next weekend once those come in from V4market. So when I go to replace the clutch slave gasket and then the front brakes i'll drain the masters and replace the site-glass.