The carnage has begun. Removed seat, plastic, tank, headlight and front blinkers. Oh and the speedo is removed for repair.
Again... I think it looks worse than it is.
Old and busted front signals. One (lower) is two wire while the top is three. The three has a running light and blinker. The bottom would have been normally off and only blinked. I think I'll replace them all with LED lights.
Instruments in housing when removed from all the other mess. There is a seal (later pic) that goes around the outside edge of this and creates a seal to the fascia that has the glass in it. That seal is toast and I bet not available so I'll probably have to fab something.
The upper part of the crack. Goes from top of front (on black seat here) to rear then around the edge.
The crack goes around the edge to the other side. Also (better seen in another pic) the mount post is busted out.
The toasted seal.
A better shot of the cracked housing with the post sitting where it should go.
Oh and the license plate mount is a nightmare. I'll address that later. I'm thinking of getting the mount bolts that have LEDs mounted in the head to shine on the plate.
The tank has been treated with Kreem or the like. Definitely looks DIY.
This is where we stand as of Nov 19. Pretty much a mess... but wait!
More mess.
Does everyone see the problem here? Yep... there is no lock nut on top of that valve adjust screw. Better yet the hardware from on top of the spring isn't there either. You can see it all if you look hard enough!
Another shot... You can see the nut better in this one.
This is what an unrestrained adjustment screw does to its cover.
Motor lifting and removeal WAYYYYY easier than the Clymer manual suggests. They recommend 3 people. Ha!
Strange gashes in the piston right side. Not sure what caused this... the valve issues didn't seem to release any material into the cylinder.
Small indentations from some gentle touches to the valve.
Some more strange and unexpected gouging on the front left side.
Slight scratching on the cylinder wall.
Some more scratches.
At this point its just odd that I didn't remove everything. But all that remains are wires and electronic modules so I decided to leave them. I'm only painting the exposed parts of the frame. Most of the parts that were covered look good.
This side shows that some of the internal metal will get a squirt too. All the paper on top is electronics and the little bit in the middle (below what would be the seat) is the airbox and coolant tank. Needed to pull the rear wheel to remove. Na.
There is still more to clean and sand in prep for paint. The exhaust is all banged up. I don't want to blow cash on new becuase there are no aftermarket parts for these so I'll just pretty up these as best I can. The frame and other chassis parts will be gloss black and the exhaust will be flat black.
THE PAINT BOOTH!!!
The morning after painting. Shiny. You can see the hanging other painted parts.
Some shiny. It looks kind of weird greyish black in this shot. I think it looks darker and truer black as it cures.
Evidently it also looks blacker when the camera is further back :-)
Later in the day the booth is tucked up with the door open and low and behold the motor is in!!! See this wouldn't have looked right if the frame was all flat and chipped. I had missed one spot when spraying so I had to just hit it freestyle... you can see where I freestyled the rear tire just a bit (just above the drive shaft).
You can see the broken frame mount bolt. the lower one is still tapped from painting. The larger, higher shaft is the brake lever shaft.
I guess I took another shot sans tape.
Some of the battered but nicely painted exhaust parts.
These are gonna look nice on the bike. The contrast of the flat and the gloss will be nice. The irony being that before I started on this thing the exhaust was pretty shiny and the motor was flat from sun fading!
Not sure why this looks kind of purple in this shot.
The fix for the mount bolt. It looks off but all the motor and frame bolts are hand tight right now. Once I get a bolt in there I'll align everything and torque everything.
The battery box mod. Cut off the stud that was in there and threaded and installed a bolt from a bike water bottle attachment.
The battery box with regulator dangling below it. All the wires in this shot had to be routed back to their original locations. The negative battery cable is in the wrong spot.
Special Tool.
I thought I would take a stab at cleaning up the messy radiator.
In the end I figured never mind... Obviously this is one of the few parts that didn't get extensive cleaning and paint. Not sure why. I'm kind of in a push to get her running so "luxuries" like paint are out from this point on I think. Also this gets a plastic cover that I MAY paint to match the body.
As you can see here the radiator isn't all that visible once the bike is back together. There are more parts to go above the front head and of course the tank.
Well I found something else to drill on. Just above the front head on the bottom of a rail (the shot is looking up) there is one of the bolts that holds the coils in place. When I pulled it all apart I noticed only one bolt was holding them (the other side). Now I know why... the bold broke off in the hole. I tried to drill it down the middle but couldn't and ended up getting the edge of the real hole. I'll just have to tap it and get as smaller bolt. Should be fine... better than the ONE that was holding them before!
Hooking up the hose to the bottom of this cap/thermostat housing was a bitch. then I had to actually break out the book to get all the wires hooked up right. In the end a nice plastic cover conceals all this mess :-)
The aforementioned book.
Oh yes got the clutch cable hooked up... only this is wrong. I have since moved one of the adjusting nuts to the other side of the black part coming up from the motor.
I got a suitable bolt from the hardware store and, viola! Subframe bolted tight. (and foot peg) Its the bright bolt.
Carburetors installed.
Carburetors installed from the other side too!
I got some new cap nut hardware for my newly painted voltage regulator.
Each cylinder has two spark plugs. One is on the side of the head and is very easy to get to. The other is down inside the head at a funny angle. This is the photo evidence. I have to tape the socket to the extension otherwise the socket gets stuck in there. Trust me its not fun when that happens!
You know your motorcycle has been sitting a while when you have spider eggs in the thread of your tires.
I had a blog post about my handlebars being a bit wide and upward swept. This is just an example of that. I don't think they are stock. Notice how much slack there is in the wire bundles.
There are previous pics of my fiasco trying to drill out this broken bolt. Its the mount point for the coils. some of the old bolt is still in there but I just tapped it and the new bolt went right in. The close quarters made using the usual T handle tap tool impossible. Thank you Vice Grips!!!
Coils mounted and bolt installed in newly tapped hole.
Can of worms... well I couldn't get the broken lever off the clutch perch. So I had to slide it off to work with it in the vice. The wires were to short to slide off the switchs so I had to pull the bar (and a bunch of electrical crap) to get it off. Also tossed the crappy foam hand grips.
Here is my nemisis and why I was up till midnight on a school night. That little screw is trapped in there and wont come out. I have a new lever but I need the perch (part that clamps to the bar). None on ebay and this is unique to the Ascot.
As you can see here I tried to drill it out but my drill started to wander over to the aluminum. After looking online I see that there is a nut that is suppose to go on the bottom. This tells me this might just pound out. Will experiment later.
