Back at it

January has been a bit of a hit-and-miss month with the project, as many of the students are also involved with basketball and curling, both of which also fall on Tuesdays.  The start of Februrary sees these activities wrap up, so kids are become more available to continue working on the bike.

A bigger job for this session was stripping the wiring harness in order to start from scratch.  As mentioned previously, the entire bike will be re-wired, from scratch, mating 40-year old handlebar controls with a modern ignition system, regulator/rectifier, and blade fuses.  Took almost the entire session, but with patience, the harness was stripped and we should have enough wire (in the right colors) to connect all the component parts.

Part of what makes a Cafe bike "trick" is to create the clean look.  The advantage of our seat section is that some bulky parts, like the batter and other components, can be hidden under the seat hump.  First step is to trace... you can see the student in the background utilizing some scrap cardboard and a steady hand.

And then we cut!  This piece will be traced onto an aluminum sheet and cut out.  It will act as a inner fender, as well as allow a spot for the battery box to be mounted, and will also provide some "real estate" to mount the fuse box and perhaps the regulator/rectifier.

While this was going on, another student worked on the front end of the bike.  The top triple clamp needed to be removed and the new headlight ears installed onto the forks.  Once done, this allowed the front end to be finished up in terms of the front suspension.

Once done, we are mixing and matching some parts for the rear tailight.  We didn't finish it during this session (we need to modify a bracket), but we think we've come up with an acceptable way to mount the tailight to the bike.