Mocking up Bracketsi

The bike is now totally stripped in order to refinish it for the final time.  Part of this process is machining and fabricating the final brackets for some of the component parts.  With older bikes, the improvement in braking capabilities compared to modern-day machines is huge.  New calipers, new pad compounds, piston design, etc, have led to much safer and controllable machines.  To that end, Mr. Sheppard rooted through his box o' parts at home and dug out a spare Nissin caliper, actually from a Honda RC51 superbike.  That machine runs two front calipers, but considering it's capable of the far side of 150mph, not a bad idea.  One caliper should be sufficient for us.

Step one was mocking up a rough template in wood.  Using some scraps from the TCS woodworking facility, an hour and a half of measuring, drilling, cutting and sanding (and 3 attempts) netted us this result.  A start, and a rough guide for the machinists to build upon.

Modern four-piston calipers do tend to be "deeper" in that there are active pistons on both sides of the caliper.  There are sometimes clearance issues between the wider caliper and the narrow spokes of a vintage wheel.  Some material from the backside can be removed, but you need to be very careful... of course the whole assembly is under considerable pressure!  As well, the "old" front brake rotor is nearly twice as thick as the modern equivalent.  The rough mockup shows that things should work, but there will no doubt be some more tweaking as this sub-project continues.

The disappearing bike...

In order to complete this project, our next step is to totally disassemble it down to the component parts for final cosmetic finishing.  Ultimately the frame itself will need to be stripped and powder-coated, and the bike rebuilt from there.

First major step after all the ancillaries were removed was to take off the front end -- forks, wheel, triple clamps and all!  The entire unit will be kept intact in order to fabricate a bracket to use the more modern 4-pot Nissin front brake caliper.

Once the forks were removed, the engine was next.  It took a bit of grunt work to shoe-horn it out of the frame.  A few seals need to be replaced (clutch rod actuator and counter shaft seal)... not sure if that should be done with the engine out, or back in the frame again.

The foot pegs were chromed from the factory, but are now pitted and rusty.  We are going to take them apart and get them powder coated.  However a rivet needed to be removed first, which will be replaced but a nice bolt when they are reassembled.  Here a student is grinding off the head of the rivet, in order to punch it out.

The spring... photo for reference purposes so we know how to put it back together!

Where we left things.  The frame needs a few unnecessary tabs ground off, and an exhaust mount stud welded on.  The swing arm is stripped, as well as the rest of the steel parts.  Next step, finding a shop to blast and powder coat the frame... but what color???

Getting a little help...

With a completion date of March starting to loom in the not-so-distant future, and with kids busy with hockey and other activities, Mr. S has come in solo to complete the rest of the wiring.  A tedious job, but thanks to Mr. Gugin and some of his testing equipment, some stubborn questions have been answered, and the bike is now wired.  Working on 2 or more wiring diagrams was bound to be difficult, but Mr. G's experience sure helped out.

We were also able to benefit from a really cool hydraulic pipe expander that Minnedosa Collegiate has in their shop.  The Dime City Cycles muffler fit too snugly with the MAC headers.  A wee tweak with the pipe expander, and things now slide on and off with a near-perfect slip fit.  A clamp is next, and the final step will be to weld a muffler mount to the frame.

After that it will be a mad rush to tear the bike down for powdercoating, paint, and final assembly.  More pics to follow after the Christmas break.  Stay tuned!

Christmas homework

As promised, here is a pic of the beautiful welding done by our supporters, Cycleboyz in Brandon.

This is a stainless steel muffler mount, fabricated and welded onto our muffler donated by Dime City Choppers.  As you can see, the welding quality and general workmanship is superb.  Thanks Cycleboyz!  Check out their shop and some of their projects via the link on the right.

Just in time for Christmas, now that the mechanical and electrical work is being completed, we need to starting thinking about the aesthetics of the machine... the color combinations, including the frame, swingarm, tank, and tail section.  Based on suggestions that come forward, we might vote, we may draw out of a hat... who knows?  Mr. Sheppard spent lunch hour sketching/tracing the side profile you see to the left; some work with some pencil crayons and/or markers and we should have some good ideas!

A bit of "dirty work"

The new Dime City Cycles muffler fit quite snugly onto the MAC header... to snugly, in fact.  One of the necessary jobs was to remove the surface coating from the header (some sort of black, super-hard paint) to see if this would be enough to allow the muffler to slide one.  First step is to remove the headers...

Like a lot of these rebuild/restore projects, parts need to be installed and removed several times during the build.  I've lost count regarding the exhaust system!

We borrowed an angle grinder with an abrasive wire wheel to remove the header coating.  Even with this tool, it took quite some time to get paint off.  We will need to wait to see if this is sufficient to install the muffler... while this was going on, Cycleboyz were doing their usual tig-welding magic on the muffler.  Being built in stainless, a muffler mount needed to be welded to the body of the muffler for us to fabricate a mount.  As usual, their workmanship was stellar and they didn't charge us anything.  Thanks yet again, guys!

There is still some work to do regarding the wiring system.  Now that all the indicators work, headlight, tail light, etc.... we are getting some sort of short somewhere that is blowing fuses!  Looks like we need to tear into the wiring harness to find the culprit.  It will give us a chance to review the original schematic to search for faults.

More Progress

A few more pics as the bike continues to develop...

 It still looks disorganized, but the wiring does work as it should.  We still need to properly trim the aluminum seat pan... it has just been rough-cut for now.

Tail light and turn signal bracket loosely mounted.  Licence plate will go underneath the tail light, acting as a pseudo-fender, and will be illuminated by a clear window in the bottom of the tail light.

Front end.  We will be removing the "gaiter" style fork boots and running with a traditional setup.  With the lowered front end, they are too long and sit distorted on the forks.  This will allow a clearer view of the front turn signals as well.  These still need to be wired in, along with the rear brake pedal, and perhaps a neutral light if we can find a suitable light.

Back at It

Now that school is back in full swing, the TCS Kids' Cafe is back working on the XS650.  Over the course of the summer while the bike was hanging out in Mr. Sheppard's garage, a few templates were made in order to accommodate the frame modifications, as well as mount the rear taillight and turn signals.  Starting with cardboard first, the goal of this session was to create the finished pieces out of aluminum.

Using the cardboard piece as a guide, we began measuring cut, fold, and drill marks in the aluminum.

During the course of this process, we used some of our mental math skills, and discussed the relative ease of working with the metric system.  "Half of 40mm", is far easier to calculate in our head compared to "half of 1 and 5/8 inches"!

 Starting with pilot holes, the students drilled out the various mounting points for the tail light brackets, frame mounts, and turn signals.

We also discussed how it is far easier to mark, punch, and drill holes (pilot holes or finished holes) on a piece you are working on prior to final finishing or bending.

The aluminum sheet we used for the battery and fuse box mount was a bit thicker than the taillight bracket -- like most shears, the material is cut by stepping down on a foot bar to operate the cutting edge.  The students needed a bit of "help" from Mr. Sheppard... both girls were too light to cut the material!

The tail light bracket on left, with the cardboard template on the right.  The larger "keyhole" needs to be finished later; the wiring for the tail light passes through the material at that point.

One hour's work:  the tail light bracket is 90% complete, and the battery bracket has been roughly cut out.  Final finishing will be done once it is test- mounted to the frame.  Note the cardboard template... irrefutable proof that Mr. Sheppard (occasionally) eats Froot Loops.