In the midst of working on Project Blue, welcoming a new R18 Classic to the garage, and all my work over the summer, one thing kept bugging me - the final drive... I wrapped up Project Red at the end of last summer. It was a full rebuild with the vast majority of the work... Continue Reading →
An experiment with silicone oil pan gaskets from a supplier, intending for their reusability. Installation was difficult due to their thinness, and incorrect torque values led to potential loosening. After 900 miles, the gaskets failed to perform and showed signs of movement, leading to a switch back to standard gaskets.
When I completed Red, it was very tempting to just jump on and head for a long weekend trip. I had even considered riding to a rally in PA on it. I have gone through this bike from front to back and gosh darn it, I know everything is right. Right? Well no. Keeping Red... Continue Reading →
Much of this build log has been notable thoughts along the way. I did include a few technical notes here and there, but it was never intended to be a technical reference. Now that the project is done (except for some smaller add ons to come) I thought I would provide a more comprehensive technical... Continue Reading →
In the last post, I remarked that I was getting some peculiar behavior on the generator light. It was coming (back) on at higher RPMs, but I can verify that the voltage at the battery was increasing as well. Normally, this would mean the light would be off. This is all a little bit of... Continue Reading →
It's been a long journey to get to this point. The electrics are done. Everything seems to be in order. I've triple-checked all the bolts that need to be torqued, and am glad that I have systematically used a green paint pen to put a small mark on everything as I applied final torque. All... Continue Reading →
I've been dreading and procrastinating on this part of the project for a while. When I was working on my cars as a teenager, I always kept electrical bits as simple as possible. I even stopped working on cars when they became heavily computerized. I never bothered to learn much about how relays, points, and... Continue Reading →
Alright. Mechanically, the last big thing to do is install the cylinders and heads. The cylinders, pistons and related bits are from the Siebenrock Powerkit 1000. There are plenty of folks showing installs of this out there and mine was not different. Everything went smoothly and my only regret is not test fitting them to... Continue Reading →
February was a bit of a mess. I did not get much time to work on Red, and several tasks were up in the air until I sorted out the handlebar clamps. Now that those are done, I can move on a bit. I was still able to get a few small things done and... Continue Reading →
After close to a month, I received my custom bar clamps from PCBWay. The timing was thrown off by the Chinese New Year, which put a two week delay into the process more or less. Other than that, it was a pretty good experience ordering from them. The CNC order process did have some options... Continue Reading →
