Motorcycle Maintenance Commandments

1. Just Do It.

2. Don’t Be Lazy.

3. Anything Can Be Fixed.

Stainless Steel Bolt Kit

Allen bolt kit for the CB550. Over 85 pieces in this bolt kit. It isn’t just a bag of bolts either, it comes with a set of instructions for bolt placement. I un-seized two of the original screws on the right side cover before my impact driver froze up. I think its beyond repair. I’ll try to get my money back on the driver or see if i can exchange it.

Forum

I’ve been checking my stats through Google Analytics and it turns out lots of folks are viewing this site. I also noticed a lot of you posting in the comments section. The comments aren’t really a great way for us to communicate so I made a forum for us. You can access the forum in the Pages section of the side bar as well as the Links section of the side bar. Or just click here: http://www.austincaferacer.com/forum/

UPDATE:

This forum is no longer available due to the high amounts of spam that was being posted. Sorry. Please leave comments instead.

Lights! Lights! Lights!

I’m nearly done with my LED conversion. My new front turn signals came in yesterday evening. They’re all metal, chrome, LED goodness. I couldn’t have chose a better style to suit my front end.

I bought them on from Demon Cycles. Even though they are made in Taiwan, I can vouch that they are well made and brighter than any incandescent bulb. The chromed metal is flawless, and the lens cover and LEDs are well constructed. They are small, have a tiny footprint, and don’t stick out like traditional signals.

18 super bright LEDs. Two wires. Yellow = power, Black = ground. Plug and play. Easy. I popped them right into the orange and light blue harness. No need for the orange/white and light blue/white wires since I won’t be using these as running lights.

Step one: Remove the headlight bucket bolts. These are the same bolts that the wiring harness uses for grounding. The threaded bolts of my new signals will replace these.

The front signals now provide three functions: Signaling, holding the headlight bucket in place to the fork ears, and grounding the wiring harness. Nice.

Clean.

Tonight I’ll post some video of the new signals. They are extremely bright.

Next up on my moto agenda is to replace the gauge lights (speedo / tacho) with new LED bulbs. The bulbs in the gauges are burnt out most likely. I’ve never seen them illuminated. I’d like to replace the pilot light bulbs with LED as well. The only bulbs that work are the neutral and hi-beam indicators.

Freeze Frame

New Clutch Cable

I took the bike out for a relatively long ride this morning around campus and developed some hand fatigue from squeezing the clutch lever too much. I can genuinely say the fatigue is not from the Clubman bars. I love the bars and can’t see why so many people complain about them so much. They are quite comfortable. I attributed the hand fatigue from from the old clutch cable. Luckily, I already had a brand new Motion Pro clutch cable sitting in my studio. I hadn’t thought I needed to replace it, but this morning my cramped hand muscles sealed the deal.

Old cable.

Nothing really wrong with it, I just think replacing it will help with my hand fatigue. If it doesn’t I’ll have to maybe get a modern adjustable clutch lever.

A simple process really. The only snag I encountered was the bit on the clutch end of the cable was slightly larger than the original.

I filed down the upper portion where the bit meets the cable, just enough to thin it down so it could slide into the lower lever slot.

Everything else worked fine. The new cable feels a little better, but not significantly different. I’l eBay the old cable this week.

Adding an ELFR-1 Flasher Relay

After several weeks of trying to get my LED turn signals to work, I finally succeeded this past weekend. The problem I was having was the signals weren’t blinking. The controls would activate them correctly, but they just stayed lit, no blinky blinky.

I tried using an LED relay from Harrison Specialties. It didn’t work.

I tried replacing the stock thermal flasher with an electronic one. Still no blinky.

I returned the electronic flasher for another. Nope.

I finally decided to buy a ELFR-1 from customled.com and still nothing.

It dawned on me that my problem had nothing to do with the flasher or relay, it most likely was my wiring in the headlight bucket.

So, I decided to take it apart and put it back together again.

I cut every wire. I cut for two reasons:

1. I wanted to shorten the wires to make a little more room in the bucket. The excess length was from installing the clubman bars.

2. I wanted to replace the bullet ends.

My process began with stripping the thick black plastic harness, then cutting around 6 to 7 inches off each wire. Oh, I decided to remove the turn signal buzzer also. Now I wonder if removing it contributed to my LED signals working.

All wired up with new bullet connectors. I also cleaned the ground connections.

Custom LED electronic flasher relay ELFR-1.

Two prong. Plug and play. Red on flasher goes to black on the bike. Black on flasher goes to grey on bike.

My new ELFR-1 sitting nice and cozy in the stock rubber mount. My new front signals, also LED, should arrive by the end of the week. I’ll take some video of all the signals on friday. I’ll post soon.