Mimi the Deerslayer: the triple threat

[thecarfarmer]

So, spending a few quality minutes with the Ronnie's online parts fiche... seems that the original spacer in my bike is H-D part 33344-94; the corresponding part for a '91-2 is p/n 33334-85

The page on PBI's site for the sprocket I got recommended a 33334-79 spacer (which is what I ordered). Mr. Google tells me this is for an '83 big twin. Suspect this may be part of the issue... so, another Dennis Kirk order placed. Couple pairs of plugs, couple oil filters, some DOT5 (the local parts store only had a couple cans - and DANG! that stuff is dear, and some other sundries.

I need to start a business, so I can write all this junk off!

[thecarfarmer]

Got the rear tire mounted today; ended up spending much of the day over at a friend's house dealing with some plumbing issues.

The Fedex site has shown my chain sitting in Memphis for the last week. Now, Dennis Kirk has sent my order with that spacer by Fedex... wonder when I'll see that .

But progress is progress, and at least one of the sprockets is on

[madnss]

Spacer and the seal changed in 94 I think? I can’t remember, same id, different od, as well as the corresponding seal. I’m not sure on depth, I had to order a new new seal for my 03, but used a bt/old style Xl spacer I had for the chain drive.

Dennis Kirk is usually pretty quick, but I live 3 hours from them so I would imagine it depends on where you are located. I order a lot of gaskets ect from dk, if it’s in stock and I order before 10 am I get it the next day, if not I can order as late as 7pm and it’s always the day after. I’m very lucky, I don’t bother ordering locally from places because of this convenience for gaskets, seals and what not.

Looks like she’s coming together!

[thecarfarmer]

Yeah, man, DK moves the stuff out quick for sure. I'm in Arkansas, and have got my care packages in a couple days. Well pleased.

Remember when we were kids, and we'd look forwards to getting the toy in the bottom of the cereal box. Well, they send stickers with parts for adults...



Bike's starting to look like herself again...



Punch list is getting shorter...



Bike sure is a bunch lower, now. I had to dent the muffler for the axle bolt @ the regular ride height...





Sprocket spacer showed up; seems to line the front sprocket with the rear. But, need another seal. Thought I'd ordered one for a '91-2; will have to dig out my receipt and try again. EDIT: looked at my receipt - ordered a seal for the belt drive setup.

*shakes head*

Looks like I'm gonna just call the stealership on Monday

Also, have to see about a chain. Bought one offa eBay, right before the freeze. FedEx tracking showed it sitting in Memphis for 10 days, now their website has no record of the tracking #. Ugh.

[thecarfarmer]

Well, the chain I bought off eBay was stuck in a FedEx warehouse in Memphis, then the tracking number quit working. So, I went and bought another one, since I had no idea when the first would arrive.

Well, as luck would have it, the second one is showing as being in a FedEx warehouse in Memphis right now, and the first one was sitting on the porch when I got home.

Box has seen better days, but, the chain looks pretty good. Gonna' have a spare, which doesn't hurt my feelings too much.

For tonight, it's living room decor.



Picked up a '91 XL oil seal for the spacer for the output shaft - will see how that works.

[madnss]

Originally Posted by thecarfarmer

Well, the chain I bought off eBay was stuck in a FedEx warehouse in Memphis, then the tracking number quit working. So, I went and bought another one, since I had no idea when the first would arrive.

Well, as luck would have it, the second one is showing as being in a FedEx warehouse in Memphis right now, and the first one was sitting on the porch when I got home.

Box has seen better days, but, the chain looks pretty good. Gonna' have a spare, which doesn't hurt my feelings too much.

For tonight, it's living room decor.



Picked up a '91 XL oil seal for the spacer for the output shaft - will see how that works.

I’m curious what the tensile strength is on that chain. I’m not saying anything is wrong or negative with it, but a quick google search shows it as a 30 dollar chain. I’m not saying that won’t work.

[thecarfarmer]

Ack!

Well, I thought the DID chain was supposed to be a good brand, and what I was missing here was a pretty, gold anti-corrosion coating.

Well, fuuu... er, dang it - the other one just showed up.



Curious how often chains break at the 80-100 HP level if not already worn the heck out, misadjusted, or otherwise improperly installed/maintained...

Will keep an eye on them, and promptly let them adorn the round file when worn

[thecarfarmer]

Well, got the chain on; was gonna take the bike for a putt up the street to warm her up and then change the oil, but ran out of time on Wednesday...

...so, that's on the docket for this weekend.

More decor enhancements arrived today



New pads and brake flush scheduled now, too. Gonna try to get her ready for shakedown this weekend, and hope I can get her to a dragstrip for some runs within a couple more weeks.

[thecarfarmer]

Well, been a somewhat productive weekend.

Somewhat.

Ever had one of those vehicles in your shop that made you wonder if it was possessed, because the damned thing fought ya' tooth-and-nail doing simple jobs you'd done a jillion times before?

Well, sweet Mimi decided to join those ranks.

First off (and, this is straight up on me), I forgot that I'd blocked the tank vent to keep the wet Arkansas air from the fuel tank. So, when I turned the fuel on, fuel started spraying out of the carb. Not dripping, not leaking, but shooting out like an EFI system with a BAD leak. Ack! Turn off the fuel, pull the carb, check the needle and seat, adjust the float height, find nothing, reinstall carb, hit the fuel, watch a display that the fountain at the Bellagio wishes it could equal, kill the fuel, pull the carb bowl, push up on the float, reach over the bike and throw the petcock. Get blasted with gas. Hurl some industrial language as I reach back over the bike and kill the fuel again. Then realize what was going on.

Now, the day I put the petcock in the tank was way below freezing. But yesterday was at least 75°... which is thirty degrees warmer than the day I had the cap off the tank, and the air in it had expanded enough that there was still a lot of pressure released when I figured out what was amiss and cracked the cap.

Pulled the cap off the tank vent, and all was good, right? Uh, well... at least my Mikuni wasn't acting like a petroleum bidet. So, I felt rather chagrined that CRS had struck again, but, figured I'd put the cables and air filter back together and go for an inagural first putt after digging into the bike.

But, I was pretty pissed at myself, so I turned my attention to the lathe that Mimi parks next to, as I'd sourced new oil seals for the spindle (found a low-time 12x36 Jet in a defunct shop with clean, beautiful ways, that had had every bearing go dry from lack of use; but it was priced right). Ugh. Two of the oil seals I'd bought don't fit. The part numbers in the manual didn't match what was actually on the machine.

So, hollered to the sky, "what fresh level of Hell is THIS" and decided it was time to return to the bike. Put the cables back on, checked the throttle action with the bars turned left, right, and pointed straight ahead. On the last crack of the throttle, looked in the carb as I planned to install the air filter assembly, and WTF?!? - where's the accelerator pump shot? I mean, the actuating rod is working, but nothing's coming out of the squirter.

Well, I guess I know how to pull the carb bowl, right?

Leaving everything else hooked up, I pull the carb off the manifold, and pull those 4 bloody little screws again.

Trudge past my lathe project to the solvent tank with my HSR2's bowl, to see what's up with the accel pump. Push the piston down in its bore, and notice it's a little stiff. And it's sitting way down in the bore.

Nothing came out of the port which would lead to the squirter nozzle. But there were some air bubbles coming up past the piston.

I took a pick, and very gently pushed down on the check valve feeding the pump from the bottom of the bowl. Stuck with varnish. Okay, if the pump can't pull in fuel, the rod pushes the piston down, and then the spring isn't strong enough to overcome the vacuum formed under it, right?

"Easy fix," I thought to myself.

Taking the pick again, I worked at the check valve again. Pop! the varnish gave up, and the valve started moving.

"Sorted," I said to myself. Then, I noticed that the piston hadn't popped up under spring pressure.

Cursing, I stopped to ponder what drunk-and-hung-over deity I had offended in a past life, I grabbed some needle nose pliers and extricated the offending piston from its bore in the bowl. And it didn't want to come out without a significant pull from pliers... was the little spring behind it? Had a chunk of gak from the tank got knocked loose when I replaced the shot off? Varnish from sitting? A curse cast by my daughter's Ironhead for not paying attention to it?

Well, the piston's little spring was there behind the piston, but the piston was dragging in its bore. Sure as heck.

I couldn't feel any burr on the piston, and the bore looked pristine. But, it wasn't moving freely. So, I went into the house, and grabbed a sheet of 500 grit paper, and returned to the solvent tank, tore off a square and gingerly wiped it over the piston, thinking that I'd see a bright spot where some tiny little burr was protruding.

Nope. Nothing.

I quit while I was ahead; I didn't want to pull any appreciable material off. At least not without micing the piston and bore.

I took my piece of sandpaper, rolled it into a tube, put it in the pump bore, and gave it a couple twists. Then I saw a shiny spot halfway down the bore. Since the sandpaper wasn't able to push hard enough against the material to even leave well-defined sand scratches, there wasn't much chance of wallowing out the hole. So, I continued, running the paper in the bore for three or four strokes, washing everything out in solvent, trying the piston's fit, and repeated the cycle until the shiny spot began to grow a little. Finally, the piston slid freely.

So, I filled the bowl with solvent and checked the function. When I saw the little jet of solvent shoot up when I pushed the piston down the bore, I didn't feel satisfied; I didn't feel relieved. I just wondered what the hell else might go wrong. I ran the pump another dozen times, waiting for another shoe to drop, until I couldn't come up with any good excuse to not reinstall the bowl assembly.

So, I put it on the bike opened the petcock, heard the bowl full and the fuel flow stop. Cranked the throttle, got a proper shot from the pump squirter. Beginning to feel hopeful, I grabbed some blue loctite and screwed the baseplate down with the breather bolts, and installed the filter and its cover. Checked the throttle for proper adjustment and function. Stood the bike up, flipped up the kickstand, checked the brakes for feel, rocked the bike to check for neutral, and hit the button.

Little Mimi fired right up, and we went for a short ride through the neighborhood. Woohoo!

Bike feels so different. Rear is really stiff - even with the springs set full soft. My 182# body isn't enough to make the rear suspension move any noticable amount, no matter how hard I bounce on it. Damn thing might as well be a hardtail. Bars are way down and forward from where they were. And it's so low, that it feels really funny when I put my feet down. I mean, I expect my feet to have to reach several inches farther down.

So, next step... Front pads (inner was thin; probably wouldn't pass tech, and definitely due for replacement).

So, pulled the pins for the pads and drilled for safety wire; pulled the other bolts that hold the caliper halves together one at a time and drilled them, then pulled the mount bolts and drilled them.

Grabbed the brake lever and squeezed it a couple times to push the pistons out a bit, cleaned them up with the OL's toothbrush and some Windex (cuts break dust pretty well) scraped the paint off the edges of the new pads' friction material, and out of the pin holes, put a slight smear of of antiseize on the pins, scuffed the glaze off the rotors and slammed it together.

Grabbed my new spool of safety wire, and Great Ceasar's ghost! Now, I haven't done a lot of safety wire, but used to use it occasionally working on Talgo train calipers, or working on Dad's experimental aircraft (an owner can do his own maintenance on non-certed planes if he's the builder). Now, .051" wire didn't sound so terribly heavy when I ordered it, but it's a pain in the cunning linguals to work with. Too damn heavy for my little safety wire pliers. But I persevered with one pair of bolts, just basically, because I could.

But, an order for some .025" is going in, along with a couple oil seals for a lathe.

But, here's pic tax:

[thecarfarmer]

So, another update... got a late start due to breakfast with friends, and then a visit to the gun show.

Snuck Mimi down the street to the parking lot of an abandoned furniture store, and spent twenty minutes riding in circles to scrub the mold release from the new tires.

Back to the Casita Carfarmer, I pulled the pad pins out of the rear calipers, to drill them for safety wire.

Now, I got away with drilling the all the bolts for the front brake with a hand drill in a jig with a hand drill. Which is pretty sketchy, since it uses a tiny 1/16"drill bit. But, I've learned that I can get away with a lot of sketchy stuff by just being really careful. Any misalignment will break the drill bit.
But, going slow got me through a half-dozen bolts, no issues.

That was Wednesday, and this is today. First hole, I popped a hole through the first pad retaining bolt, and then thought it would be a great idea to also drill a second hole at 90° to the first one, to give options where to feed the safety wire through (since the bolt heads aren't so accessable).

Great idea... in theory. In practice, the bit snapped doing the second hole, leaving the broken piece of drill bit right through the first hole. ¡Pinché hijo de puta! now, if I had a 1/16" carbide bit, I might be able to cut through the broken bit. But, I don't.

Gonna see about ordering another bolt on Monday. Ugh.

Well, off to the big box store for a drill press.