Saturday, January 26, 2013

Getting the Bike Together - Again

I must have accidentally deleted this post. Two comments were lost from Dom and Lori. Not sure how but here it is again...

In my last post, I mentioned that I would take a picture of the rim. According to BMW, the rim is designed for only a tube type tire. There is no safety bead on the rim to help hold the tire bead in place on the rim. The sealing area along the edge is wide enough to safely hold the tire bead in place and many owners do run tubeless tires on these rims. The IRC TR-1 tire that I will be installing is a tube type tire.

Given the cold temperature in our garage, I asked a fellow member of our local airhead group if I could come by and use his tire changer. He has a No-Mar changer and it made quick work of putting the tire onto the rim. Longer tire levers really make a difference. It was on the rim and aired up in a little more than five minutes. He was ammused by the idea of dirt bike tires on an RT. Of course, it's necessary to stand around and talk for a while as I admired his collection of bikes including his newest addition, a 1958 Norton.
This evening, I put the wheels back on after cleaning up the rear hub of all of the excess grease. If you have been following this blog, you may remember that grease got onto the rear brake pads after the tire swap in OR so the pads were replaced at this time. The rear brake fluid was changed since I was working back there anyway.
The replacement shim for the carb came in the mail from Bing while I was out of town so it was installed under the main jet. The float level was rechecked since I had the carb bowls off. The carburetors were installed and the throttle and enrichener cables were adjusted (approximately). The battery reinstalled and plugged back into the trickle charger. I picked up a 5-pin flat trailer connector to connect the lights on the sidecar with the bike. Initially, there is just a tail and brake light but eventually I want to put in a right turn signal at least on the rear of the sidecar and some sort of white LED forward facing light to help me be more visible to oncoming traffic.
The wiring is my next project before putting the sidecar back on. Almost there...

4 comments:

  1. Richard:

    I actually love to do wiring. If you were closer I could come up and solder it all up.

    too bad you didn't get a photo of that '58 Norton. I have a friend who bought a brand new Norton Commando in 1973. He still has it, looks better than new

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast

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    1. Didn't think of taking a photo. The Norton was a bit rough but was untouched as far as anyone else's restoration attempts.

      I enjoy doing wiring as well but still prefer the ambient temperature to be a little warmer.

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  2. Richard, sounds like it will almost be a new bike by the time you are finished!

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    1. It's a long way from a new bike. Last Sunday, I went to another airhead's home as he was putting his heads back on the bike. It is one year newer than mine but spotless. He must no oil, bugs or mud on anything. And he does ride it. He rode to Key West last summer.

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