Honda NX650 Dominator '92

Wanted to try a big single... So after a bit of searching came across this... It was local, had MOT & tax & went for a reasonable price...

All seemed well for a couple of weeks then it started to hesitate as if it was needing to be switched onto reserve...

Further investigation narrowed the symptoms. It will rev to 4,500 rpm then, if the throttle is held, the revs will drop back to around 4,000, then hover between the two figures...

Unaware of its history in any great detail, we checked the obvious fuel line potential issues, all ok. We when removed, dismantled & cleaned the carb in our ultrasonic cleaner. We noticed the emulsion tube was distorted, it looked as if it had been drastically over-tightened at some point, but figuring that this couldn't have just happened the carb was re-assembled & replaced.... No difference... 

The carb to cylinder head connector on these is made from rubber & prone to splitting underneath... This one had started to split but it didn't look like it had gone right through, but would be something to keep an eye on.

Choke ok.

Air box opened, the only difference being that it revs around 500 rpm higher

Having drawn a blank with fuelling, attention was turned to the ignition system.... All the coil resistances (ignition, HT & LT, & pick-up trigger coil) were within the tolerance bands given in the manual I downloaded... This pointed to the CDI unit being at fault... A used one was bought & tried... No difference...

Carb is going to be cleaned again now & the emulsion tube renewed...

Honda SL100 1970

A new addition to the fleet, with an extra twist of difficulty!

Purchased as an import, having spent its first forty years in Minnesota this will need to be UK registered, the first step is an MOT, which it passed first time last week. Apparently its a relatively simple process... But I think I've heard that before somewhere!

 Pretty much all we did was clean out the fuel tank & tap & replace the carb & battery. The battery was inevitable, but the carb had almost "dissolved" inside the float chamber... The first time I'd seen anything like it! A new carb came with another project, so that was fitted & it runs fine.

August '13

An added, & rather unfortunate twist to this one... It was stolen recently during a garage burglary... Infuriating given its age & rarity, we never expected to see it again, or at least not in a useable state. Fortunately it was recovered with minimal damage, the only significant losses were the plastic side covers, not easy things to replace as they are no longer made for this bike, but at least it will ride again!

Sandwich Whitemill shop entrance

The entrance to the shop at the museum has been leaking for a while, as the weather is slowly beginning to improve we decided to tackle it over the next few weeks!
The old polycarbonate roof will be removed & replaced with ply which will be felted.
This week saw the old roof removed.

With the old roof removed, the glass had to come out of the windows as some of the frames & cill were rotten.

The new roof joists could then go on, this time the roof will be flush with the existing roof & felted.

Long Jump Pit

Something different today.... A long jump pit needed sorting, it had been neglected for many years & the grass was making a good effort to take over!
Three hours later everything was back where it should be & the pit had a neat new timber edging!

BMW 320 estate rear seatbelt fix

The problem is that the seatbelt on the backrest of the wider section of the folding rear seat retracts as the seat back is folded, the inertia reel mechanism won't then release the belt to allow the seat to be raised again.
On the parts diagrams, there seems to be some sort of cable which presumably is intended to disable the locking mechanism when the seat is lowered? It doesn't work! The car has been back to the dealer with this issue & apparently it's not uncommon.

The seat back has to be removed & the end of the belt removed from the body as the belt will ONLY pull out if the seat back is at the angle it would be in its raised position.

This is how to do it:
Remove left wheel arch trim, it is removed from the top first, you might like to loosen the plastic trip at the top first (two screws by the load space cover bracket) but we managed to get it out without. It unhooked from the bottom as you lean it forward.
You can now see the hinge fixing bolt, remove it (large torx socket)
It is now possible to remove the left side seat back by working it towards the front & left of the car, it is not easy, the pin in the centre of the car stays in the right hand seat back & is about 3" long.
The left seat back is now free but tethered by the other end of the seatbelt, you won't be able to pull it out yet as you can't get the seat back upright. You now need to get to the other end of the belt which is bolted to the body below the rear seat base.
Remove the right side wheel arch trim, hinge bolt & seatback (just as difficult as the left one!)
Remove the boot floor trim/carpet & lift the back edge of the seat base, it will move just enough to get access to the seatbelt bolt.
The left part of the seatback will now come out, you can hold it at its normal operating angle & pull the belt out!
Pull it out & tie a knot loosely in the belt to prevent it winding itself back in.
Put it all back together, as the Haynes book used to say "reassembly is the reverse of dismantling" !
Never ever fold the left seat back down again! (Maybe fit some sort of clip, something like the sort of clip used to seal plastic bags in the freezer? If you do need to?)

LED lamp

After reading this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/21-W-Led-Bulb-1450-Lumens/

I got to thinking about making something similar... The starting point was a 5m strip of LED's.

A suitable former to wrap the LED strip round came from an empty plastic dog medicine bottle.
The LED strip was wrapped in a spiral around the bottle & cut to length (the strip is designed so that it can be cut every three LED's.)
Leads were then soldered onto one end of the strip, the wires being poked through a hole in the bottle.
Finally a hole was made in the lid & the wire passed through with a knot on the inside to act as a strain relief.
The pictures tell the story, the end result is a useful low energy, robust light.
The strip is rated with a power requirement of 4.8W/m, the lamp uses just under one metre which would give a current draw (at 12v) of less than 400mA

Suzuki TS185 '76

This bike came our way a year or so ago & has been sitting waiting for attention for the past few months as other projects (& the cold weather) got in the way...
It came as a runner & was largely complete. The downside was that there was evidence of some amateur hacking to the wiring!
However a quick google search came up with this excellent diagram which was pretty much the same as our bike, save for a couple of colours being different
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/TS185_Wiring_Diagram_new.jpg

A couple of days with a multimeter traced the problems... The headlamp is designed to work only with the engine running & there is a resistor to absorb the excess output from the alternator when the light is switched off & thereby preventing the battery from being cooked. Not an unusual system on classic motorcycles with un-regulated charging systems, but it does take a bit of logical thought to work it all through & fault find.
The problem with the light was traced to a wire on the lighting coil having come un-soldered...

The MOT was passed, the only remaining problem is to find out what's causing the "flat spot" as the revs are increased to around 5k...