You could hardly wait, right?  Me too.  Today is Monday, March 28, 2005.  The temperature got pretty darned close to 60 degrees today.  Snow still on the ground, but it was sunny and beautiful.  A great way to start the 2005 riding season! 

Lynn & the kids were visiting her sister in Kalamazoo, and would be home late.  I left work at the 5:00 whistle, planning on starting Buster up for the first time this year and taking a nice, leisurely ride.  Sounds good so far.

I uncovered him and rolled him to the middle of the garage.  Turned the key on, hit the starter button.  The engine turned over, then nothing.  No big deal-I hadn't charged the battery all winter long, so maybe it wasn't doing so well.  I started to kick.  After the third or fourth kick, I noticed that the lights on the instrument cluster were dead.  I pulled the side cover, and sure enough the main fuse was blown.  No big deal.  If you remember, one of my winter jobs was to clean out the starter switch button.  No time like the present, so I took the right hand side control apart.  The control also houses the throttle linkage-one cable for going faster, and another for throttle return.  Took off the go-faster one to wriggle the starter switch around and get at it.  In the process, the throttle return cable came off too.  Took the starter switch mechanism apart-it's housed in its own plastic box, wrapped in tape.  The tape is nearly 30 years old, and falls apart in my hands.  The plastic box falls apart too-first the mounting bracket, then the rest of it.  Inside I can see the dirty contacts, but the housing is in pieces.  No problem-I can still kick the bike to get it going until I get a new switch from eBay.  It's outta there.

I start to reassemble, and find my next learning opportunity.  While I was wriggling cables, the throttle return came off of the mechanism at the carburetor.  This makes the cable bunch up at the throttle control, which keeps the housing from going back together.  To fix this, I have to take off the gas tank.  I can't get the throttle return back on without taking the throttle cable off.  Take that off, put the return cable back on, now I can't get the main throttle cable back on.  I know I did this before, because I had the carbs off last year.  After some swearing, I get the cables back on and the housing on the handlebars back together.  Tank goes on, fuse is replaced.  Turn the key, and no lights on the instrument cluster.  Fuse is blown.  I went through a thousand fuses. 

I thought maybe there was a problem with the starter relay, so I took it off.  No need for it if the starter button isn't there, right?  In a calmer moment (like now) I realize that the relay isn't even in the circuit.  Anyway, it's in a drawer in my garage now.  Lynn and the kids come home at 7:00, and I'm fit to be tied.  Dinner, kids to bed, back to the garage.

Another hour or so of tinkering, and the fuse doesn't blow.  The headlight doesn't work, but the other lights are on.  Time to start kicking.  I worked up a sweat fast!  Now I wonder if this electrical problem means I'm not getting spark, so I pull the #4 plug and kick.  There's a nice spark there, but I'm sweating.  I get off the bike and manually touch the starter leads together (remember the relay is in my drawer) and after a few tries, Buster comes to life.  He's belching smoke and backfiring, but settles down and idles.  At 9:15, I rode him up and down the street.  The 2005 riding season has begun?

March through May I rode him in this condition.  Not great, but not bad either.  The drive chain started to knock, so I knew I had to tighten that.  Then, Bergie was roadworthy so I started riding him daily.  This gave me an opportunity to examine the electrical problem.  I tackled the headlight first, and took off the left hand switch.  Nothing here looked bad, and nothing seemed to matter for the headlight.  After a day or so, I read on sohc4.us that the headlight circuit is part of the starter button circuit.  The design keeps power to the headlight except when the starter button is pressed.  Now I start to take apart the right side switch housing.  Throttle cables come off easily enough this time, as does the front brake lever and mirror assembly.  The starter button itself wasn't there-I broke that months ago-but the wiring was.  As I lifted away the wiring, I saw what had escaped my attention earlier.  There are three wires that go into the starter button-one for the headlight, one for the starter relay, and a ground.  Of the three wires, two were seriously damaged.  The headlight wire was halfway cut through, the starter relay wire was cut through about a third, and the ground wire was nicked.  Clearly this was the source of my electrical problems, but why?  I pulled the wires completely out of the housing and the question was answered.

The housing clamps onto the handlebars, and needs a gap between its edge and the bars to pass the wires through.  This particular housing, the lower half, at least, didn't have a gap built in.  I don't know how the wires got in there with this type of design, but one of the previous Buster owners took matters into his own hands and made a gap with a drill bit.  There were three semicircles cut in the bottom half of the housing, on the inboard side.  While there was enough room to pass the wires through, the gap ended up looking like the serrated edge of the knife.  Pass the wires thorugh, tighten it down onto the bars, and the wires have no choice but to get cut up.  I can get a switch from Radio Shack, and can file down the edges on the housing, but the ideal solution would be a new housing bottom half, with a new starter button.  With this in mind, I strip the housing and wires from the bike, careful to include a pull wire for reassembly.  The process was helped greatly by the removal of the handle bars.  Not pretty, but now all I need are my parts!

I had bids in a couple of times on replacement parts on ebay.  Finally found one that was missing the kill switch.  No problem-my kill switch works.  I win that auction & the part arrives.  It has a properly designed gap for the wires, the start button works, the leads are bare for the kill switch, and the ends are different than my wiring harness.  I removed and unsoldered my kill switch, soldered the new leads on, mount it back into the upper half of my housing, which, incidentally, is in better shape than the one I just bought.  I cut the ends off of the new leads, cut the ends off of mine, and splice the older style bullet connectors onto the new wires.  Test everything with a multimeter, looks good.  Wire it to the bike, and as near as I can tell it works.

Pull the wires through the bars-this got tricky, as my splices were a bit bigger than the wires, but I got it all into the headlight bucket without losing my pull wire.  Hooked it all up, and everything survived the pull.  Now, to reassemble.  I expected the hardest part to be the throttle cables, but in fact they went back together with no trouble at all.  Feeling emboldened, I put the whole right side together, grabbed the headlight, plugged it in & turned the key.  Miracle of miracles, it worked!  Even better, I got him started!  Smoky and sputtery (I'm experimenting with Marvel Mystery Oil in the gas), but everything works!

In the process of pushing Buster around, I broke the lead for the horn, so I had to solder that back on while it was on the bike.  Tricky, but not impossible.  Then I had to figure out how the little metal retainers go back on the right side to hold the wires in place.  Finally, the right side was mounted too.  The headlight was put back, and it all still worked!  So a little over a month after I first investigated the problem, Buster is back on the road.  I still need to tighten the chain, but I feel like I made some real progress with him.

It's Monday night, June 27.  Nearly 3 months to the day since the start of the season.  No snow on the ground today-temps peaked in the mid 90's.  There's supposed to be a storm coming, and at the end of the work day the haze was picking up.  Hot, humid.  Perfect time to work up a good sweat working on Buster.  My electrical successes this past weekend made me feel like I could do anything, and the noise from the drive chain made me think I had better do something.  Let's tighten the chain! 

This is supposed to be a simple job.  Take the cotter pin out of the axle nut, loosten it, loosten the lock nuts on the adjusting bolts & tighten them equally on each side, making sure that the alignment marks are the same on each side.  Then tighten the lock nuts, axle nut, replace the cotter pin, and ride.  Problem #1 is that the non-drive side adjusting bolt is bent, so I can't loosten the lock nut.  Solution #1 is to take an adjusting bolt from Bergie and use it on Buster.  This is when I notice how much adjustment has already been done on this chain, compared to Bergie.  This adjustment will be the last for this chain.  Time to replace it, and the sprockets too most likely.  Replaced the adjustment bolt, overtightened, loostened, overtightened.  Repeated this exercise a few more times, finally got it about right on either side.  Tightened everything, worked up a rolling sweat, and replaced the pin.  Lubed the chain, and I think it's still just a tad bit tight.  I expect it'll stretch a little more before it breaks & takes my leg off.  Chain replacement has just bumped itself up the priority ladder for Buster. 

I'm going to replace Bergie's front fork seals, and take his chain off to clean it.  Hopefully I'll get that done before the end of the season.  Once that's done I'll replace Buster's chain and tear the petcock apart so his reserve works again.  Alternate bikes-one in for work, one out for riding.

Ha!  Two bikes, both need work.  I had been riding Bergie through Labor Day, when he decided he didn't really want to go to Grand Haven.  After I got home again, I swapped bikes and tried to get Buster going.  He was hard to start, and not firing on all cylinders.  #4 was dead.  Karl came over, and we swapped the plug.  Now he's running on all 4, but smoking a lot from #4, and there's a different kind of sound coming from him.  THe smoke cleared up, so I didn't think much more of it.  Rode him to work for the next couple of days, all is well.  That weekend, though, I took him out for a longer ride.  About 3 times as long as the normal ride to work. 

It's dark, I'm riding along listening to the new noise, when all of the sudden (is there anything that happens that isn't all of the sudden?) there's this loud boom, and a lot more engine noise.  The bike's still running, but with significantly less power.  I make a u-turn and pull off the road.  The #4 plug is out of the head, dangling by the plug wire.  I made it home on 3, but was it loud!  Turns out I had it cross-threaded, and not in very far.  The longer ride must have made enough heat, vibration, and pressure to pop it right out.  Never had that happen before. 

Got home, replaced the plug, and let the bike set as I had to go away on business.  When I talked to Karl about this, I mentioned that I was using Marvel Mystery Oil in the gas.  He asked if I was using too much, thus causing the hard starting and fouling.  Great question.  On the 19th of September, I started Buster up (hard starting, this time Plug #3 took some time to get going) and rode him to the gas station.  His tank was about half full, so I topped him off.  No oil this time. 

Rode him to work on Tuesday the 20th-easy startup, good performance.  Pulled into the parking lot at work, and noticed that he seemed to not roll so good when I rolled off the power.  Parked him, and his front rotor was warm.  Looks like the front brake is grabbing.  Fortunately I've been through this exercise before with Bergie.  Unfortunately it's no fun at all.  My new to-do list is front brake, chain and sprockets, then petcock.  He sure is shiny though!

The front brake problem is intermittent, but has been working ok.  I'll make it through the season as-is.  I've been thinking about trying hotter spark plugs, as an alternative to tearing the engine apart.  I'll probably give that a try next season.  In the meantime, I turned my idle air screws out another half turn.  Actually, ran them all the way back in & came out two turns on each.  Idle seems a few hundred RPMs slower this morning, but it's possible that Buster just wasn't warmed up all the way.  We'll see at lunchtime. 

I met Buster's Previous Owner at the  Holly Rally in Battle Alley.  He was displaying a 1969 CB750 in beautiful shape.  He's keeping it, and one other bike.  The other 13 he has sold off.  Personally, I prefer Buster. 

Happy New Year!  Technically, it is 2006, but I started this page with the start of the 2005 riding season.  It's January, so the 2006 riding season is still a few weeks away at least.  I bought a garage heater, so now I can work on Buster and Bergie even though it's cold outside.  I know the petcock was supposed to be last, but I started with that because I parked Buster with an almost empty tank of gas.  So, first I drained the float bowls, then took out the battery and put it in the basement.  Next, I disconnected the tank and pulled it from the bike.  I thought I had a piece of fuel line hose that I could plug onto the petcock, snake through the milk crate that I set the tank on, and then run directly into my gas can.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the line, so I drained it into a cup, turned the gas off, dumped the cup, then turned the gas back on and filled the cup again.  When I got it down to the point where no gas came out of the ON position, I flipped to RES.  Some gas trickled out, but it was a lot less than normal.

Bergie's petcock was held in place with two screws.  Buster's was a big pressure fitted nut.  Bergie's internal valve parts were a lot different too.  Finally, Bergie had two separate tubes that were attached to the petcock that ran up into the tank.  Buster had a plastic thingielike a tube, covered with a plastic mesh baggie.  I pulled it out of the tank, and it was filthy.  I think the RES didn't work because the mesh baggie below the RES part was covered in crud, limiting fuel flow.  I hosed it down with WD40, and put it all back together.  The valve had a spring-different setup than Bergie.  I reassembeled it without the spring, so I had to tear it apart & reassemble.  The key was that I figured this out before I mounted it on the tank & filled it with gas. 

Mounted the petcock back on the tank, and put the tank back onto the bike.  Dumped gas back into the tank-eveything's tight.  Tried the setting on both ON and RES, good flow from both.  I think I'm done with this job, and I think I did a great job on it.  And, I love my heater.  Sprockets and chain are probably next.