A great full day's work today has seen loads more progress this afternoon.
Firstly, I got the short engine back in. Being by myself, my cunning plan was to reverse the way I took the engine out by balancing the engine on the trolley jack and raising it into position; then pop in a couple of bolts and bingo - job done. The reality was that it got part way there before falling off the trolley jack via my finger and left a nice blood stain across the new silver paintwork...... ('twas but a scratch, it just bled a lot!)
Plan B was much more intelligent (and safe!) and involved rope to sling the engine off the top frame rail so that it was supported while I jacked it up. MUCH more controlled and calm this time. We have a lot to learn from the Egyptians :) In the photo below, you can see that the clutch cover is still in it's grimy state - one of the jobs this week is to do the last polishing of the two engine side covers. The front engine bolts are a bit of a mish mash. They look OK because they've been zinc plated, but I'll probably replace them with stainless in proper sizes sometime soon. I refitted the chassis plate using silicon sealant.
With the engine in place, I could finish the electrics and that meant refitting the controls and clocks. The brake master cylinder was overhauled with new seals etc and repainted ages ago using Plastisol and looks really nice now. The clock casing was polished up using a couple of coats of black trim polish and again has come up well. It's starting to look like a bike again now!
To the back end, and I installed the new front sprocket and the drive chain. I've never fitted an "O-ring" chain before and I was surprised to see the little rubber o-rings on the split link. This made it a bit harder to fit but all it needed was a bit of inventive use of a G cramp to compress them a bit while I got the spring clip on and it went OK.
The chainguard is also back on now and I've adjusted up all the back end and brake etc to get the right chain tension.
I also fitted the rider's footrests, but the pillion ones don't go on until the exhausts are fitted, as they also hold the silencer rear bracket.
Next up was to fit the headlamp shell and indicator stalks. I really wasn't looking forward to this next bit - sorting out the spaghetti in the headlamp shell, but actually it went fine (well, the proof will be in the pudding when it has some power to it!) I had terrible memories of plugging together dozens of bullet connectors from when I did the G5, but this was great with 4 block connectors dealing with most of it. I'd made lots of notes when I took it apart and that helped a lot too, as did a good photo from before I stripped it down. There might even be enough room to fit the headlamp as well.....
The airbox cover and air filter holder are now in place - I just need to get hold of some M5 bolts to hold the cover down.
And the last job of the night was to start installing the indicators. The "pattern" units I bought from David Silvers don't have a long enough cable, so I needed to extend them using the cable from the originals. 10 minutes with the soldering iron and a bit of heat shrink sleeving saw that done. I'd already fitted the stems onto the grab rail, with the earth cables and plastic cable casings, so then just needed to thread the power cables down the plastic sleeves. Time for Noel's next top tips:
Top Tip 1: the right hand indicator cables are longer than the left hand ones as they need to cross over the bike! Tomorrow morning, I'll be refitting the earth cables to the correct sides!
Top Tip 2: run a length of garden wire cable down the plastic sheathing and use that as a draw wire to pull the power cable through.
I'm not sure whether the pattern indicator lenses will pass the MOT as they aren't "E" marked. I'm assuming that they must be OK as David Silvers are such a reputable company, but I'm keeping the old lenses for the moment in case I need to bodge them on for the MOT.
And that's today's progress - to be honest I could have carried on all night, as it seems to be coming together faster than I anticipated.
One bit I'm a little disappointed with is that the indicator stalk mountings on the grab rail aren't quite in line. It looks as if the right hand one has been knocked out of line a bit (maybe after a drop?) but there's no obvious sign of any damage. It actually looks like it's been welded up that way at the factory. Looking at my original grab rail, that also looks out of line, so maybe the quality control at the factory was just a bit poor? It's not a huge problem, but I can imagine it will niggle when it's finished. The grab rail was a second hand E-Bay purchase and the chrome is passable but not 100%, so it might be that I'll have it re-welded at some point in the future and re-chrome the whole grab rail. Good enough for now though.
