Battery Box

Recently, I have been continuing to try to strip all of the various parts off the frame to a point where I can get the engine out.  A big part of this is getting electrical components removed.  The first thing I did was remove the horn and take it all the way apart and clean all of the rust off of it.  I then repainted it and put it back together.  I didn't replace the bolts so the few rusty ones dont look great, but this part isn't that visible.

A cleaned up and repainted horn

The big thing was cleaning up the battery box, which holds the battery as well as the voltage rectifier and regulator.  Years of unsealed batteries leaking acid onto the metal did leave it looking rather rough.

Looking down in the battery box

Side view

I stripped this down to bare metal and repainted the metal and cleaned up the electric parts and bolts.  This was the result:

Cleaned up battery box

I need to test the rectifier diodes to make sure they are working, but seeing as everything seemed to be working when I had it running I'm not worried.  I also order a reproduction set of rubber dampers and grommets for the box since the pieces that weren't missing were very far gone.

Also here is a look at how I am cataloging the parts as they come off the bike.  Using the parts diagrams I found on a British parts supplier site, I am recording each bolt and nut that comes off with its part number in an old paper lab notebook that they were giving away at work.  Each set of parts has a numbered bag and its contents are laid out in the book.

I have the tool kit bracket in the basement now for painting and after I get back from vacation I have carburetors to go through.

Handlebars and gauge cluster

So one of the first things I did was remove all of the handlebar attached switches along with the gauge cluster, brake master cylinder, and grips.

Gauge cluster from front

Back of gauge cluster, here you can see the state of the paint and metal

The state of the grip controls

I stripped the whole gauge cluster and handlebar switches apart and cleaned all of the connections and switches and soda blasted the housings for repainting.  I repainted everything with POR Chassis Black paint which seems to have done a good job, we will see how it holds up over time on the bike.

Refinished Right control

Refinished Left control

All of the wires were checked and labeled, all I need now is to order some replacement PVC flexible conduit to replaced the cracked and broken conduit that was on these wires.

Refinishing the gauge clusters is still missing a few things to be finished.  I have all of the housings stripped and repainted, but when disassebling I noticed this:

This is supposed to be a bulb holder for one of the indicator lights in the gauge

This is what it should look like

It appears that the bulb and holder had rusted away from at least 2-3 of these signal lights.  Fortunately there is a company that makes replacements so I am waiting to make a bigger order to get the cluster reassembled.

That's all for now, I have a few more updates to get up to current on my disassembly process status.  Its slow, but good progress.

Some backstory

My love affair with motorcycles began years ago on our dairy farm growing up.  The machine that most fascinated me was the old red Yamaha that sat in the back of our machine shed.  I can remember wandering in behind the tractors and tools to look at that bike covered in dust and cobwebs and hearing the occasional story from my dad or my grandfather about riding bikes.  This bike belonged to my grandfather, a 1973 Yamaha RD 350.  He had always wanted a bike when he was younger, a Harley like his brother's, but being rather short he was always afraid of dropping the big heavy Harley.  He finally got his chance in the '70s when he bought this bike second hand.  He put some miles on it for the first 10 or 15 years he had it (there is 12,000 miles on it now), but at some point it got put up in the shed.  Sure enough he kept it running though.  I can remember him starting it up and driving it the short distance to the milk house and washing it off and then it went back in the shed.  Time went on and he retired and someone else took over the farm.  The bike moved over to the open end of the old chicken coop, exposed to the elements where it sat for several years.  I spent a summer with my grandparents during college and it was then that I promised myself to some day restore this bike.

I got my first bike a few years later in graduate school, a 1981 Kawasaki KZ550.  I rode for a year or so in North Carolina where my family moved and it was truly everything I dreamed as a child, I was hooked.  On a visit to my grandparents after another summer internship, I saw the Yamaha sitting in its new, thankfully now covered, location at their new house.  I talked with my grandfather about it and asked if he had any desire to ride it again, he said he would like that, but he didn't know why it didn't run anymore.  I spent an afternoon with the bike checking components, cleaning carbs, and putting parts back on that had been taken off, sadly I was missing a battery so i couldn't test it.  I must have sparked something because over the next few months he decided to get it running again and took it down to an old mechanic who took care of it.  He rode it around for a few more summers after that, in his 70s.  I was so happy!  Other people in the family were worried he would get hurt, but I was glad that he had something he could do again that he so enjoyed.  He would putt around the dirt roads near their house and generally just enjoy being outside.  I was planning on making a motorcycle trip up to see him after I moved north for my new job and go riding with him around town, something I wanted to do since I was little.  Sadly, he passed away suddenly from pancreatic cancer a few months after I had moved.  During that a visit to see my grandmother that Christmas, she asked if I would like to take the bike back with me.  I felt bittersweet about the moment, I had dreamed of this bike since I was little, but I would rather gotten a hold of it under different circumstances.  The bike sat in my shop for a year as I found other things to take up my time and I don't think I was really ready to deal with some of the emotions that went along with it.  Last winter I finally bit the bullet and ordered a battery to see what state the bike was in, not having run for a year or two.  I dropped the battery in and kicked the bike over a few times and it roared to life and idled almost perfectly.  We this makes my job easier!

The bike as it looked when it was brought home before cleaning

I drove it around the roads here last summer a few times and had a blast (though my wife had to come get after I ran out of gas a few times).  So this winter I have been slowly working on restoring/rejuvenating the bike.  This is a documentation of this progress as well as a guide for myself.