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YOM plate

Posted in Cosmetics, Not Glide Related on October 8th, 2012 by Wade

The USPS sucks, for the most part
“Let me ‘splain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
I bought an old CA black and yellow licence plate for Marlin.  In accordance with the YOM (year of manufacture) law.  You can put a vintage plate on a vehicle of the same erra.  The BY plates went form 63-68/69.  As Marlin is a 68 I thought it would be cool to put a YOM plate on him instead of the current white blue plate.  With that said I scoured and monitored e-bay for about 3 months and finally there was a plate that was not too badly damaged for under $60 ($0) opening bid.  So I bid and won the plate for ~$20.

So now I have this plate and I wanted to have it resotred.  So I put it back into the ebay shipping envelope and boxed it up with the USPS shipping box that have the standard prices and sent it off to the Tag Dr. Two days later I get an email from Rod at tagdr telling me the box arrived empty, open and stamped by the post office as such.  this caused me to call up the post office and complain.  That is an entirely diffrent rant that I wont go into now.

Guess What as I was hopping and praying the envelope (with the plate) was in the mailbox today.

So lets see

  1. usps boxes suck
  2. usps lost my package contents
  3. usps re-delivered a canceled opened parcel.
  4. YEAH the usps got my plate back to me.

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New Tires

Posted in Not Glide Related on April 28th, 2012 by Wade

So after spending all day putting the engine in alex’s bug I thought I would use my new tire spoons, and freshly liberated jack to change the tires on Marlin.  It started out great got the bike off the ground and got the rear wheel off .  This was of course the easiest part of the the operation.  Actually getting the first bead off the rim wasn’t to bad but the second was a bitch and a half.  First I tried to take it off the same way as the first bead but quickly gave up on that and ended up with both beads on the outsides of the rim.  This way the rim was floating inside the tire.  According to google it was supposed to now be easy to pull the rim out.  Wrong.  So after I got the second bead back on I was eventually able to get the tire off, with no small amount of sweat.

Next came the new tire.  I lubed up the bead and poped it on no problem.  This, of course, was the beginning of the end.  When I grabbed the inner tube and tried to put some air in it I found a tare.  Being that it’s 8 at night I will have to wait until tomorrow to get a tube.

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Wires

Posted in Not Glide Related, repair on April 23rd, 2012 by Wade

I received in the mail (ebay) a reproduction of the wiring harness for Marlen.  I hope to have lots of pictures of the process of replacing the wiring harness but first I will have to make room in the garage.  There are lots of bug parts lying around.

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Since last time

Posted in Not Glide Related on April 8th, 2012 by Wade

Its been a real long time since I added anything to this blog and with good reason.  I’ve been working on another project.  A ’69 Beetle rebuild.  Because of that I don’t have my jacks or room to work on Marlin.  However, once I get the engine back in the bug I will be able to install new tires and switch out the petcock for a new high flow petcock.

Things to do

  1. Change tires
  2. Change petcock
  3. Install rear turn lights (I have them)
  4. Rewire bike
  5. Refab the saddle bags.

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Other brakes

Posted in Not Glide Related on July 31st, 2011 by Wade

In case you didn’t know I have three motor cycles.  a 1995 Honda Nighthawk 750 (Gill), a 2001 Suzuki GZ250 (Dori), and a 1968 Harley Davidson Electra glide (Marlin).  With all of the brake excitement I decided to redo the front brakes on the other two bikes just to be on the safe side, seeing as how Ive never changed the fluid on ether of them.  While its true that I never changed the fluid on ether bike Dori has had its brake fluid replaced.  You see, the bike got blown over in a wind storm several years ago and the fall knocked loose the banjo on the master cylinder.  The resulting fluid leak is why that bike is now blue rather than factory forest green.  Ever since then the brake has been rather spongy and never really felt right.  So as I said I took this opportunity to redo all the brakes.  Gills brakes were quick and easy and now feel as good as ever.  Dori’s brakes are now much firmer.

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Clean up

Posted in Not Glide Related on April 27th, 2011 by Wade

I spent some time the other day trying to find oil line to replace all the rotted lines on the bike.  First I went to an auto parts store and came away with nothing.  Then I got to thinking “don’t modern Harley’s use oil lines”?  So I called up the the sac HD dealer to ask them if they had 3/8 oil line.  I also asked if they had the isolation mount that snapped during the tank removal.  They said possible there were lots of different types but probably did.  With that information I grabbed the boy, some hose, and the broken mount and headed for the dealer.

Yeah they had the mount and after some searching over in the service department they had 3/8ths hose.  Apparently even though modern bikes used external oil tanks they dont use the same size hose.  So it took a little looking to find it.

Now I’m ready to put it back together after cleaning the tank.  I’m not sure if I did this right but Dawn ™ soap was recommended by some to remove grime.  After all it works for oil spill birds.  It didn’t work to well and made a real mess out of what I can only describe as tar inside the tank.  Then I got some diesel and am currently soaking the tank to try and dissolve the sludge out of the tank.  I worked wonders on the grime that was caked on the outside of the tank.

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Leaks

Posted in Not Glide Related on April 12th, 2011 by Wade

I started out with the intention of just cleaning up the oil that spilled out of the Marlin the other day.  After I rolled the bikes out of the garage I started cleaning up the oil spill.  Go Dawn (TM).  While I had Marlin in the driveway I decided to fire it up again just to here it outdoors.  For better or worse the oil continued to flow onto the ground.  The engine quickly died and gas was also pouring out of the carb.  I think the gas was coming from the float bowl over flow hole.  Why, I don’t know but it was.

Once I was down on the ground looking for the source of the leak I found an oil line that was completely broken.  There was also a hose coming out of the oil pump that was rotted and full of holes.  After finding these hose problems I put the bike back in the garage and decided to pull the carb and manifold.  I had done some Googleing and believe that the racing of the engine when the choke is let out is do to vacuum leaks.  Once I got the manifold off I found cracks and pinch marks in the O-rings.

Next things to fix.  I’m thinking a complete oil line tear down and replacement.  Then a new set of manifold seals.

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Opportunity

Posted in Not Glide Related on March 17th, 2011 by Wade

Well wrestling season is over and I’m almost done with my work bench.  Now Alex and I are just waiting for a week end with no track meet so we can start to work on the bike.

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Site

Posted in Not Glide Related on August 30th, 2010 by Wade

I tried hard to put this site together in a manner that I felt best represented what I was trying to do, rebuild an old neglected motorcycle.  Well my wife has to go and ruin it all the other day when she said that it, The Glide Ride, sounded like a porno site.  I can see her point but unless a reader has a machine fetish I can assure you there will be no pictures or descriptions on this site that are intended to arouse or  in some way involve repairing a motorcycle.  Now of course anybody who has ever looked though a motorcycle magazine can attest that these pictures could be racy but I think pornographic might be a stretch.  🙂  Any way, back to working on the brakes.

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Information

Posted in Not Glide Related on August 8th, 2010 by Wade

With no bike there’s not much to talk about.  But I do have some news.  I talked with a CHP officer today, he’s another coach on our football team.  He said that registration would not be a problem even with the Michigan title and the deceased owner.  Of course there will be a bunch of CA hoops to jump though and places to go in order to get the bike registered.  He said they might also make me put a frame tag on it to give both an engine and a frame number for the new title.

I also talked to Ted today and got the contact info for the guy in Woodland that does bike restorations.  Now I have some one to contact and talk to about getting restoration hints, tips, and advise (hopefuly).

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