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Wow

Posted in Cosmetics, Engine, The Long Rode on April 22nd, 2013 by Wade

Lets we last time I wrote I was getting the charging system back in line. Last Tuesday the 16th the new regulator arrived. I hooked every thing back up and and fired up the engine. Once again Marlin fired right up and that made me happy. So I went out for a ride and something just wasn’t right. there was no power and after a few miles there were some strage sounds. Like slapping or cracking coming from the engine. This didn’t make me happy. Today I went riding again looking for some 60 wt. oil to make the first oil change and get rid of the brake in sluff. Of course I couldn’t find any, all that around is 50 wt. So after getting home and letting things cool off for a few hours I went out after dinner and adusted the pushrods, I was hoping it was a valve problem causing the noises I was hearing from the engine. Low and behold the rear intake push rod had collapsed. So that explained a lot. This made me happy. I was pretty sure I had found the problem. After getting things buttoned back down I went out for another ride and this time I was happy. Now I Marlin is just swimming in power and torque. But now I have a new fear. Because Marlin has way more go then he has stop.

From now on out its all cake. I still need to get the right spot light to stop moving round during driving and figure out bag rale screws so there firm and they stop falling out.

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Gas and Oil

Posted in Cosmetics, Engine, repair, The Long Rode on March 26th, 2013 by Wade

Between yesterday and today I finished every thing up

  • tightened all engin bolts
  • mufflers
  • carburetor
  • tanks
  • seat
  • battery
  • bag rails
  • floor boards
  • tranny bolts
  • installed the generator
  • cleaned oil filter holder
  • installed circuit braker

The things I have left to do are the following.

  • static time the engine
  • add oil
  • add gas
  • start it up.

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Transmission

Posted in Cosmetics, repair, The Long Rode on January 25th, 2013 by Wade

I got Marlin outside today to clean the frame as well as pull the transmission to clean and inspect the gears.  As you can see in the photos the gears have been about the cleanest thing on the bike.  Every thing came apart pretty easily but putting it back together was a bear.  Turns out you have to put the trans back on the mounting plate in order to slide it into the frame.  otherwise it wont fint around the swing arm tube and the pogo tube.  In the process of tightening the mounting plate back down I striped the front left bolt.  I guess with every thing I’ve done one striped bolt on the trans plate isn’t to bad.

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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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Guards

Posted in Cosmetics, The Long Rode on May 18th, 2012 by Wade

About two week about I made what I think was a good find on ebay.  It was advertised as “late 60’s saddlebag guards.  The opening bid was good and so I bid.  At the end of the auction I was the only bidder and the rails were on there way.  The add siad that they would need to TLC and they did but not a whole lot.  One pad of 0000 steel wool and some crome polish and there as good as the rest of the chrome on Marlin.  I call these rails the “Starfish” type because of the backing plate that runs along the finder and I bought them because they have the same lights on them that the pictures on the shop manual have.  I think I did good.  Even if I didn’t I still like them and the starfish is the right stile for the bike.  They even fit around the bags.  Except now turn lights wont fit with the bags.

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Mounted Bags

Posted in Cosmetics, repair, The Long Rode on May 17th, 2012 by Wade

I just thought I would put a picture and a link to more of the bags after being bondoed, sanded and mounted.

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Bag Reconstruction

Posted in Cosmetics, repair, The Long Rode on May 12th, 2012 by Wade

Today Paul and I tried to reconstruct my saddlebags.  It all started last week when I went out and got fiberglassing materials.  Cloth, mat, resin, brushes etc…  I watched lots of video and of course I’m not working on nice flat boat hules.  But away we went.  I first made some molds out of cardboard.  We had to get some different clay because the stuff I used first dried and cracked.

When we were satisfied with that I started cutting up the saddlebags.  I had two objectives.  One was to remove the big humps that were wasting half of the bag volume and two was to fill in the mounting and tail light holes since they were in the wrong locations and not wanted.
On the first bag we went whole hog and cut out the all the negative spaces of the bags and the holes.  Then I started cutting cloth and fiber to do the patching.  I did and inside and outside layer of the cloth and two layers of mat filler.  I hope that it’s thick enough.  Now it was time to open up the resin can but the lid would not come off.  I ended up having to brake the lid off witch pulled the neck out of the can.  So one way or another I was using the whole quart of resin.

Now the second bag was a bit different story.  We decided that we were just going to cut out the holes and not remove negative space since it was a lot bigger chunk of the bag.  Maybe I will attack that later after I see how all this turnes out.

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