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The Glide Ride » 2010 » August
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.
Posted in The Long Rode on August 29th, 2010 by Wade
It was going to happen sooner or later. Alex and wanted to pull apart the master cylinder in order to check out how bad a shape it is in. So to start we had to take off the bolts holding on the foot boards. Of course one of the hinge bolts snapped. But we still couldn’t get the master cylinder off. Since there’s more then one way to skin a cat we just unscrewed the piston from the brake peddle. Then we tried to take off the brake line. Unfortunately the brake line nut is seized in the master cylinder. So now were stuck. After that we tried to just pull the guts out of the MC but again to no avail. I got the retaining clip out and a bunch of powder came poring out. Alex asked if it was okay to be around. So here we are with a broken foot board, a seized brake line and rotted internals. Lots of fun.
Posted in The Long Rode on August 23rd, 2010 by Wade
Back in Texas I thought the right gas tank was going to be the problem child of the fuel system. Well I was wrong. Turns out under the little bit of fuel that was still left in the left tank was a lot of rust. Additionally there was rust on the roof of the left tank. I was relay anxious to try out the electrolysis method of rust removal on the tanks and so that is what I did.
Following the description from this web page as well as others I got my rig together. To this end I got a 500w computer power supply, and following the direction in the following video and turned it into a normal power supply.
Now that I have a working DC power supply and an old steal file, that I padded with sponges, I was ready to go. Oh I also made my own sodium carbonate (washing soda) by baking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) at 300of for an hour as per a website I can’t find any more. But there are plenty of other sites that give the same basic recipe. Now with all the parts assembled I was ready to go.
Drum role…. and I flicked the switch and saw nothing just like I was hoping. No sparks no smoke. After about 15-30 mins. if I listened closely I was able to hear some bubbling under the neck sponge of the iron prob. This was a good sign. Since the tank was so big and the prob (file) was so small in comparison I thought I would let it run for 24hrs. After the first day I reset and went again for another 24hrs. Today I finally said I’m done with this and was ready to give up. I took it all apart, washed every thing out thoroughly and prepared to go get some muriatic acid to do the job. However, after I cleaned and dried the tank I was very happy with the results. So instead of switching methods I setup the system for the right tank. I think 24hrs should suffice for this tank but we’ll see.
Posted in The Long Rode on August 20th, 2010 by Wade
I finally talked to Bob yesterday. His first and biggest recomendation was to join the Antique Motorcycle Club of America. More specifically the Fort Sutter chapter. Now I have that on the list to do as well. He also recommended what was already my expected plan of attack. GET THE ENGINE RUNNING first. I asked about a full rewire and he said that was not a bad idea but a lot of work especially if the engine wont turn over. He also asked me server questions about the bike and he liked most of what he heard. When I asked him about re-chrome vs. replace he said re-chrome as much as possible especially if it is original factory hardware. Lastly he gave me some names of mechanics for engine work should there be any problems with the engine after I get it running.
Now on to the fun stuff. Registering the bike in CA. One the coaches I coach with is a CHP. He said he would ask around when he got back to work about the bike. Today he said it was a good thing he asked. Normally if you don’t know somebody it can take up to 2 years to get an old bike’s title transferred and registered. Now I’ll have to go to Stockton but if it saves me a couple of years it will be worth it.
Posted in The Long Rode on August 17th, 2010 by Wade
Today it starts. I got a call about 11:20am today. The call was from the local delivery driver. He asked if I would be home in the next hour. I said “Yes I will.”
After getting the bike into the garage the first thing I did was to pull off the carburetor. After doing this I was finally able to get the part number off of it and try to look it up on the interweb. I found it but didn’t get much help from it. I guess I will just have to see how it goes after getting some of the other thing cleaned up first.
As you can see I got the tanks off the bike. In order to do this I also had to take off the seat. Oh something else I found out about the bike today. I used to be gold. The inside of the tanks didn’t get much red paint. They apparently didn’t tank the tins off to paint them. Then looking at some of the scratches it looks like there is rust, primer, gold, and finally red paint. So I want to have the tins and frame completely striped and repainted. We’ll see how that goes.
If you look closely you can see the bend in the seat T frame. I will have to work on that. I am still waiting for a call back from a restorer so I can get a feel for the next/first steps but I want to start cleaning out the insides of the tanks. The other option would be to start checking the electrical system. We’ll see. So for now he’s back to sitting. But at least there’s movement. 🙂
Posted in The Long Rode on August 13th, 2010 by Wade
As you know the 68 started this trip in Houston Tx and I’m having it shipped to Sacramento. You’d think that would be a nice easy shot. West to, I don’t know, LA then north to Sac. That would make sense wouldn’t it? But that is not where the bike is going. Instead it went from Houston to Austin, no biggie there, and then to, get this, Bloomingdale Il. Seems kind of round about but as long as it gets here I guess it doesn’t matter where it goes in between.
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).
It’s 4:40 on the 4th and I just got off the phone with Houston. We dont have a problem because the bike is loded and on its way. According to the driver it wont actually leave Houston until Monday but it should be here by the 18th. So now theres nothing to do but wait.
So I’m siting in Phoenix airport and thought I would call Mancusos H D and ask them about a replacement fork lock key. The gentleman I talked to said it wouldn’t be a problem looking up the key part number, the problem would be wether or not the lock was the original HD lock for that bike.
I’m sitting in the airport now. typing on my phone. yesterday I got a second bag key so now I at least have two of those. I still need to figure out how to replace the fork lock key, good thing there not locked.
Yesterday was the first day the transport company could have called to finalize pickup, but they didn’t. hopefully today will be the day and the bike will be on the road by Wednesday. typing on this thing sucks so until layer “ride on.”
