Does it count as motorcycle maintenace if....

You work on your truck at a motorcycle dealership?

I took the truck today, a 1975 Chevy stepside, to our Bike Blessing event at San Diego Harley-Davidson.  About 2 miles from the shop, the exhaust noise changed noticeable, but the truck still made power and I didn't see any smoke.  That's a good sign, right?  So I pull into the dealership, set up our booth, and get to performing bike blessings as groups from the California H.O.G. Rally pull in.

A little later I get a break, so I go over to the truck to make sure nothing is falling off or there isn't a new big puddle underneath it.  Turns out two out of the three bolts holding one of the exhaust flanges  have backed out and gone away somewhere other than on my truck.  No problem right?  Call a friend who was coming by, have him bring ramps and tools, and move one bolt from the other exhaust flange to have two and two until I can get a replacement.  Oops, one of those bolts is missing it's nut!

The good news is I'm at a Harley dealership, and they have fasteners.  I get a replacement nut, slide under the truck (now up on ramps) and put the exhaust back together.  With two bolts holding each side, truck made it home and I'll replace the bolts and add another nut on each bolt to lock them in place this weekend.

Not the project I planned to do, but I can sand the Sportster gas tank later in the day tomorrow and hopefully paint it next week.

Until then, have a great weekend riding!

Custom Kawasaki Concours Windshield project

If you aren't familiar with the Kawasaki Concours "C10" model made from 1986 until 2006, it was one of the original sport-touring bikes.  In 1985, Kawasaki punched out their Ninja 900 (AKA the Top Gun bike) and made it one of the first production liter sport-bikes.  At the same time, they fitted the basic Ninja 1000 frame and engine with a shaft drive, hard bags, a slightly mellower cam, and a barn-door fairing.  While the fairing works for a sport-touring bike, the windshield is huge!  I've seen Harley dressers and Gold Wings with smaller windscreens!  It also has an early attempt at a lip that doesn't work terribly well for most riders.  I sit right in the windflow from the lip, so it really was a problem.

When I got the Concours parts bike a few years ago, the windshield on that bike was completely clouded due to age and exposure.  I salvaged it, and started researching what I could do with it.  Many other Connie owners have cut windshields down or made their own, and I've always liked the blacked out windshield look on both sportbikes and Harleys.  So I though, what is the big risk-the windshield is junk as it is.

Done cutting the top portion and lip off the Concours winshield

The first step was to figure out how much to cut off the windshield.  Here the adage, "Measure twice, cut once" was applicable, as too tall could be re-cut, but too short and I'd be back using the huge windshield or have to cut it and not go back stock.  I tried a few heights by putting masking tape at the edge of where I would cut, and decided on 14 inches from base of the screen at the fairing to top.  Since I can't draw a straight line I enlisted my mother-in-law to mimic the existing top curve.  Then it was time to have fun with power tools.  A jigsaw with a multi-purpose blade was in the saw and seemed to work on a test cut-I think it had 10TPI but could have had 12.  I then sanded this edge and shaped it a little more with 150 grit sandpaper.  You can see in the photo above how much was taken off-about 5 inches and the offending lip.

Since I still had the improvised paint booth up from the rattle can paint job, I hung the windshield up by two mounting holes and proceeded to spray it with some old Krylon black plastic paint.  How old I have no idea, but it covered the plastic.  Unfortunately I got a little heavy handed the first go-round so I had to let it set up, then wetsanded the windscreen with 800 grit paper to get the runs out, and then added a few more coats.  Solid black-which is ok as I look way over it and anything I could see throught the windscreen would be milli-seconds from hitting the bike anyway.  I'd better have dealt wtih it by then!  Also the mounting holes in the new-old windshield were smaller than the bolts to the old-old windshield, so I filed them out.  I could have used a drill as well but wanted to file them.

The next step was to remove the old windscreen but many of  the bolts were seized as they possibly had never been removed.  So I sprayed them with break-free and called it a night.  The next morning they all came loose without too much drama.  Note:  a 13mm box end wrench would have been helpful.  My tool kit and the Kawasaki factory tool kit doesn't have a 13mm wrench so I used a socket where it would fit and pliers were it didn't.  The top two bolts on either side also hold on the inner fairings and the top bolt is fastened by a 14mm flange nut-don't ask me why, I don't know.  Well, I discovered two new problems when removing all these parts.  The joy of riding old bikes!  First the top right mounting hole on the main fairing is damaged and the cracked parts long gone.  9 out of 10 bolts will mount solidly and since this bolt also goes through the right inner fairing it should be ok.  Also the right mirror was missing two nuts on it's mounting bolts, but I caught it before it started wobbling.

All that was then left was lining up the new windshield to the fairing (it actually holds the fairing under tension) and mounting the bolts.  This was relatively drama free and when the new fairing was in place I re-installed the inner fairings and the little grille piece that sits between the instrument cluster and the fairing covering the horns.  I'm pretty happy with it and have ridden just over 100 miles with the new windshield installed.  Let me get a couple more rides and I'll publish a ride report/review and any more tips I may have forgotten.