Well I did quite a bit ... First of all, for the consideration of Volcom and a couple others, attached are the modified handlebars of the clip-on fashion that I designed based upon some rather stout pipe repair clamps. I've put over 100 mi on these handle bars and I am abundantly confident that their structural integrity is more than adequate (Volcom, you mentioned potholes ... well I made the arduous trek from Lemont to Chicago - and back - three times on this setup and you know how the pothole situation is on I-55 and throughout the city
). The bars consist of 7/16" threaded rod going through the clamp then torqued with a series of end-to-end elongated nuts which incidentally fit rather well inside the stock handlebar (needed a little filing but not much). The last long nut is half-threaded on the 7/16" threaded rod and to keep the pipe from sliding off, a hex-head cap screw with a fitted bushing and three rubber grommets is torqued in the open half of the ending long nut. Even hammering the end with a breaker bar and one of my forge hammers won't get the pipe off when that cap screw is locked in. Grip tape (sometimes referred to as cloth electrical tape) is wrapped over the fork tube in order to guarantee the clamp won't slide at all while riding and turning hard - it's not going anywhere. In the end, I could NOT be happier with the success of my handlebar setup, I didn't even have to get new cables of different length, they're all the stock cables and they respond perfectly.
Also, LED turn signals have been installed with an EP-34 relay ... for those of you who intend to use this ... pay attention to both the orientation of the relay plugs from the relay's packaging as well as the wiring to the plug in your harness ... there's an instructional thread on installing an EP-34 for LEDs which indicated that you can just plug and play and only have to mess with a ground wire to give a better grounding ... well ... I used a different brand relay than that poster did as my local Advance Auto didn't carry the brand he used ... as such ... much aggravation ensued until I figured it out ... one of those deals where you're supposed to take 15min to do a project and it takes 90min
I wrapped my exhaust and man ... what an awesome improvement in looks - I'll post pics later.
Adjusted and lubed chain.
I balanced my carbs ... well tweaked anyway, they were very close to begin with. HOWEVER found a real stupid problem when I was hooking up my manometer for balancing ... one of the tubes on the carb boot was properly plugged, the other had a tube connected to it that's supposed to hook up to the vacuum diaphragm of the fuel petcock (which doesn't work on mine) ... well that tube was open and not even hooked up to the petcock
man was that dumb and man fixing that really smoothed out and pep up this bike ... I fell in love all over again ... honestly, for all I know, even when that tube was hooked up to the petcock, it was probably sucking air and giving me a vacuum leak - I don't remember this bike ever running so well - what a beautifully balanced bike with respect to size, handling, and power.
The bad side ... there's a periodic back-fire every now and then, when it hits me at idle (e.g. a stop light), it kills the bike and leaves me trying to kick the thing over with a green light in front of me and pissed off cars behind me. My timing was spot on when I installed the engine about 500 miles ago ... can't imagine it's off again. However, I did not check the valves when I installed the motor. I know I should have but got lazy since the thing runs most of the time. I'll have to take a gander at timing and maybe go over my valves in the near future.
Cheers!
- J
