Joey's K3 is out on the road. God save us.

Alright so this menace is up and running. There's still a couple issues to sort out before it's running in tip-top shape but for the most part she's good to go.

Sorry for the awful pics it was raining and I was in a hurry. I'll get some decent ones later hopefully.

Here's a pic I snapped of the sidecovers before I painted them. To be honest I think they looked kind of cool like this.

One of these things is not like the other one.

One of these things just isn't the same.

Front left carb body

Back left carb body

Back right carb body

Front right carb body

Some words of wisdom from the man himself,

"Unless you know the entire history of a bike, you can't rule out that a previous owner made an ill-advised carb and/or engine swap. Believe me, this happens all the time. 
-Randakk 

Truer words have never been spoken.

According to Randakk's Tech Tip #32, this guy broke 2 of the 3 carb swap rules in one fell swoop.

2. Never mix carbs from late series to an engine in the early series. (the 769A's are from the 1978 GL1000)
3. Never mix carbs within one rack that have different codes.

I think I'll write a letter:

Dear Previous Owner,
Fuck you.

'Ignorance' does not even begin to describe your despicable actions. I hope the future holds for you, a fate worse than death. 

Yours in Christ,
Charles

Resistance is futile ...or too great, either way it won't run.

The GL1000 has a ballast resistor which ensures the ignition coils get the proper voltage at startup and during normal operation. 

When the starter motor is engaged the resistor is bypassed because the starter will draw so much current from the battery, that the coils will naturally get the 7-9v that they need. 

When the bike is running however, the ballast resistor limits the voltage to the coils so that the otherwise 12v it would be getting is limited to the proper7-9v. This keeps the coils from overheating, the points from detonating or burning up, and the condensers from overworking and failing.

As, it turns out that my ballast resistor is shot. It should read exactly 3Ω when tested.

This one looked a little roasted around the base of the terminals and tested at 3.5Ω.

Rather than source another one from NAPA, I just decided to man up and get a Dyna electronic ignition. 

The Dyna-S supplies the appropriate ballast resistor (different Ω). The only downside to using the included one is that it doesn't fit the stock bracket. This is not a problem if you have a Dremel and file handy. Just shave down the edges on the terminal side of the ballast resistor and the bracket will slide right over.

The only downside to installing this new Dyna-S is that it completely negates all the work I put into getting the stock points set and condensers properly grounded, since all that gets removed.

Anatomy of a Tachometer.

Joey's K3 tachometer:

Gauge halves pried apart

This is the magnet that causes the needle to move.
As it spins it moves a metal plate attached to the needle.

The magnet causes this metal cup to rotate.

Update 9/18:
I cleaned it up and put it all back together. Surprisingly, it works fine now.

CB400F up and running.

So I took a day off from working on other builds to get the CB400F up and running.

It still looks awful, but at least now it runs.

Here's a list of what I did:

• Changed oil
• Cleaned and oiled air filters
• Cleaned and rebuilt carbs
• Adjusted valve tappet clearance (not easy without the special tool)
• Set ignition timing
• Sync'd carbs and adjusted air screws

I still need a new chain, tires, battery, sparkplugs, proper headlight bracket, mirror, shorter clutch cable, and a speedometer would be nice. It's a long way from being street-able, but I'm happy with the progress so far.
I think I'll treat myself to some new tires and sparkplugs in the near future so I can do a plug chop in order to get the carb settings just right.

That's it! You're grounded!

Still trying to sort out the GL1000's problems, I decided to take a break from the head scratching and do something productive.

The condensers are normally grounded to the battery box. This is a poor place to ground them because of their distance from the breaker points plate, especially when you consider how prone that battery area is to rusting due to gasses vented by the battery. The Ideal place to mount them would be on the points plate itself but there's no room in there so we must improvise a better solution.

So I busted out some spare 8 AWG wire, some shrink wrap, and a couple of ring terminals and got to work.

The result:

Wire attached to the condenser ground.
Notice the rust on the battery basket where it's mounted.

Wire barely peeking out from behind engine mount where it's grounded.

Altogether pretty clean install.

I figured it would still be good practice to properly ground the condensers, despite the fact that I plan on running a Dyna-S in the near future. Who knows, maybe my electronic ignition could fail and I would have to throw my spare points plate on in order to make it home. It would be a shame to burn through a set of points just for that.

Symptoms of poorly grounded condensers include:

• Exploded, prematurely worn, or damaged points
• Poor idle
• Hard starting
• High rev missfire

They should call them Not-So-Easy Outs.

Time to trash all those stupid stud extractors I've inherited. They are always more trouble than they're worth.
This is what happens every single time:

Oh the joys of working on older bikes. 

F*ck me.

So Elrich's F2 isn't off to a good start. After having to tear down the entire motor just to replace the cam chain, I snap a bolt off in the case. then I snap a stud extractor off in the bolt.

Next time I'm just going to quit when I'm ahead and drill it out and heli-coil it before I make it worse.
Yes, there will be a next time. I'm sure of that. When you start working on 40+ year old bikes, you'll understand.

Stokin' the neighbors!

So our neighbor from across the street came over last night, flashlight in hand:

Neighbor: Alright you need to be more considerate of our neighbors. 

-Yeah Hi, my name is Charlie. 

Neighbor: You need to be more considerate. (guess he wasn't interested in introductions/ pleasantries) Ok? This is, you can't... alright?

-Alright that's fine sorry for being so noisy. Joey, it looks like we're done for the night.

Neighbor: And 3am. Saturday. *shakes head* No.

-Uh, yeah okay boss. Goodnight.

Now... I like to think that I'm being fairly considerate, considering that I have the ability to make a LOT more noise than I do. No air tool usage late at night, I'm not running motorcycles at all hours (because none of them run), or blasting music. In fact we were just idling Joey's bike in the garage (sometime before 11pm) when he came over.
Also, I have no idea what he's talking about when he said, "3am Saturday. No." Saturday is probably the one day of the week I'm actually NOT up late working on bikes since I have ALL DAY to do that.

Hopefully this won't be a reoccurring theme.

I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit when Joey left in his super loud, exhaust-less Bronco, followed shortly by the arrival of another neighbors even louder Jeep Wrangler.

The point of this story was something I don't remember. Anyway, Joey's K3 carbs are almost sync'd. Gonna get that done tonight and he should be on his way with a ride-able motorcycle!!!

And just in case anyone was wondering:

Except as otherwise provided, any noise which emanates from any operation, activity or source and which exceeds the maximum permissible sound levels established in this section below is hereby prohibited. Such levels shall be measured at the property boundary of the sound source or at any point within any other property affected by the noise. When a noise source can be identified and its noise measured in more than one zoning district classification, the limits of the most restrictive classification shall apply. 

Zoning District Classification	Maximum dBA Daytime	Maximum dBA Nighttime
Residential	60	55

Daytime shall mean the local time of day between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. weekdays and from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays observed by county government unless otherwise specified.

From a pile of parts to nearly complete - Joey's CB750 K3

The biggest problems we ran into:
1) the forks that came on this thing were off of a cb350. I didn't realize how different the fork lowers were until we went to put it all together, my later fork tubes and springs would NOT fit it. So, if anyone wants a set of freshly rebuilt and painted cb350 forks let me know ;)

2) We planned to throw the wheels and tires from my K7 on there but didn't realize that the early and later K's had different hubs. So, after about a million different tries with different axles, and spacers, and drums, and whatnot we finally realized the left side of the hub was larger on the K7, probably to make up for the wider swingarm and greater offest on the later F and K bikes. So, we would up cleaning 2 sets of hubs.
The hardest part of all of this, and probably of the entire build was that farking bearing retainer. Using TWO spanner wrenches it still took forever to get off. Joe came to the rescue when putting it back on and helped by holding them in place with a board and his weight. The added leverage of turning the board also helped greatly.

3) The center stand spring. That thing is a mother effer. Joe also had another stroke of genius though. (see below)

For anyone wondering how the wide world of sports you get the centerstand spring back on... here's how:

I SUCK at painting... seriously

So I painted Joe's K3 and my Gl1000 tank.
That was way harder than I expected it to be.

The tank came out fairly nice because it was mostly flat surfaces and easy to reach spots.

Unfortunately, Joe's frame had more nooks and crannies than an English Muffin. There are also some really tight spaces to try and fit the HVLP gun through in order to spray. The combination of these factors made it really difficult to paint.

I managed to get the primer down without a problem but had a really hard time with the ceramic frame paint.
I also didn't buy enough to practice a whole lot (the tank was my practice).

Next time I'll definitely overbuy on paints for practice and might even get a smaller detail gun to make it easier to paint the frame.

Stripping

Stripped