Thread: New bike - TX650

Take three on ignition switch placement. I decided to place it here, under the thank: Less noticeable both on the switch side and the back of the switch. The Delrin cover I made for it hides it reasonably well. Who would think such a simple decision would be so difficult.

Slack day today, just made up a few static timing lights of different design. First one uses a 9 volt battery, so had to solder a resistor in the line to cut the voltage down. Second one works off the bike battery, so also had to use a resistor. Third one uses a 3 volt button battery, so, so resistor required. Why so many? I was bored!

Well, another day spent on the cam, must have made about a hundred of these bloody things before I figured out how to do it" cut the keyway first, then mark where the ramps are then file, check, file, check, ad nauseum! Finally got it right, close enough to say spot on, statically at least. I also added a felt oiler bracket to the backing plate and moved the condenser up near the coil. Looks a lot neater now, and quicker to set the points with only one set.

Did some more buffing on the front rim, came up reasonably well, I ground the edge down and managed to get rid of the lever marks, but as you can see in pic four the pitting is very bad and very deep, no way of getting rid of that. Pic five is the rear rim. I still have to grind down the edge of the rim to remove the lever marks. Very badly pitted and the area between the nipple lands is very uneven. I'll attack that next but not sure if I'll use them, whilst they look nice and shiny , get up to within a few inches of them and the pitting doesn't look nice. More procrastination required I think.

Are they alloy rims? They look like Borrani’s with the valances on the sides. I had some on my Honda 400/4, beautiful looking rims but road salt from British winters meant I was forever cleaning them down.

Japanese knock offs. Borranis are too expensive.

And the rear rim, came out better than I expected. I used an air belt sander to try and even out the area between spoke holes, doesn't look too bad now. It has a couple of damaged bits still evident which I'll try and resolve with a nylon fibre wheel. I may just use these I think, will look good once spoked up to polished hubs with polished spokes. I'm polishing the exposed edges on the aluminium wheels also, once I've painted them and exposed the polished edges I'll compare them. Still not keen on a fat 16" at the rear though.

How to remove tyres with two stuffed hands: Squash tyre in vice to break seal, apply F clamp, repeat several times, insert tyre lever, add 2' extension and pull like hell. I also polished one side of the front alloy wheel. Cast aluminium is a bit harder to get a mirror shine on compared to billet, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it. Should look a lot better when painted black and shiny surfaces exposed. I probably won't be using the ally wheels, whilst they look ok, a big fat 16" wheel tyre is just not my cup of tea, so I'll more than likely sell them later on.

What a waste of time that was: Cleaned up the wheels, polished the spokes and rims and painted the rest, I thought they might look good on this bike, not to be though, they look bloody awful! I won't worry fixing the rear wheel, waste of time. Very disappointing, looks like it's going to be polished hubs, rims and stainless spokes.

Ignition switch bracket finished off today. I've re sited the switch to the front, under the tank by the headstock. I also bought a small horn as the original doesn't work anymore, despite fiddling with it for hours. The horn mounts on top the ignition switch bracket. I'm using a two pole, single position Narva ignition switch. To tidy things up a bit I turned up a Delrin collar which fits over the threaded part of the switch and a cover which snaps over the collar from the rear. To prevent the cover falling off, I turned a groove inside the cover which snaps over a .8mm high raised ring I turned up on the collar. The cover isn't fully home in the picture, it has very tight tolerances to prevent it working it's way loose, so is very difficult to remove. I still have to re route the plug lead a little to avoid getting a boot when switching off.

I made up a steel tail light bracket a while back, but it was awfully heavy, so today I messed around with welding up an aluminium one. I did try bending up a bracket, but it was impossible to get the thing straight and square, so ended up welding four pieces of aluminium together for the tail light bracket proper. The steel one is one piece as it was going to be painted, but being as the aluminium one will be polished and there was no way of getting into all the nooks and crannies to polish it if one piece, I made it in two parts: The plate bracket and the tail light bracket proper which sits on top. It still mounts to the mudguard via the 38mm grommet and aluminium bung, but is much, much lighter. The steel bracket comes in at 264grams, whereas the aluminium bracket is only 110 grams, despite being made of thicker material. Doesn't sound like much, but being as the mudguard has been cut down it is now devoid of the double wall edge all around, so a little less stiffer. I don't want too much weight on it, 110grams is bugger all. All I have to do now is hope I can polish it and retain the flat surfaces.

Offline for a few days: Had the dip joint fused and PIP joint broken and re-pinned and fused again at a more usable angle. Might make working on the bike a bit easier with a bit of luck.

Yet another stand, or at least a modification to one. I was finding it a bit of a stretch working on the top of the bike, trees, bars, switches and so on and the bike takes over the hole bench, making it difficult to work on anything else. So, I turned down a couple of axles from 20mm bar and welded them underneath the stand and added a couple of cheap 10" wheels. So now I can move it around the shop and the bench is available for other projects.

Such is the form I'm after. I laced the rims with a few spokes just to see what it'd look like, quite happy with the form, although, I might lower the seat cowl a bit and paint the side panels. Interesting thing with the switchgear: I bought a couple of switchblocks on ebay, the right side has a throttle sleeve allowance, which I didn't want and the add said nothing about. So I asked the seller if they had a throttle sleeve to fit, nope, they don't. Couldn't find one to fit, so got my money back, binned the two switchblocks and bought two, two switch switchblocks which look quite neat. I also have on order a couple of rear clamps for both clutch and brake levers with integral, momentary switches which will be for horn and starter.