Tool Fabrication...Ugh!

This morning I spent some time, again, fabricating a necessary tool. I was reminiscing back to a day, when I was working on my Suzuki SV650 where I would have to keep making tools in order to complete projects. I thought that one day, I would have enough money that I didn't have to keep making these stupid tools anymore! Well, here we are some 10 years later. And yet, I am still making tools!

If you've ever had to remove damper rods from a fork, you'll feel my pain. Sometimes you can get lucky by shoving a broomstick handle (or some wooden dowel) into your fork tube, and you might have success in getting your bottom allen bolt out, which was the case with the Suzuki. For the RD, not so much..... Mind you, this bolt has been in there for probably 42 years (translation = forever ). There is a bean shaped nut on the top of the damper rod and a broomstick handle wasn't about to help me out. I looked online and of course this tool from Yamaha is no longer available. (These are the perils of working on a really old bike.) After scouring the Internet, I found some (but little) help. And I came to the realization that I would, yet again, have to fabricate another tool, especially since I was going to have to remove 4 damper rods and I didn't want to leave the extraction method to luck.

First I wanted to get a real idea of what I was dealing with, so I found an old can of Play-doh from another tool-making time, stuck it on the end of a socket and shoved up against the damper rod nut to get an impression. It turned out pretty nicely :)  From there, I could see that I needed a 12mm socket, so I ran down to Home Depot and bought one of their cheapie house brand sockets for under $3. I took an angle grinder to the sides of the socket and relieved two walls and presto! we have a tool!! It worked like a charm! So it only took me two days to get the damper rods out.

Now I just have to run these down to the machine shop to have the tops lathed off and I can start building up the forks. In the meanwhile, I'll strip the paint off the lowers and give them a quick polish. I'm going to try and use as many of the original parts as I can- lowers, damper rods, etc., only swapping out the bent fork tubes. Busy with work, it may take me a while to get this stage done, but I've been dreaming about this for so long, a couple more weeks won't kill me.

Status Update

Over this week, I got a couple of goodies in the mail! First with the bad. I received one of my OEM pistons from an eBay purchase, but they sent me the wrong size piston in the correct box. I'm still dealing with the clunky return on this item. I won't feel settled until I get all my money back- shipping both ways and the cost of the part.

Now for the good stuff! The piston rings arrived from Germany, I got Taylor 8mm spark plug wires, a new (not OEM) condenser and stainless steel bolts for the engine case cover- all were good. But the best things that came in the mail were the Ikon shocks! These things are beauties! I can't wait to get them on the frame!

I've also been shopping like crazy for a decent set of rearsets for the bike- easier said than done. Basically there are two different design approaches for drum brakes-  1) You can keep the stock system or  2) you can covert to a cleaner cable activated system, that way you can rid yourself of that ugly heavy passenger peg bracket. For option 1, there's Tarozzi for about $370, an old pair of Raask rearsets if you can get Gary from Spec II to call you back, or a used set of MotoCarrera rearsets if you can find some. For option 2, there's Slipstream (Jim will never call you back) or there's Vintage Smoke and you might as well sell a kidney for that system. Or...you can design your own. There are many good peg and lever manufacturers out there, but they don't make mounting plates.

I think I'm going to make my own mounting plates. I can buy some aluminum from eBay for about $20, then grind them down to my configurations and mount whatever I want on them. In the end, it's going to cost about $350, but I can do a cable pull and it will look (and function) more elegantly than the stock system.