nearing the end

Well, the finished product looks much like this. All that is needed now is an entire weekend of polishing. 2 years worth of rebuilding dust has accumulated on the bike. Hopefully I will get sometime over the thanksgiving break to clean it up.

On a lesser note, I passed the California bar exam. Yay me.

I like the new back tire.



Sexy front brake.

Silencers looks good but really need to be slanted up about 15 degrees.

My favorite pic so far. Very pretty. Petrol tank will be Norton Silver soon.

getting very close

So very close I can taste it. Carbs out in Washington geting bored and sleeved. Sadly it is covered in dust too, which will take many hours of polishing to get clean.

I love me some Dunstall silencers!

My brother has a 1957 Dominator 99. It is not nearly as cool as this bike. Not even close.

After many hours of searching ebay, I finally found an authentic and original set of Dunstall silencers. Finding these things is like looking for a unicorn.


How my new hydraulic clutch mounts inside the gearbox casing



My fancy new hydraulic clutch kit from Colorado Norton Works. Worth its weight in gold.

What student loans will do when applied towards chrome plating.

Every English bike purist on earth spinning in their grave looking at these.

the return

My new starship enterprise speedo and rev counter with their sexy blue and red glow.

No smart comments here, this just looks pretty to me.

Before the chrome bezels are fitted and they are powered up.

Unable to hide her scorn and disdain, my classmate chastises me for having an unshiny rear mudguard. Said mudguard found its way to the chrome platers a few days after that.

With law school and the bar exam safely behind, it's time to get back to the 3 B's of life.

As shown below, Amal's actually polish up quite nicely if you have plenty of time and scotch to spare. Some light wet sanding and a buffing machine does them a world of good. These are 932/300 off a later 850 Commando that have been retrofitted to my Atlas because they have bigger throats. Learning lesson from this weekend. The later model Amal's have the pilot jet fixed INSIDE the carb. Do not put a pilot jet in these carbs, there is one in there already. For some strange reason Amal kept putting thread in the pilot jet holes even though they were fixing the jets in the inside of the carbs. It will not idle with 2 pilot jets in each carb.

My new oil filter from Norvil. Fitting was surprisingly easy and changing the oil and filter will now be a 10 minute job. Oil can now be drained directly from the bottom of the bike rather than from the oil tank drain plug and making a huge mess. Filters are cheap:)

Student loans + eating nothing but Ramen noodles = new chrome.

mudguard, speedo debacle

After 5 solid days of studying patent law I treated myself to a motorbike break. Side note to anyone considering becoming a patent lawyer: find a clean spot on the floor, and lay down until you change your mind. Also, write to your congressman and demand that the U.S. convert to a "first to file system" rather than the rubbish "first to invent system" that we are currently using. We are probably the only country on earth employing this bass ackwards system that does nothing more than increase litigation, costs, slows prosecution down, and makes lawyers rich.

After a monumentous error in judgment regarding how I was going to mount my speedo and rev counter I ended up making the below bracket. I bought some 1/8th inch thick aluminium plate metal, created the form on Google Sketchup (awesome program) and then brought it to a machine shop for it to be cut out. Most of yesterday was spent smoothing off the edges and making it shine. I started experimenting with some new buffing practices and have found something that works well. It is about as close as you can get aluminium to looking like chrome.

Bracket before polishing. The original brackets bolted under the stanchion bolts. The speedo then fouled against the master cylinder. The new bracket sticks way too far out for my liking and hides my headlight, but for the mean time it has to be that way. The bracket will soon have a light switch and bright light warning bulb.

First run on the buffer got it looking like this. There are still some serious striations on the metal from the rolling process. Might have to have another go at it with the water paper. It is however a good start.

New rear mudguard came pre-polished but it was a sub-standard job. 180, 320, 600 grit water paper got it looking like this.

New headlight shell.

clutch, belt drive alternator, ignition

With my thesis complete and a very light class load, I have been able to get back the things which matter in life.

Below is the completed belt drive clutch and alternator setup.
The clutch hub was scraping up against the inside of the primary chaincase retainer. It had an appointment with my grindstone, followed by a 1 mm thick CLUTCH spaaacer.... hahaha. Inside joke.

Its all on and works great. The commando diaphragm clutch is the stuff that dreams are made of. It is a "2 finger" clutch now. Routing the cable is going to be tricky as the bikes short frame lends itselft to kinking cables. The alternator is all new. This is great because switching the lights off everytime the rev's drop below 2K is annoying, especially in heavy traffic. The bike was even known to cut out in front a 100 of my closest friends in high school. Tara may remember this. Embarrassing to say the least.


This is the new Tri-Spark ignition setup all the way from Australia. It is electronic like the old Boyer setup, but it is a smaller self contained unit. The red wire is a ground wire, the other two go directly to the ignition coil. The old boyer system had a separate black box that was hidden under the saddle. This unit is all self contained. I am anxious to see how it works.



The little black alloy disk in the distributor below houses 2 tiny shiny magnets which make the sparks. I am not exactly sure how it works, but I think those tiny little magnets create a small current, which goes through the flux capacitor contained in the Tri-Spark unit. The current is then synchronized into the visible light spectrum when it goes through the dilithium crystal. From there it is sent to the ignition coil where a team of fairies, riding unicorns, magically transform it from ca. 12 volts to ca. 30, 000 volts. I am about 85% sure this is how it all works.

Distributor before installing the alloy black disk. Overall, the ignition setup was fairly easy. The later model Commando's have a built in timing degree disk inside the primary chaincase cover which makes ignition timing stupid easy. The Atlas has no such device, one must drive all over town looking for a 360 degree protractor, drill a hole in the middle of it, find TDC, tie a piece of wire to a cylinder barrel base nut, have the wire point at exactly 0 degree on the protractor, and then turn the engine back until you reach 32 degrees on the protractor. Hard, no, tedious, yes.

So sexy.

Hopefully battery box and oil tank happen this weekend.