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.

work resumes

Sadly I worked the entire winter holidays so nothing got done on the bike till today. Today I put the newly polished tappet covers on and the new 19 tooth gearbox sprocket. Old one was 23 tooth. Highway speeds at 2500rpm's. The new one will give me some much needed acceleration between gears.

Tommorow, depending on classwork load, I will get the belt drive on with its fancy new double ended adjuster.

engine

head on barrells. all in frame.

Fitting the belt drive has been more troubling. The clutch hub is scraping against the inside of the inner chaincase cover. It will have a date with my grinstone some time in the near future.

I have to start writing my thesis this weekend so it looks like the bike is going to have to collect dust for a little while. Next project is getting the belt drive to fit right. Then gearbox adjuster, oil tank and then battery box.

the assembly begins

I got the wheels back. Nicely laced and trued by Cyclops cycles in Shawnee Kansas. They did a fantastic job and did it in just 2 days. The gears in the gearbox were shot. I ended up replacing all of them, I also bought a gearbox rebuild kit so it is effectively a brand new gearbox now. Strangely enough, after I put it all together, it worked. No one was more surprised than me. Building gearboxes will humble you. The disk brake looks lovely when you get up close too. I have the engine back, hopefully I will have time to reassemble it and put it back into the frame in the next couple weeks. The new belt drive kit is sitting on my kitchen table and will go on shortly afterwards.

wheel hubs

Got the wheel hubs back from Colorado Norton Works today. They look fantastic! I have always prided myself on being fairly good at polishing metal, having done it since I was a little kid, but I have met my match with Colorado Norton Works. Considering the condition of what I sent them, the result was better than I had hoped for. The hubs have the new sealed bearings in them and overall they look great. They also supplied me with new alloy fork seal retainer nuts which weigh exactly nothing and look sharp. Website at http://www.coloradonortonworks.com/

gearbox polish

Against my better judgment I decided to polish up the gear box casing like the rest of the bike. It did not turn out as nice as I had hoped. There were too many places that I could not get to with my bare hands and the drain plug area looks awful. I console myself in the fact that the easily visible areas look good. Oh well, i'll get to properly over the winter.

gearboxes

I decided against my better judgment to overhaul the gearbox. I know nothing about gearboxes. We will see how this works out. I got the gearbox overhaul kit from RGM with the fancy new bearing and oil seals. The below pics are after its all pulled apart. Wish me luck getting it all back together.