Sweep The Floor Bike #2

Got the new tires mounted and balanced and installed the Henry Abe wheels....mostly.





Turns out I have a 550F swing arm and the H.A.'s use a K style backing plate. I have three axles here and they all fit, BUT....
The spacer on the F swing arm is wider than the spacer on the K swing arm. Now the search is on for the proper spacer.

 
Man, I WISH I could find a good machine shop around here that would do those kinds of jobs for me. Scroll up a few posts and take a look at the oil cooler adapter. I need that machined out, too.
 
Long time no update. I've been working a lot, working on other projects and just waiting. I keep staring at the bodywork in the spare bedroom and get motivated from time to time.



I recently picked up another 550. It's always bothered me that the engine covers on the STF2 bike are polished and almost everything else is satin, matte or semi-gloss. So....I pulled the covers off the "new" 550 and cleaned/sanded them and painted them semi-gloss black. These will go on the STF2 bike and the polished covers will go on the new 550. Win-Win for me!

 
I dropped of the engine at 2Topia Cycles for some "Winter Filler" for them and, wouldn't you know it, they got swamped. Nate only recently got started on the top end work.



Bored for the high compression Yoshimura pistons.




Valve job, port and polish, match ported manifolds, clearanced for CB650 cam.

 
Got the caps and plugs installed. Got the carbs, air box and K&N filter mounted up. I forgot to bring the drain hoses for the bowls and the breather tube. I'll be back up there soon, though.
Nate at 2Topia is going to work on a little bit of wiring for me. I'm sick of using my cheap connectors and crappy solder gun. There are only a handful of connections I need to make, but he's going to do it for me with the professional stuff.



 
Got the Kerker sorta-kinda installed. The rear hanger that came with it just doesn't work with my set-up. Nate is going to fab up a hanger for me. I can't wait to hear this thing.
The header is just hanging loosely in the head....I'll fully tighten up everything when we make a hanger for the muffler.


 
It's been slow going, but occasionally stuff gets done on this project. The wiring is taking a while, but it's going to be very neat when done.





 
Got about 98% of the wiring done last night. We also made a little smoke and noise! Fired her up for the first time!
We really didn't do any tuning; just let it go through a few heat cycles, idling, varying the RPM, etc. Haven't even put the vacuum gauges or timing gun on it yet. It starts right up and will hold a pretty nice idle.
And that Kerker..... :eek: ....droool...... It sounds so wicked. I thought my old Carpy/GP style pipe sounded nice, but MAN....nothing like genuine, vintage, Old School performance parts! Good LAWD it sounds good!

Sorry about some of the pics being a little blurry.











 
Everything has sort of taken a back seat while I deal with....life.... but this bike is still alive. I just sold my other two 550's (Oh! The pain!... :( ), and this one will be coming home as soon as I make a spot in the garage.
It still needs a little jetting work. Taking what I learned on my other 550K, I have four new emulsion tube/needle jet sets. I'll deal with final jetting, timing and syncing once I get those swapped over.

I still need to wire up the speedo drive and get the seat pan upholstered, too. For some strange reason, the tach on the Danmoto doesn't work. We've traced it down to a faulty Danmoto, which sucks because they've always been really good. I'm undecided what to do about that right now. It's been way too long since I bought the unit to send it back. Maybe I'll run a small analog tach? Or and LED strip of lights? or, just do without.

The vintage, old school....circa 1975...Kerker sounds like nothing else on the market these days. Absolutely amazing.

https://youtu.be/u2rAr_15-64
 
You know that thing where you take a bike that's almost done and then start taking it apart again?
Yeah...I'm getting pretty good at that.



The rear wheel has a slow leak that I can't stop. Tried changing the stem but it didn't help. Dropped it off Monday to have a tube installed.
I also took that opportunity to see why the brake backing plate is rubbing on the wheel. I'm using parts from three or four bikes on this build, plus aftermarket wheels, so there's no telling WHY it's doing it, but I have some thin washers that I can stack between the bearing and backing plate and that appears to solve the problem. I'll know for sure when I get the wheel back on.

I also pulled the carbs for new emulsion tubes/needles. I ran this engine in another bike many years ago and it always ran rich and got crappy mileage. I've since learned from working on yet another build, that it was probably the emulsion tubes all along. I'm hoping this will help with tuning the modified motor.

I'm also unhappy with the whole dash/bars arrangements. I've had some mixed responses on the headlight I'm using. I dig it....it looks really cool in person....but it's almost impossible to neatly run the wiring and cables with such a small headlight. It just looks messy.
I briefly considered not running any gauges at all, but I really prefer to have them. I'm working on a more traditional yet still cool solution.

Stay tuned.
 
Man those wheels are funky! Cool project though - I have a ton of crap lying around my shop but definitely not enough to build a bike from the ground up ;D

The engine looks great. Still deciding whether or not to pull the motor in the GS550 and clean it up, I'd like to do a similar paint scheme to yours, love the contrast between black and silver.

I personally like the headlight, although I do think it looks a tad bit small in comparison to the tank/general size of the bike. I'd say keep it. Maybe you can add a tunnel behind the metal mounting plate to hide your wiring?
 
For whatever reason, I was having some issues with the brake backing plate rubbing on the wheel (maybe because this bike is built from 3 or 4 bikes, a pile of parts and some aftermarket wheels?? ::) ).
Here's a "before" showing how the backing plate is somewhat counter sunk in the wheel.



The rear wheel had a persistent slow leak that I couldn't stop. After changing the stem a couple of times, I just pulled it to have a tube installed. While it was off, I used three thin washers to space the backing plate out. It turns out that air-cooled VW alternator belt pulley shims are the perfect size to slip over the axle. They're also very thin, so it's easy to stack them and get the proper spacing needed.
No more rubbing and no issues getting the wheel and axle spacers back in.

"after"
 
And while I really dug the little dirt bike headlight, it was causing my OCD more trouble than it was worth.
The tach on the Danmoto is bad, so that meant an added tach. I could see wiring, the tach cable wrapped around the headlight, etc., etc. I also disliked the shape of the master cylinder when compared with the rest of the lines on the bike.
So I ripped it all off.

Here's the new, lower profile master cylinder installed and a (possible) mirror solution.



I have plans for the headlight and dash. A little more traditional, but a lot less headache and I think it'll work just fine with the build. Stay tuned.
 
Sweep The Floor Bike #2

Scott you know I love this thing. If you ever need help with machining bits properly just hit me up, I'll be your huckleberry
 
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