Well, it's been a looong time since an update!! Was a bit busy training for and running my first marathon which was last weekend. Haven't really felt like spending too much time on my feet since then...
A bit of progress has been made however. First and foremost, I now have a functioning clutch cable!! I managed to solder the nipple onto the cable without incident although I did have to trim down the cable outer a little bit to make sure the cable outer to nipple length was correct. So clutch is all good.
I also now have a functioning gearbox! Since mounting the gear change linkage I have been unable to actually get the gears to change. I decided I needed to remove the right side cover to have a look at the gear selector shaft, arm and drum and try and work out what was going on. I was going to try and avoid having to drain the oil when removing the side cover so I leaned the bike way over to the left and pulled the cover off. Unfortunately, leaning the bike over does not allow the oil to fall away enough from the side cover for it to be removed without making a mess. Awful mess, at least half a litre of oil all over the floor!!! Aaaarggghhh!!! All the Ducatis I've worked on have had a deep sump so it's a simple job to lean it over a little, pull the cover off and hardly a drop gets spilt. The CB350 has a very shallow sump, so big mess... Lesson learned: drain the oil to remove the side cover!
Anyway, I found the problem with the gear change. Back during the engine rebuild, I found that I had mislaid a part which I replaced with a large cap screw
It turns out that when trying to change gears, the head of the cap screw was impeding the full travel of the gear selector arm.
A very easy fix. I just loosened the lock nut, wound out the bolt and retightened the locknut. Simple!! I am now praising God, Allah, Buddha and Mohammed that I don't have to open the cases again to delve into the interior of the gearbox...
Next up was to fix the oil leak that I had coming out from behind the electronic ignition cover on the left end of the camshaft. I had left the oil seal off the camshaft and assumed that replacing that seal would fix the leak. So I replaced the seal, started the engine and still had a huge leak from the same place!!! So pulled the cover off again, and eventually worked out what the problem was. Under the the housing that the ignition rotor is mounted in and that supports the end of the camshaft there is an oil passageway
The gasket that fits between this housing and the head can go in one of two ways. If it is put in the wrong way it doesn't completely seal the oil gallery and allows oil to spew everywhere
Gasket inserted the RIGHT way!
The next problem I had was to fix the kill switch. My kill switch was functioning a little too well. When activated it killed the engine by blowing the fuse!! I pulled apart my wiring and realised that there were two problems neither of which became apparent until the kill switch was activated. As long as the kill switch stayed in the Run position, there was no problem. When the kill switch was activated, the fuse blew.
The first problem was my fault in that the wires I had running to the kill switch wires were not hooked up correctly. So that was easily fixed. Next problem was that the cheap Made in China generic kill switch I bought from eBay was wired such that when the switch is in the RUN position, there is no current flow through the switch. When the switch is switched to STOP, there is current flow throughout the switch. This seems like an odd arrangement to me and I don't know what vehicle the switch was made for. The way my wiring works is for power to flow through the switch to the coils when in the Run position. Switching the switch to Stop, cuts the power to the coils. SO I pulled the kill switch apart and after an hour of fiddling around managed to change the switch to function so power will run through it when in the Run position and stop when in the Stop position. For the life of me I can't work out how the switch would work if it was the other way around?!? Anyway, it works now...it only cost me $8 so I can hardly complain.
The bike is now "finished" (still needs paint though). But being "finished" means theoretically, I can take it for a ride. Which, theoretically, I may do tomorrow!!! Woohoo! ;D ;D ;D ;D