Your best bet is to take a part from your bike into the local paint store that supplies auto body shops and just have them match it. That way any fading that has occurred will be matched with the new paint.
OK, you have to pick a spot to start.
At the horn switch there should be a black wire and a pink wire.
Using an ohm meter set to the lowest scale, check from the black wire at the switch to the battery negative it should show a dead short, as in very near to 0 ohms. This should not matter if the key is on or off.
With the key on and the switch not pressed, there should be 12V on the pink wire. When you press the switch the voltage should drop to zero.
Let us know what this is and then we will know what direction to head from there.
I think it could look real cool once it is all cleaned up and polished.
Its hard to know.
Maybe the intent was to have all cables hidden under a cover that will cover the entire unpainted handle bar. Would be a very clean look.
On another note, I'll bet that brass grip really sucks the heat out of your hand on a cold day.
Glad to hear that Mark is not in to bad of shape.
It is about that time of year again. The deer are starting to get ready to give birth to this years crop of fawns. part of that process is driving off last years young to spread the gene pool. these young are wandering around in new areas that they are not familiar with, many have never learned about roads and the associated dangers.
KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR THEM!!!!
This is bike awareness week here locally.
This is the first one they are having, it will be the first full week of May every year.
The news here has had a lot of bad. It seems every other day they are talking about another bike fatality.
After all of the snow and cold, everyone has forgotten how to look for bikes, and many bikes seem to have forgotten that there are still cars with blind drivers on the roads with them.
There are also shim eating gremlins around. they are invisible, anything they eat also becomes invisible.
I had the heads off the engine and on the bench. took a shim out and it vanished right before my eyes. That was years ago and I still have not seen it since. I was hopping that eventually the shim eating gremlin would take a dump and it would reappear somewhere.
I have lost a number of things around the engine that have gone to never never land.
The first time I was doing spark plugs, I just could not get one of the plugs started in the hole. I finally figured out that the PO must have dropped a quarter that landed behind the plug boot and once I pulled out the plug the quarter slid down an covered the hole. Point is there are a lot of weird hiding places for things to get lodged into.
What pressures are you running in your shocks, front and rear?
The higher the air pressure the more the bike will lean on the side stand.
Check the bolt that the side stand pivots on. They have been known to bend and break, allowing you to practice you technique for picking the bike up off the ground. If that bolt is getting ready to go the bike will lean farther. It is also not that uncommon for the top of the side stand to get bent allowing more lean.
I also have a 30" inseam and I was thinking of cutting some off of my side stand to get more lean. I have to lean the bike to the right with a lot of weight on my right foot to get the side stand up.
Another thing that I have been doing with good results is to use a universal pipe cement that is made for all types of plastic pipe.
I spread the crack apart as far as I can and work some adhesive into the crack and then close the crack and clamp if necessary to hold it together. Immediately wipe off any adhesive that oozes out on the painted side, it will mess up the paint if you let it sit on the paint. this will get you a part that is still pretty on the painted side and is now able to hold its shape.
I then spread a layer of the adhesive on the inside surface and immediately press in a piece of fiberglass cloth. Work the cloth into the adhesive with your finger to get it fully whetted. Apply more adhesive to any dry spots on the cloth. Once this hardens up you will have a repair that will not need to be repainted, and is stronger than it was originally, and has only added about the thickness of a piece of paper to the back side so fitting back in place is not an issue.
If you are using this on a tab with a mounting hole in it, just glass right over the hole and after it is set up is is simple to use an Exacto to clean out the hole.
I learned this technique repairing structural model arcraft parts. I have never before seen it mentioned on this site.