Snaggletooth

Be interested in your feedback after you receive it. Been playing with some smaller ones over the summer to get familiar with the flight controls but time to move up. Like you I want more experience before moving up the the high end stuff. The first permit is no issue but the license for commercial photography looks like it's going to be restrictive around here. So have fun.

As I've said so many times over the years of working on old bikes: "I'm not restoring THIS bike..... I'm building a NEW one." Have fun.

Why is there always a Harley involved? In a few months i will have owned my '84 for 10 years and been a supporting member here almost as long. Found mine in a listing on Craigslist. The owner at the time had kept his dads bike when he passed away. He wasn't in any hurry to sell it being his dads bike but wanted a Harley for himself. We met, we talked and went over the bike. It had been stored since his dad had passed several years prior but he kept in in a heated garage, started it once in awhile and kept it clean. He'd removed several parts that had started leaking with the intention of rebuilding them but ya know..... it turned into a parts box collection. He figured out I was familiar with the bike and had enough knowledge and interest to maintain it. We made a deal. i bought it for a song and I can't sing. We loaded it on his lawn trailer and brought to my place just after Christmas that year. Spent the next few months going through the bike and joining his bunch. The knowledge compiled here was what got me though the bike to get it back to roadworthy status. Since then the guys and gals here have been a constant source of info and advice for the years following. Great bunch to know. Not only for the info but ideas from what they had done with their own bikes have kept me on top of upgrades to new mods and better replacements. The bike today is beyond roadworthy and would jump on the bike and go anywhere on it. The thing is, I still keep in touch with the guy I bought the bike from. Stop by his place on it and visit once in a while. It make me happy to see the grin on his face when I pull in on it. Makes him happy his dads bike is still out there running down the road. I think maybe he might regret letting the bike go. But that's just me. He's on his 3rd or 4rh new Harley since he sold me the Venture. A bike he thought was on it's last legs. But it's only been ten years. It's still got a lot of life left in it. But you came to the right place, once you get used to this pack of critters it's hard to break away. It's been said before, it's more like family around here. So hang around and get to know the bunch. Mike

Exactly! Thank you.

Dang it. Always the last one to the party but

Great to hear that Dan

Now i know why one of my garage gremlins was limping that day. Good reason to never try to catch a shotput. Man, keep those knees together.

Hang in there. Don't let it beat you down. When I did mine five years ago it was a full day of frustration and irritation. Those flywheels are a bear for get loose the first time, and when they come off, it's a surprise. They will actually jump a foot off the shaft when they let loose. So be prepared with padding under it. It does take a good quality gear puller, grade 8 bolts, a couple of over thick steel washers for under the bolt heads to keep them for pulling through. If you're using a breaker bar add a little cheater pipe on that. Or even better a solid 1/2 drive air impact wrench. Like you I was talking to myself. I wasn't winning. i gave up and went to bed muttering to myself. I left the bike on the stand with the puller still attached and fully cranked down. When I got back up in the morning I went out expecting another day of battle. Found the dang thing laying on the floor in the pile of packing quilts I'd been sitting in. I don't know if it was just the temp changes over night or the garage gremlins just having a good laugh but I'll take it. If I i was closer I'd stuff my garage gremlins in a cage and drop them off. They need something to do.

Yep, Tenders are good for keeping a good battery in a decent state of charge, but will never get a deep charge into it. It takes a good old fashioned charger a full overnight charge at 2 amps to usually bring them back to full power. From my experience with the DEKA AGMs over the last 7 years is a Tender is really not even needed if the bike is ridden even weekly and the charging system is working correctly. That picture is posted earlier of my voltmeter is after sitting over a weekend before starting it. Mine has sat a month and never dropped below 12.6 volts. Shelf life volt power on a healthy AGM is months, not days. The first DEKA was 5 years old and never saw a charger or a Tender. Just didn't need it.

I heard nuttin.......

No problem Justin. That's what we do around here. BTW...

I just got an email from Dano. I'll point him at this thread and let him know somebody is looking for him.

See, this is where the old joke, "While you're in there" came from. First it's the slow cranking when cold. Then it's the slow drag when hot. Then it's the engage clutch popping off.......... Then it's might as will get a new battery. Then ohhhh cool cables. Then the it's better Stator.... then a better rectifier.... then.... then... then... ah damn. I used to say I'm not restoring an old bike. I'm building a new one. Not always so far from the truth. But is the shortest path to success.

If you are talking about the OEM voltmeter in the bike don't put a lot of faith in that. A long ways from being accurate. If you are seeing 10 volts when you turn the key on that is enough to spin the motor, but from my experience not enough to get the old girl to fire up to start. These old bikes like their spark. And as you crank that motor over that "10" reading is going to drop like a rock. A while back I did a bunch of mods to the bike from changing to a DEKA AGM battery, new heavier battery cables, a 4 brush starter, a Shindigen rectifier and HO stator. I figured as long as I was at it I might as well install a digital voltmeter to monitor the system. I left the OEM voltmeter installed but wired a new power supply system completely independent of the bikes harness. Just the wiring for the battery, R&R, HO stator and then the Digital voltmeter direct to the battery. The difference in the readings on the two meters was quite a bit. About 1.5 to 2 volts difference. The new digital gave me instant readings on the voltage activity at all times. I knew instantly if I was having a problem after sitting, during starting and running down the road. Saved my bacon a couple times. With an accurate reading with a voltmeter at the battery you should see at least 12.6 volts with the bike off, while cranking you should still show around 11.0 then around 14.0 to 14.4 volts running around 2,000 RPM and above.

Looks like you got the shifter off alright. Just make sure EVERY bolt is out of the cover. Once that is done you simply have the pull the cover off using equal pressure to take it straight off. There are two pins that align the cover to the body. Now once you begin to get a 1/4 inch or so off you will feel the pull of the magnets on the stator. It's pretty strong pull. so keep the cover coming off straight and it will release once you get past the pull of the magnets. Watch your fingers. It can bite. The only thing you might be fighting is if the PO used a sealant like Permatex on the cover and gaskets. That stuff can bake on like glue. That shift shaft sticking through the cover stays put. It won't fall out.

Oh yeah. If the starter engage clutch is beginning to fail it will rattle and bang like a box of rocks while the roller prangs are bouncing around because they are not catching and holding like they should due to failure of some internal part. Either a badly broken engage clutch body or some of the pressure springs on the prangs are damaged. Once it all fails all you get is the whine from the starter motor. Been through this years ago on my '84. I did do a rebuild on mine with new springs and rollers to try to fix mine. Held up for a lil while but ended up getting mod work done by Dano and have had almost 6 years of trouble free starting since. Now I'll say this, during the process for trying to find ways to get by i even tried a heavier oil in the bike. Not the answer. LOL. And on a COLD morning all I would get was the whine because the parts that should move couldn't because of the heavier oil holding them in place. Or that's my thoughts on the heavy oil anyway and I'm talking straight 50 Wt. here. So my thoughts are either a badly broken engage body or all three springs are broken or bent. Hope you can make contact with Dano. He's about the only one Stateside that can do this mod. The only other options are a complete rebuild with all new parts, which can cause alignment issues during install, or buy a new assembly from Yammy. If they are even still available. Back then a new one was about $185.00. Danos was about $300.00 for all the new parts, the machine work and both gaskets ready to install. As said, his is a "last fix ever" deal. I was the first guy to install his mod on my bike. Still riding it 72,000 miles later.

Oh yeah, they bear my name. I had made a few sets to try out my idea but turned out Mr. Myers had the same idea a few years earlier and had a better looking end product than what I was turning out. So I passed the ball to his court. He does so nice stuff. I have hooked up a couple others with Mr. Myers but don't know if he is still producing them. If he is..... grab them. They are worth getting. I have 4 on my bike now. Two on the handlebars and two more as camera mounts.

Back in the early 80's I was working as an OTR driver for a company that made and delivered concrete and stone siding for high rise buildings around the Midwest. As a driver a pretty plush job. Nice equipment, predictable schedule and home more often than many drivers. Once they started covering a building I could spent several months doing turns to the same job site. On the plus side it was a full load on usually air ride flat beds or drop decks from the Omaha plant to anywhere from Denver to Dallas or Chicago the run the empty trailer back to the Omaha plant for another load then return again. On the downside the concrete and stone panel were huge and heavy loaded on steel A frames on the trailers so at times it was like floating a boat with concrete sails. A stiff cross wind could make a trip rather interesting. The other issue that caused a lot of concern was the job site deliveries. Most all deliveries were active construction sites where I'd have to back through the work sites to get next to the building to get under a tower crane. Many time in the dark. The amount of tire damage I dealt with was crazy. I've found tires damaged by rebar, broken lumber, hunks of broken concrete and stone that were buried in the dirt or mud. It was nothing odd to pull off a job site and find the space between the dual tires packed completely with mud. The worst I found was a brick wedged between a set of duals on the rear of the trailer so bad I had to have the outer tire removed to get it out. Think about it for a second. Following a semi down the road at highway speeds with a brick lodged between the tires. How long would you follow that? Or would you even notice it? Probably not. Imagine the impact of that brick coming off a tire at the speed with your car or bike. Not a whole lot of difference when a tire starts the throw the tread off a low tire even without a blowout. As a rider it made me acutely aware of the danger of following trucks too closely. It made me more active in my truck inspections before hitting the streets. Better visual checks. More tire thumping. More tire pressure checks on any vehicle. For all the effort made to be safe i still had an incident that scared me to death. Not so much as the folks behind me on a highway in Kansas late one night. I was just south of a place called Beto Junction headed back to Omaha on my last run for the week. Hardly anyone on the highway that night. i had a couple headlights on the road behind me and catching up at a pretty good rate. I could tell by the headlight spacing it was pair of motorcycle. It got the point where at times all I could see behind my empty flatbed was the glow of my taillights on their wind screens. They were that close. I had a set of flood lights on the headache rack on the truck for backing thought the construction site so I gave them a couple of flashes to see if they would back off a bit. They did a little, but not much, or not enough to say the least. A few miles later i saw their headlight going crazy. Swerving and dropping back fast, then stopping off the edge of the road. I could still see both headlights so i knew they were still on two wheels. A few more miles down the road I came the truck stop at the junction and pulled in for fuel and a break. As I was fueling up a pair of bikes pulled in for gas. Both dressed GW's. One had a shattered windscreen and the other had a big split in his fairing. I walked over and asked if they had just been following a flatbed. Well, yeah. I asked if they had noticed my flood lights flashing. Well, yeah. Why did you do that? To get you to back off me a bit. You were way to close. They asked me if I'd blown a tire. Don't think so. Take a look. All my tires were up and inflated so the best i could figure was I'd hit an alligator on the road and flipped it up into their path. Back then a dressed GW was little more than a big bike with a WindJammer on it. I think those two guys were as lucky as they could be that night. We spent an hour or so talking trucks and motorcycle over greasy food and black coffee while their nerves settled down. i think that experience was burned into their minds for many years later. They realized how close they had come to an ugly ending. So It's just another reason to give a truck all the space you can for safeties sake. Their is no way to predict what my happen out there. And very little time to react when it does happen. So stay alert folks. Be safe.

Hang in there Puc. Be thinking about ya. As stated, it's all cool. I read slow anyway. Get well soon ok. Snaggletooth You're a fixture around here ya know.

After I installed my first DEKA the bike was a daily rider and used on my service route so most trips were around 20 miles at a time and around 150 mile a day. Sometimes up to 20 starts a day with all the stops. That battery was trouble free for around 5.5 years. Never had a need to charge it. Around that time I was planning to be out on the road for a three month trip. I started doing a regular schedule with a battery tester. Always had a good voltage reading but the "battery life" reading was showing 25%. Still a strong starting bike and never faded off from the power. But, going on the road I installed a new DEKA before I left town. It's been in the bike now for about 3 years I think. Still doing just as well as the old one. Never a problem. I took the old one that was showing 25% life and kept it as a stand by in the garage. Used it to test lights, jump other bikes and as a loaner for other bikes when they had dead batteries. Just had it on a tender sitting around for extended periods. It finally went in a neighbors riding mower. Still in there today. So yeah, DEKAS have a decent life to them. They used to claim 10 years out of them. (under prime conditions) But they do like to be used. They have a damn solid shelf life with NO drain but staying fully charged on a running bike seems to keep them happy. Now I'll add this. If the AGM battery showed dead on a smart charger, it may not be. When an AGM gets too low a smart charger may not read it properly. Use a regular charger set for 2 amps and let it run overnight. It may still come back. If you don't have a regular charger jump the dead AGM to a good battery then to a smart charger. The smart charger will read the good battery and proceed with the charge and transfer that charge to the "dead" AGM. It's an old trick but it works. With any luck the AGM will show a good read after that overnight charge through the linked battery then top it off for a full charge. Then test it with a quality battery tester and get a volt read under load and a "battery life" reading. You may get a few more years out of it. It's possible.

Well said Bob. No doubt about it.

Hey Puc, All my pics of my bike projects are still on my PC unit which is still packed away in storage so not much help there. Once you have the tupperware and seat off you can see the main bolts for the subframe connections. Four main ones, maybe six. It's been a few years since I did that.The rest is just minor brackets, air lines and some wire connections to unplug. I didn't figure out the trick until after the second time I stripped the bike down.....then with the bare frame I saw how simple the setup was. Got a good laugh out of it the last time I pulled the rear sub off. The next door neighbors wife came out to the garage and was standing there watching me. I asked what's up and she said her husband just came in and said the gorrilla next door just tore his bike in half out back. "I had to see that." I guess it looked kind of odd. Front of bike on the jack and the rest the bike leaning against the wall. As far a simpler to change the rear tire on a GENII. Don't think so. I still prefer a bike jack and raise it up, drop the right muffler and axle and drop it out the bottom. Two bolts. OK a few pinch bolts to. My saddlebags are the easy ones. Key. Tada!

You probably think I'm nuts but the simple way is to remove the entire rear subframe. Most the items on the subframe can stay bolted on just need to be disconnected. The entire assembly can be lifted off and set aside intact by one person. Now, time to put it back on another set of hands come in handy. But this method is a big time saver.