4) Motorcycle Build Prep and Disassembly

Cleanup, Prepare and Start!

Spent the afternoon and evening cleaning, organizing, and preparing to start the disassembly. The shop was a mess but with a little effort I made room.

So as I started dissassembly the shelves filled up quickly

The slow transition starts 

As I dig into the bike I am finding all kind of fun things like missing screw, broken tabs, and future challenges. This bike has a lot of mile on it and it shows in the condition. Mechanically it appears to be in decent shape but the fairings and bags were well used and not well kept.  I can hope someone on Ebay will be interested in all of the plastic.

As I start digging in there are a few things I think I will need. First I have been looking at motorcycle lifts. They range in price from $500 to $1000.  The cheapest one is at Harbor Freight which had fairly good reviews but the quality is a concern. There are some lifts for around $800 which use an air cylinder to actuate compared to the Harbor Freight lift which uses a hydraulic jack (muscle power). For what I am doing I think I will go look at the $500 lift. 

I have both a wire feed MIG welder and an old arc welder which should be capable of all of the fabrication I could need to perform. The other side of that is my ability to perform which I will need to practice. I have looked into a TIG welder which would allow welding aluminum and also would be fun to have.  

Looking into what I see initially as areas of concern there are a few real challenges. As I was removing plastic I note the number of vacuum hoses and the vacuum hose routing diagram on the gas tank. There are a lot of hoses that run all over. My challenge is to figure out which ones are really necessary.

There is also going to be a challenge with the a gas tank. The Goldwing Frame does not have a single center tube but two tubes that fork back very wide around the two carburetors. A tank from a Honda Valkyrie would possibly work but again if I wanted a Valkyrie I could just buy one. So I bought a old Harley tank on Ebay that I am hoping to be able to modify to fit. 

The other concern with the gas tank is the fuel pump. The bike might run on gravity feed from the tank but I think I will try to add a fuel pump to make sure there are no fuel flow concerns.

I should be able to finish removing the fairing and start determining what is required to keep as I start to determine the type of modifications. The next big thing is when I remove the Goldwing very large gas tank which is under the seat.  This should allow a lot of  space to help move thing around like the computer and all the relays. 

 So next is take more stuff off, look for other concerns, and start thinking about moving to the middle of the project which should be the really fun stuff and actually take the longest to complete.