11) Wiring In and Actual Progress

Wiring Wiring Wiring Smoke?

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to wire the bike. Bought a wiring harness for the Harley Road Glide fairing and needed to merge it with the existing Honda harness. I found both the Harley and Honda wiring details online and purchased multiple weather resistant connectors to plug them together.

 I installed all the wiring including a new radio, ignition and tank mounted dash with all the indicators. It looked great and when I first turn it on everything was working.




Until I smell it and than saw it. Smoke! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!

So began the search for what was smoking, and why. It is usually easy to find the what. The key is to make sure you find all of the "Whats".  Than the important "Why", Because if you do not determine why it will happen again.

Began by removing tape from the bundle the smoke appeared to be coming from. Found one of the ground wires totally melted. I had to clear the entire bundle as the wire melted the adjacent wired.

Also found a totally blown 20 amp fuse. So the search resulted in finding that I was in to big of a hurry to power it up. I had a hot wire go to ground resulting in letting the magic smoke out.

Replaced the damaged wire, re-taped, and made sure everything was properly terminated. And again turned everything on and waited.

No Smoke!

So finally some real progress. Mounted all the relays, installed all the gauges (fuel level, temperature, voltmeter and a clock), mounting the rear fender, installing level sensor and fuel lines. Need to run plug wires and complete the wiring of the rear lights. Possibly in the next month put some gas in the tank and see if the bike restarts with the only smoke coming out of the exhaust.

10) Finally Some Progesss

The tank is headed for primer!

Finally the gas tank has progress past welding and rewelding, the main wiring has been reinstalled, I have figured out how to wire the Harley ignition and various indicators into the Honda harness, completed the fairing mounts and mounted the coils. I actually have made some progress once the gas tank issues are finally (hopefully) behind me.

 I believe in my previous blogs I outline how the gas tank would be the foundation of the look of the bike as well as how the tank was to be the biggest challenge. Well no matter how I framed the effort to modify the tank it was an understatement. I know the person I had do the modification was becoming frustrated with it as was I. But there was a level of expected evolution in the chasing of pin holes. So after the tank was at the fabricators for a couple extra weeks I went an got it and figured I would take on the challenge. I mean I have some skills, right?

What a mistake. Right away I noticed the tanks was pretty tight except for around the flange for the level sensor. No problem, pulled out the Oxy-Acetylene tanks and proceeded to make a mess.

Once I got my technique back, (it has been awhile) I was able to fill the holes I made and ran some nice beads around the flange and I was happy. Until I heard the first pop. With a closer look I could see the crack at the root of my brand new weld. No problem, fired up the torch again and ran another well placed and formed bead over the crack. This time there were two pops. 

Ok, slow down, lets think about this. The flange is about 1/8 inch thick, the tank is maybe 18 gauge (or about 0.05 inches). As I try to remember back, hoop stress and thermal expansion may have something to do with this. So I welded up the new cracks and tried quick quenching which worked. Than I remembered how quenching will harden the steel making it more brittle. So I pulled out my rosebud (this is a very large Oxy-Ace torch tip) and carefully annealed the area around the flange to add some ductility back into the metal. This was working great until I heard it POP! Well now I am really getting a little frustrated.  Welded it up, quenched it and walked away.

The next day I installed the level sensor flange, pitcock and gas caps.  This was to allow filling the tank with water to make a final check for leaks and measure the flow rate through the pitcock. The first thing I noticed was the vented gas cap was working but not as well as I had hoped. I was only getting about 1 gallon in 8 minutes. Without the cap I could get 3 gallon in less than 4 minutes. So I made the decision to add a vent tube to the tank. More welding/brazing, but it did come out pretty good and works great.

During all the flow testing I noticed the level sensor flange had a slow leak. The best I could tell it was not leaking from the weld but by the gasket. After trying to tighten up the flange to seal the leak did not work a closer look revealed all the welding had warped the flange. So I did some initial grinding to try to flatten the surface and resorted to the magic of J-B Weld. Applied it as per the directions, sanded and lapped it flat and now I have a solid, flat and leak free flange.

     

 
I cleaned, etch and seal the internals of the tank with the Kreen tank sealing kit and covered all the welds with filler to give the tank a smooth finish. Once the filler is sanded and all surfaces are cleaned I will primer the tank and not look back (hopefully).

Next up is finish the air box, wire the fairing, mount the rear finder and about a million other things. Still having fun and may even finish this some day.

9) The Project is Home

Tank modification done so back to work, Maybe?

The project made it home on February 12th. I took the bike to the fabricator on November 14th, so it has taken about 3 months for the modification. I did not want to rush the fabricator so I was very patient. You may have been wondering what was I doing during all that time. Being retired I took care of the cats, went to the beach, but mostly I finally got around to rebuilding my motorcycle trailer.

 I finished rebuilding the trailer just in time to pickup the project from the fabricators. The trailer looks pretty good don't you think? And it is good to have the bike home too!

 

As I was hoping the tank went from a 4 gallon capacity to a 4 3/4 gallon. Below are the before and after picture.  We were able to add a port for a level indicator which looks like it should work well. 

  I needed to clean and coat the inside of the tank, so I bought a kit from Kreem which includes a cleaner, etcher, and a coating. So I fill the tank to check the volume and start the cleaning when I noticed;

 So the tanks needs to go back to the fabricator for some touch ups. But I still have a lot of work to do on the bike.  I need to start final mounting of the air box, move the coils, modify the seat pan, hang the rear fender and mount the fairing. Well those and about 500 other things to figure out and stress on.

But I think it is going to come together with a little time and patients.