day twentysix

so i rode the bike around for a while pretty much everything went well, it is super fast, brakes work good minus the back brake doesnt return like i would like. oh the kick stand sucks too. then this happens...... yeah the bolts on the stator rattled loose and ran into the flywheel. yeah it pretty much destoyed everything. hmm how am i going to fix this with like t minus 5 hours????

here is the carnage, so i called around no one had a banshee stator plate... well the dealer had one for $600.... yeah right! so i hopped in the car and went to my parents house to rob one off my moms banshee, sorry mom.

after a bit of work with the mill and the tig i had it all straightened out.

here it is at like 1000 rpm.

to fix the back brake problem i built this bracket that hooks to the lever arm on the drum, from here i hooked a spring to the frame.

here we are just before we headed out to arizona for our adventure. jess, me, jeff, and jake.

i 15 on the maiden voyage!!! feels pretty good, well worth the long nights.

day 2-5

so the last week and a half i have been staying until about 2am or so trying to play catch up. here is whats happens when you are half asleep trying to use an angle grinder. no fun.

here is the bike back down on the ground, i love how light & low it is i cant wait to ride it.

tank mounted.

the stupid this will not start, not even a hint of starting. straight up stone wallin me. here i am trying to ajust the timing on the cam sensor.

we even tried to bump start it...... bad idea it doesnt work, or at least i couldnt get it to hahaha

at least we had a good support crew jessica and jeffs wife nikki kept our spirits up. jess went to the mexican market and bought us some of the good sodas you know the ones with real sugar not the corn syrup trash they put in the american garbage.

here i am at like 2:30 am the day we are supposed to leave for AZ. i still cant get the bike to start, my friend james sudgested that i put my new larger jets in. i pulled the carbs and cleaned everything out turouly and installed the new jets. after installing the carbs back on sure enough the bike fired right up! it fired like second kick, i was shocked, it even ideled pretty close to where i wanted it.

day 24.

i had a problem when i went to remove the exhaust from the bike after mocking it all up. i couldnt get this pipe off. this is what i did. cut the pipe in half and insert a slip joint.

i already had all the mounts and everything in place so everything had to stay in the same place so i just measued the area to be trimmed and the lenght of the slip joint subtracted the diffrence and thats how much i removed off the rear section of the pipe.

with the slip joint welded on i took a washer bent it up in the break and welded it on.

this spring will hold the pipes togeather and alwos a little bit of flex in the system this will increase the life of all the exhaust mounts too, an aded bonus.
well like all projects that come down to the wire something has to go wrong, i put the oil in the motor and this is what i have on my table a few min later. apparently that clutch pushrod seal that i installed isnt doing its job.

so the real promlem here is that it is 24hrs before we need to leave and no one that i know of in the salt lake valley has a pushrod seal for an xs. i did find an rd350 seal that has the same shaft size but the out side diameter is smaller then the xs part.

i took a chunk of aluminum and got to work making an adapter sleave.

here is the adapter after the lathe work.


i had to machine a flat on one side so that it would clear part of the casting on the block.
here it is installed in the tansmission. excuse the messy grease all over the seal, at this point i was running around like a mad man trying to get this thing togeather so i could at least ride it around the parking loit before having to ride the 750 miles to cotton wood.