IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!

My wife has been out of town for work this week (coming back tonight actually) so I took advantage of my free time and got busy on rewiring my 71 T Bolt. After trying to differentiate between the yellow and white wires (which were identical due to age) I finally got it wired and for the first time since I had the bike I was able to get her to spark. A nice big blue spark to be exact. So I rebuilt the carb, adjusted the rocker valves to .008 and .010 (as someone from the Britbike.com BSA forum kindly informed me) slapped the rocker cover on with a new gasket and reinstalled the rear wheel (so that I could try to kick start it without dropping her on the swing arm). I don't have the gas tank ready yet so I sprayed some starter fluid into the carb and after a few failed kicks I realized that one of my connections had come loose. I reconnected the wire, kicked her again and VROOOOOOOOOOM! Just a few seconds of muffler-less roaring glory but I am beside myself with joy that she actually ran. This is my first attempt at resurrecting a motorcycle (which hasn't run in over 20 years) so I'm quite ecstatic!

I still have a few issues to deal with before I can get her on the road, but I'm hopeful that she'll be ready by early spring. Today was a very good day!

T- minus 10... We have ignition!!!!!

I just hooked up my new wiring harness, battery and a few replacement electronics - and for the first time since I brought home this beeza I see signs of life. It sparks!!!!!! Now I just need to re assemble the carb an the rocker cover to see if it'll start

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New tire, flat tube

I wrestled with the rear tire for 2 hours bferore I finally managed to seat it properly. Much to my dismay, when I put air in the tire, it leaked. Tomorrow I'm taking the wheel over to Cycle Adventure so they can change it...

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bike tear down

Rear tire was flat and bald and areplacement is on it's way. Time to clean up the rear and put my new wiring harness in place.

While I'm at it the rim could use a freshening up. The hub has lots of flaking paint. I really don't feel like taking off the spokes as I have wheels that still need to be re-threaded and trued. I think I'll just clean it as best I can for now. Maybe next winter I'll tear this bike apart again and repaint everything as I want this bike to run for the first nice day in march.

Now I'm really in neck deep.

Chipping away at the paint

This is what hours of chipping away with a razor blade has left me with. The whole bike had been painted with flat black spraypaint to cover up the factory polar gray frame. Most of the exposed areas had little to no black paint left, so away I went!

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Ok, it's been a WHILE but lots of stuff has gone down since my last post. I got married to my beautiful girlfriend of 5 1/2 years (!!!) moved out of our apartment in NYC so now we live full time in West Chester PA AND I picked up a 1971 BSA A65t Thunderbolt - yup ANOTHER MC project. I will be posting more pictures as well as my progress on that bike shortly.

Taking a break from the CB125 to rebuild CB360 carbs

I decided to take a little break from the cb125 this weekend and focus on my 1976 CB360t. This bike is running, but the throttle has always been a little off. Doesn't run well at low throttle and occasionally loses power when starting (like the choke is on when it isn't).

I feel sort of weird about taking apart a running motorcycle when I have so many projects going on, but I just have to feel that sense of completion with one of these bikes - and this carb overhaul was badly needed.

I bought a set of carburetor rebuild kits off of Ebay. They showed up on Friday and I just couldn't wait to get started. Off with the tank and air filters...

Not only are these carbs a little sticky, but they're filthy on the outside and just begging for a cleaning.

Ah, how satisfying the bead blaster is.

This grime was scraped out of the bottom of the carb under the floats.

The Carburetors on the CB360 are much more complicated than the one on my cb125

Lots of carb cleaner. Had to make a pep boys run to grab another two bottles.

looking better. At this point I changed out the jetting and air intakes that came with the rebuild kits. All the new jets are the same size that came with the bike originally since I'm not planning on modifying the air filters at this point. I just want to keep this simple (and running).

Once everything was rebuilt I had a little trouble putting the two carbs back together. After some fiddling I finally got everything to line up properly.

Carbs look great but I wasn't sure if they'd work right off the bat. I'd never done an overhaul like this and I wasn't sure how sensitive they'd be.

Carbs back in the bike and after a couple of kicks to get some gas through the system, the bike fired up!

I took the bike for a quick test ride and so far so good. It runs better at low throttle than it did before and it idles better. I may have to me a few adjustments here and there, but for now I think I can check this job off my list.

Now back to work on the CB125...