My new project - Page 4

Spokes · #46 06-23-2012, 06:41 PM

The condenser does get hot with the engine and cools with the engine. I agree that you should look at that first.

Buckets81 · #47 06-24-2012, 07:13 PM

My spark problem turned out to be a fuel system problem instead. The float wasn't adjusted properly and as a result, the bike was sipping gas faster than the carb would supply it. It took a few minutes to diagnose and fix this morning.

Now that the embarrassing part is out of the way, it's time for a ride report! (with a lot of pictures.)

I put over 100 miles on the bike today. For the first ride, we went from my Uncle's house where we were working on it to the top of Mt. Lemmon. It was quite a distance through the city to Catalina Highway, which leads to the top of the mountain and then there is about 27 miles of beautiful, twisting road to the summit. There is an elevation gain of approximately 6550 feet from the bottom to the top and this promised to be a good challenge for my Benly. It did really well. I was mostly able to cruise comfortably at 35-40 MPH from bottom to top, although a few of the steeper sections required a downshift into second and I had to wind it up a bit tighter than I would have liked.

Here is a picture of the road from one of the vista points. The section from the part you can see in the picture to the place I stopped to take it was one of those tougher spots where I spent a good amount of time in second gear. The twists and turns in this picture are pretty representative of the rest of the road. There are tight turns and long sweepers. Oh, and the views are great.

So here goes from the beginning. We were pretty hungry after tinkering around and testing the bike all morning so we stopped at McDonald's for some lunch on the way to the mountain.

Mt. Lemmon is really neat because you start in an upper Sonoran Desert lifezone and end up in a Ponderosa Pine forest. They say the change in foliage is similar to driving from South to North from the Mexican border to the Canadian one. I took a few shots at the first pull-out for contrast with later pictures.

We made it up to the half-way point (this is Windy Point Vista, which is where the first picture in this post was taken) and decided to let the bikes take a break. Most of the really hard riding was out of the way at this point but there were still a few steep spots to come.

You can see a group of bikers in the background in this picture. They were riding as a club on their Harleys and the state chapter President came over to talk to me about the bike. Apparently he started riding on a CA95 and mine brought back a lot of memories. He told us a few stories and we were on our way.

As we got close to the top, we ran into a hail storm. That stuff stings! We pulled over at the Ski Valley and took refuge in the gift shop until it blew past. We got a free bike wash out of it too, although mine is still filthy.

This is the part where I found out that my speedometer leaks. Luckily it had time to dry out by the time I got home.

A few more miles of very slow, very twisty road and we were at the summit, or at least as far as you can go before they close off the road. We stopped to take in the view and I snapped a few more pictures of my motorcycle.

We headed back down the mountain a ways, drove through the village of Summerhaven and continued on until the road dead ended at Marshall Gulch. This is a beautiful spot that has escaped forest fire for a number of years and is a popular place to hike and picnic. In the first picture, you can see a very tall man standing next to his very small motorcycle.

We hung out there for a few minutes, enjoying the shade, and then decided to head home. The ride was pretty uneventful except for the part where some lady in an Expedition decided it would be fun to drive right at me on the wrong side of the road. Luckily there was a wide shoulder and I was able to swerve out of her way. We stopped again at Windy Point where a guy on a Hayabusa Turbo that he claimed made 305HP told me about his dad's 305 Dream.

We stopped at one more vista point on the way down and took a few pictures.

I made it home in one piece, even though a monsoon storm was rolling in and the wind was blowing me all over the place. My chain has stretched and is in desperate need of an adjustment. I also plan on adjusting the tappets and the cam chain before I do too much more riding as a precaution as well as resurfacing the clutch disks to try to get the slipping problems I was having on the way home under control.

All in all, it was a great ride. It feels nice to be able to actually ride my bike instead of dreaming about it and asking questions on here. Thank you to everyone who gave me information and advice. One more Benly is on the road.

Puzzleparadise · #48 06-25-2012, 02:13 AM

That's an awesome photo diary, thanks for sharing!

kartgreen · #49 06-25-2012, 08:57 AM

Buckets , that's one hell of a first ride !!! Glad you made it O.K. and without incident . A friend of mine was killed 2 weeks ago just blocks from home when a young lady driving and texting rearended him throwing him into oncoming traffic only to be run over by another unaware driver of an SUV .
As much fun as it is to ride you have to be ever vigilant to the other drivers . I take the additude that they don't see me so I watch out for them .
Enjoy your bike and ride safe .

Buckets81 · #50 06-25-2012, 05:10 PM

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, kartgreen. I don't like driving in traffic in my Jeep, much less on the little Benly. I'm going to try to avoid it whenever posible but I know things happen. I got the same exact advice from the biker I talked to on my trip yesterday.

I got the screws in the mail today by the way. Thank you very much for sending them.

ByTheLake · #51 06-26-2012, 01:45 AM

Excellent pictures and narrative, thanks for sharing. I sure look forward to getting my Benly on the road and hopefully doing a little sight seeing myself.

Jetblackchemist · #52 06-27-2012, 03:24 PM

Done.

Buckets81 · #53 06-30-2012, 05:53 PM

I took it out again today for a nice long ride. I rode to my uncle's house and swapped out the 80/100W H4 bulb for a standard 55/60 watt bulb and then rode over to my brother's house. My brother lives about 15 miles from me on the other side of town and I completely ran out of juice before I got home. The bike is sitting in the carport on the charger and I'm scratching my head as others seem to have had good luck with the same conversion. My wiring harness looks good. The only thing I can think of is that the ignition switch wasn't put back together properly when it was taken apart for cleaning. It seems to function in all of the positions but according to the diagram, it activates an additional charging circuit when the key is in the light position and it doesn't seem to be doing that. It drops from a good if not slightly low charging voltage with the light off to just barely over 12v with it on. I'm trying to eliminate all other possibilities before I have the stator rewound as that isn't exactly cheap.

Jetblackchemist · #54 07-01-2012, 01:47 AM

Done.

Buckets81 · #55 07-01-2012, 07:05 AM

I mounted the rectifier in the stock location against the frame with the ground wire going to the spot where the old rectifier grounded out. You did post instructions for wiring it in your tutorial and I wired it to those instructions. Without pulling the bike apart to double check, I'll just quote you from your original post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetblackchemist

How do you wire the rectifier? Red to positive on new rectifier, holding red at 6 O'clock on a clock face ground is at 12, Brown is at 3 and yellow is at 9.

To be honest, I don't know what the stator looks like. I haven't had it out of the bike. I had kind of assumed that it would look like everything else that I have gotten into that wasn't exposed to the elements for decades, brand new.

If I do replace or rewire the stator, what are my options? Would the stator from a 1 volt bike like the CD175 fit? To be perfectly honest, if I'm going to pull the thing out, I feel like I might as well replace it with a 12 volt part.

Buckets81 · #56 07-01-2012, 07:38 AM

Looking at the instructions again, I think I wired the rectifier incorrectly. I was holding the positive at 12:00 instead of 6. Would that be a possible explanation of my charging issues?

Jetblackchemist · #57 07-01-2012, 04:49 PM

Done.

Buckets81 · #58 07-01-2012, 05:48 PM

I hate it when I make bonehead mistakes!

Buckets81 · #59 07-02-2012, 12:37 PM

Just pulled it apart (ugh) and it looks like I have it wired correctly, although instead of a yellow wire, I have a green one with yellow stripes. Also, there is a small amount of wax coming out of my coil so it looks like that is going bad. If anyone is around to answer before I start putting it back together, will I hurt anything by switching the green/yellow wire with the brown one for testing purposes?

comp_wiz101 · #60 07-02-2012, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kartgreen

Buckets , that's one hell of a first ride !!! Glad you made it O.K. and without incident . A friend of mine was killed 2 weeks ago just blocks from home when a young lady driving and texting rearended him throwing him into oncoming traffic only to be run over by another unaware driver of an SUV .
As much fun as it is to ride you have to be ever vigilant to the other drivers . I take the additude that they don't see me so I watch out for them .
Enjoy your bike and ride safe .

Sorry to hear about your friend. I haven't ridden mine yet, but I plan on only taking it down quiet roads out in the country.