Muttster: A long, slow '74 resto-mod

Lookin’ Good!

Interested to know whether or not your toes and kickstart interfere with each other, especially when hooking the pedal up to change down?

Looks GREAT!

I like the little High Rider tank, especially with a Corbin Gunfighter seat (but they're too hard for my bony butt)

Nigel - Yeah there isn't much room there for boots to keep the toe clear and the heel off the peashooter. Will have to fiddle with the angles a bit. Would be easier with a 2-1 like Mikes....

Paul - i kinda like the look too and had a one off racing hump I got with the bike I used to use with it before I got an interstate tank and then I cut the nose off of it.

The thing I like about the Highrider is how easy it is to work on stuff when it is still on. Plus, it has a crappy old paint job so there isn't any problem there.

So, on thinking today in between paying (hesitate to use the word "real") work, about why I am not getting first gear easily when stopped I think the clutch stack height and adjustment are correct. Maybe I just dont want to take the primary apart again...

I did the clutch rod adjuster till it I could feel it touch on the operating lever and then backed out a full turn. There is about 3/16 of slack at the lever.

I did use 2 new Barnett plates instead of the old ones that were in previously, as I had them on hand, with the three bronze plate that were in. I cleaned all of the bronze and iron plates in petrol. I seem to recall measuring the stack and that it was in tolerance to what should be expected from dynodave's site, but cant find that I wrote it down, so am unsure if that is true or not. Could it be the case that they need to "break in" a bit?

When I adjusted the primary chain tension, I did it to spec - slackening to 3/8" or 9.5mm from DEAD TIGHT. I measured this by depressing and lifting and measuring the distance the roller pins traveled. I had to push it fairly hard in both directions, so my question is how hard should it need to be pushed? I am guessing this is likely the culprit as to why I am not getting first gear easily when stopped - that I dont have enough slack?

Does it stick into first if you allow the clutch to drag a little? That’s what mine is like and conversations on here have shown that so are quite a few other boxes that otherwise perform faultlessly.

Fast Eddie said:

Does it stick into first if you allow the clutch to drag a little? That’s what mine is like and conversations on here have shown that so are quite a few other boxes that otherwise perform faultlessly.

Click to expand...

Not really that I noticed. I tried that a few times and it didn't seem to catch. Most successful was reaching down and giving it a good yank. Even then sometimes it felt like it went in but when I released the clutch, nada.

I backed off the tension on the primary and it shifts much better now. Not perfect tho. I used a 10mm open end in the inspection hole with a reasonable instead of hard finger pressure and I thought the play might have been a bit short, more like 9mm than 9.5 so I will give it a bit more slack and see how that goes.

I took it out on some nice sparsely run country roads around my house to bed in the new brakes and I noticed a bunch of things:
* soooo smooth. No vibes. Even my wife remarked the sound was smoother.
* it revs up fast. I need to be careful...
* it wont rev back down quickly after the throttle.has been open a while. Throttle snaps right back, so i don't think it is fouling. Maybe i need to look at the float heights?
* the front end bounces all over the place, so the landsdownes need some dialling in
* my indicators have stopped flashing. The running lights work but they don't flash. They did when I installed them. Grr...
* there is a strange whining noise that I noticed about 50mph or so, which disappears when I pulled in the clutch. Never heard that before the rebuild. Sounds like it's coming from the primary, but it could be the tranny I guess. I am using Type F and Redline lightweight shockproof. Any ideas?

Some of you know that I had a bit of an off back in march, about 1250 km south of home and broke my collarbone in 5 pieces.




Broke some stuff on the bike too. And since my shoulder subsequently froze up (still only ~80%) and we have been in/out of lockdown in NZ, I have been slow to fix it. I still haven ridden anything since then... sigh.

But, I have been poking at things a bit.

I decided to do a bit of an upgrade since my knees havent always been great since I played catcher in school for a long time and hurt them skiing as well. I can feel/hear the right one grate as I go up the stairs every time. So time for an ounce of prevention... or rather, about 5 kgs.



After reading a bit, and on Matt's advice I decided not to fit a second adjuster for the tranny. I am hoping this pans out well.





This is really a superb piece of kit, and really straightforward to install. As usual, Matt's instructions are great. Since the pic I have gotten all of the electrics for it hooked up too.

One of the crash victims was the primary cover.



Some 240 grit on the orbital sander, and then 400, 800, 1200 wet/dry and a buffing pad on the drill with autosol, et voila.

The exhaust also took a whack.



I cleaned it up and hit it with some matt ceramic bbq paint. The paint is really a great match and it looks better in person than in the pic. You wouldnt notice if you didnt know it was there.

As you can see from the post of the cradle above, I had my horn and ignition key hanging off the front of the battery tray. With the estart, these had to move.

I have a Stebel horn that I really like the sound of and wanted to put back on. But it is heavy and has broken two mounts and I didnt want to pull the rear end apart to put it in the stock horn location.

So, the meep meep horn I had on the front of the tray had to find a new home.

Luckily, it fit here and I had already had holes drilled there to mount it from my old RITA that was retired in the original rebuild.

For the ignition, I took the suggestion from @Fast Eddie and decided to fit a mo.lock - a contact free digital ignition lock that uses RFID.



Grant Tiller made up a wiring diagram for me for +earth for this unit and my bike given the other mods I have made. You can see them at the link below.

I had to find a spot for it, which wasnt super easy given it cant be behind metal, and with adding the CNW kit things were becoming cramped in the middle.

And as I had to replace the speedo cup, I had an idea...




So, I made a bracket out of some thin galvanized strapping I had laying around.



And sprayed it and mocked it up.





Et voila.



It works really well (on the lift, LOL) and I think it is a reasonable solution. Time will tell.

A while ago I picked up a lightly used carb gantry from @joe czech and so I have installed it now, too.



Super straight forward, especially from all the previous installs and special thanks to @swooshdave for his thread.

One thing I did notice doing this and from posts from @Time Warp is that I had re-used my 32-30 tapered manifolds from my RH10 head in the rebuild with my ported FA head, which has 32mm inlets. So, I got some 32-32 manifolds and am back on the fuel mix analysis train. Will be interesting to see what the differences are.

My L side NYN rear sets took a hammering. Completely bent my new mouting plate I had made at the start of the year and wallowed out the counter sink at the rear, rashed the foot peg and broke the brake lever.



I have never found a good position with these pegs and the brake lever was anemic, so I guess this was the final straw on this experiment.

So, back to the Don Pender Dunstall repops. These have a great brake lever, but the shifter was always too long for my foot. So, I figured out a jig to add some heat and pull them in about 18mm.



We'll see how these go.

Other little stuff has been done too.

• Straightened the silencer mounts since they were all bent up
• Had the side cover repaired since it was dented in and the paint was chipped off. Looks flawless even from the inside.
• A new throttle since my old one was knackered.
• New clutch lever since that was rashed.
• Polished the front axle spindle as that was rashed as well.
• Bought a new front mudguard since it too was rashed and had a crease in it. I tried pounding it out, but it was not looking that good and so it goes on the spares heap.

Hopefully I will get it fired up this week.

Wow, you have been busy !

You’re gonna love the E start!

It’ll be interesting to see is there manifolds give more oomph, they should I think, especially in the higher rev range.

Really clever idea for the keyless go unit mounting!

One question, what primary drive did you have prior ?

Fast Eddie said:

Wow, you have been busy !

You’re gonna love the E start!

It’ll be interesting to see is there manifolds give more oomph, they should I think, especially in the higher rev range.

Really clever idea for the keyless go unit mounting!

One question, what primary drive did you have prior ?

Click to expand...

IWIS chain, mixed stack bronze/Barnett plates.

I also got the 1cm RFID tag which can drop right into the glove finger for.the Midas touch.

Nice work .