1974 CT70 K3 Restoration Project

[cjpayne]

You got the taper right. Thats all I ever worried about. Keeps oil from going around the screen. Never had a problem otherwise. Just remember that the oil flow is going from the bottom up.
Not all of the ones I've seen, but sometimes I have found a tad bit of rubber flashing thats just flopping around. I just trimmed it off. I've never come across a used screen that wasn't cleanable and reuseable, unless it had been (re)installed backwards.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

Progress! Slow but picking up the pace once the engine is done (stupid dowel pin). The frame looks good from a distance with a few blemishes up close. I chose to leave it the original paint for now and any original parts that cleaned up well. Maybe I'll spend the extra $800 someday on the frame, but I plan to ride this for now.

I may take a few of the zinc plated bolts and parts off here and there this winter and get them plated. Except for the brake linkage, engine and carb, most of the remaining parts are brand new or refurbished like brand new. I spent so much more money than I ever expected. $5 here, $20 there, and lots of $100 to $300 orders. I don't want to add it up. To be fair, I ordered a lot of new parts where I could have maybe made due with the old ones...fasteners mostly, specialty parts, etc.. Thanks to cjpayne and kirrbby, who helped me with parts last year.

On parts that needed replacing, I went OEM if possible. I can't believe how much rubber, wiring, cables, and seals are on this bike, $$$. The only salvageable rubber parts were the front shock boots, which I replaced in the 80's and were like new.

Stupid fork ears! Close, but not perfect. I have all the original turn signals and posts in great shape, but no way I'm mounting them if I ride this. They look ridiculous and my son will break/bend them, just like I did in my teens, I know it. I can't afford to ruin the fork ears... again!

Thanks to whoever suggested hanging the bike from the ceiling with straps. They go over the garage door opener and really made my life easier until the engine and kickstand is on.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

Here's that primary gear circlip. Note it's not the usual clip with ring plier holes. It says it's 17mm. Will any old 17mm clip work if thickness is right? Curious why they used this style without tabs and holes.

 

[cjpayne]

Here's that primary gear circlip. Note it's not the usual clip with ring plier holes. It says it's 17mm. Will any old 17mm clip work if thickness is right? Curious why they used this style without tabs and holes.

View attachment 57275

You could try it and see if it fits

 

[cjpayne]

Thanks to whoever suggested hanging the bike from the ceiling with straps. They go over the garage door opener and really made my life easier until the engine and kickstand is on.

View attachment 57274

That's what I do, but I wrap mine under the neck and then between the bar knobs. That way I can pull one strap out and lean the bike over a little if I want. Little triangular pieces of wood really help behind the tires too when they're strapped up and your torquing on things.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

I ordered the correct clip. $1.13 for the part, $7 for shipping it 50 miles. As long as I was spending all that shipping, I decided to order two and a couple more things. Dumb, but I understand their need to simplify their shipping options.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

Assembling the final part on the engine...left side cover. Noticed that the lower rear mount hole below the sprocket in the case is stripped. Helicoil? I've never used one before. Is that my best option?

I could go up a size and tap it but the screw would have to be up-sized as well. I'd forever have a mismatched screw but cheap and easy. Thoughts?

 

[69ST]

I'd helicoil it. A legit shop should do this for $10-15, tops.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

I thought re-assembly was going to be so much fun. Ugh! Seems to be taking forever. It's at this point I wish I had paid the extra $800 and had the frame done now instead of down the road some day.

I was running the new fuel lines and ran into something that didn't match up with my tear-down pics. Here's an old pic from when I took it apart. In this pic, it looks like the ribbed line (reserve) is running into the main port...clearly a mistake I made 35 years ago when messing with the carb. We never had the tank out of the frame so I'm assuming the ribbed line was still the reserve.

Just in case, can you guys confirm that the upper port, marked with an "o" is the primary line, and the lower port, marked with a "R" is the reserve port. Seems obvious but I

don't need any surprises now.

 

[cjpayne]

R is reserve

 

[ArcticMinibike]

It's Finished! Well, mostly. It's even an award winner on it's first debut out of the garage!

I put in many many late nights and one final push til 4 in the morning to get it together for a car show last weekend. My son and I hit a major low point the day before when we failed to get any spark. More on that later. We just about threw in the towel until we realized that there was no requirement for it to run at the show, just be there an look pretty.

Going on 4 hours of sleep, I threw it in the back of my truck and hauled it to the show. You should have seen the look on the guy's face when I rolled up to the exhibitor entrance in my crappy old Ford explorer, which hasn't had a wash in about 6 weeks. He gave my truck a look like "no way are you exhibiting that", then I explained there was a very small motorcycle in the back. We had a good laugh.

The best part...I won first place in the motorcycle category. The disclaimer...I was the only entrant. Hey, first is first! I was explaining to a friend at work how I'd invested a huge pile of cash and who knows how many hours to end up with a $10 plastic trophy. Still, I'll take it. Moral of the story...if you want to win a trophy, take your bike to a car show which just happens to have a motorcycle class. There were over 80 amazing cars, and 2 motorcycles. The other bike, a vintage Harley, belonged to a judge who was exempt from competing. Actually, I think I could have given him a run for his money, as it was pretty rough. I told him I could win a race against him any day...if we were pushing our bikes uphill with the engines off.

My only regret so far might be leaving the original paint as-is. It's only a minor regret, because it's really pretty nice other than a few small surface rust blemishes and a couple of cable rub spots on the head tube, the usual places. It's definitely original, so I won't worry about riding it and I can always paint it and re-chrome a few things down the road. Everything else has been replaced or gone through and everything is OEM unless not available. I'll probably pull a few things off this winter and get them some new zinc plating.

My original "before" pics were lost when the site moved to this new platform, but I'll get around to posting before and after shots soon.

Still more parts to buy here and there, like the exhaust header chrome. My original halves are a little banged up and one bolt is rusted and broken off. Have to work on the spark issue, yuck. Have to work on the cable routing, I'll be asking for assistance here. I have all the original turn signals but am not installing them. The fork ears were ripped to shreds once, and my "new" set are ripply enough as it is.

I can't thank you guys enough. Plenty more questions to come buy you guys really made it possible for me to get this far.

 

[cjpayne]

I think the bike looks pretty nice.
I went back through your thread and ALOT of your pics were edited by the moderator. Don't know why.

 

[allenp42]

Personally I think the paint, and the rest of the bike for that matter, looks great! Nice job to say the least. I agree with your decision to leave the turn signals in a box; I did the same. Again, nice work!

 

[kirrbby]

I had some time here and there this morning, and have rear thru most of this thread. You've come a loong way. Your bike looks awesome...really nice job. You HAVE to be very proud of that thing...your childhood bike...given a new, and I'll bet nicer, life. All done by you, with your son's help and guidance :--)
Good stuff ArcticMinibike.

When this site moved, the admin must have had to do some work to bring all of the pics along...cause every old post with pics says...last edited by a admin.
It's a shame that yours aren't showing up at all. Maybe PM Tiegden, or post a new thread in the site help forum, to see if he can help...before you try going back and RE-posting all of those pics.

 

[69ST]

Can't really blame you for leaving the paint as-is and not doing more with the chrome. Those can be tackled later and the chrome is easy...just pricey, especially those HL ears. The bike looks really good, the paint still clean, intact & vibrant enough to look fresh, at least in photos. IOW, it looks like a fresh restoration in the above photo. Take my word for it, that's saying something.

Funny thing about the HD race...back when your bike was new, you'd have had a chance of actually winning, on engine power. That was the dreaded AMF era; those bikes were often seen dead on the side of the road...in a puddle of oil.

As for the vintage photos, I think we all lost a lot. As best I can recall, I had close to 500 posted. The nuts-and-bolts, hardcore, tech involved with operating platforms is beyond my skill set. I would say this this, however...Ben made the right call on that one imho. I'm a dinosaur and don't like change either...probably less so than than most. Still, a lot has changed since 2005; specifically, I refer to phone technology and the old platform was basically dead but still walking. That was headed nowhere any good. BTW, a lot of damage was done by botophucket whom, I reckon, is probably one of the authors of the net neutrality "revision" It's a cyber-corporate jungle out there...

 

[ArcticMinibike]

Thanks for the compliments. I might change your minds if I took close up pics of all the flaws. I'm guessing we all focus mostly the flaws when we look at our own projects, where the average person wouldn't see them or care.

Regarding the lost pics, I messaged with Tiegden after the migration. I think he acknowledged some things were lost and offered to try and help me bring them back. I think with me, it may have been an issue with how they were stored or attached. I have all the pics and don't mind editing the posts if it doesn't cause problems. I'm more concerned about using the best method of posting pics. I've been shrinking them to a reasonable size, uploading as attachments and embedding full-size rather than thumbnails. Hopefully that's OK. I try to keep the file sizes small, 300k or less.

Now, onto why it has no spark. I'm dreading that diagnostic process... More to come.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

BTW, hardest part of the reassembly, by far, was getting the kill switch screw in the kill switch internal post. I bet I worked on that for 20 minutes or more. It was my very last step at 3:30am.

Because the throttle cable goes right through the same space and the post flops all around, it's nearly impossible to line everything up. I had to use the post to push the cable off to one side, then I couldn't line up the threaded hole or risked cross threading due to misalignment. What a pain. Maybe I should have installed the switch first, then run the cable. Anyone have this same problem and suggested solution?

Speaking of that area of the bar, how much lube on the throttle slide? The spiral rubs pretty hard on the slide. I used white lithium grease very sparingly. Should I use a bit more?

I used lithium because it's light and less sticky. Should I use something else?

If so, just in the area on the slide where the spiral engages?

I read the posts on the subject here but never really found a consistent answer. I'll probably do the booster spring mod to minimize cruise control, but still thinking on that one.

 

[cjpayne]

I always bathe the internals with bearing grease on the throttle and they always have the "cruise control".

As for the spark issue, go ahead and get a jumper wire with the proper connectors that go from the black wire of the stator plug to the HTcoil wire. That will eliminate the entire wiring harness and help track down the problem considerably.

 

[69ST]

Yeah, there's not much cubic real estate to work with inside the handlebars. So, what you're dealing with is just par for the course. Getting those tiny mounting screws started can be a MoFo, when you're tired & sleep-deprived. I usually do a preliminary alignment, using a small pick to locate & position the switch post. If nothing else, it can help show you which way you're gonna hafta wrestle the switch to get the screw started.

FWIW, I like lithium grease in this application and for the reasons you've stated.

I agree with CJ on the spark diagnosis. Find out if the problem is in the wiring, or the magneto assembly. Hopefully, you get no spark with the primary coil output jumpered directly to the HT coil. That would mean points or condenser. BTW...you do have a battery in place, with the proper 4-post modular plug, right? These bikes have an electrical "safety" in place...the primary circuit is run through the battery connector - those two positions with the half-loop of black wire. That's to (ostensibly) prevent you from starting the bike, sans battery, which will pop every bulb.

Don't worry about solving the no-spark issue. These ignitions are about as complicated as lawnmower magnetos.

 

[ArcticMinibike]

I'm a little unclear exactly how I should jumper the HT Coil and perform the test. More detail please.


Here's some background info on my wiring:

- The wiring harness is brand new reproduction
- I connected as many wires in the headlight junction area as possible, like color to like color, I've got a few unconnected spares for the turn signals
- When I have the battery in, key on, transmission in neutral, I get the green light on the speedo (a small victory)
- Points and condenser are new. hopefully I didn't overheat the condenser.
- I spliced a new wire on to my HT coil, I think I did a decent job with a quality splice kit, but anyway to test continuity without piercing the old part of the wire?
- I have a new stator rebuild kit from dratv but never installed it. It seemed to be missing a wire when compared to my original, but I'd have to check again. I left it in the box in case I didn't need it. I was disappointed in how cheap it looked and that it was T-Bolt branded. I have some T-Bolt parts on my KLX and they are sort of "meh" in the quality department.

I have a spare HT coil, but I don't know if either one is good and the condition of the wire is probably as rough as well. I'd have to find it and take a look. I doubt HT coils go bad but is there a way to test?

Speaking of wires in the headlight, and I'd have to look again, but it seemed there was one multi-port green and one single-port green coming from the harness. What's the single green one for? I think they are both solid green. At the time, I figured green was green. Maybe I'm imagining it. I better pop out the bulb and double check.

I had concerns about the stator a few weeks ago when swapping out the condenser and got some unexpected continuity readings. Everyone said that was OK, but I had a feeling something was wrong.

So...
Step 1, jumper the HT - please provide detail on how I should do it and what I should expect to see