Dave's Bike Is Coming Along Pretty Quickly Now

It was time again for another stop by Dave's house to work on his vintage RD400 restoration. We made some pretty good progress tonight, getting to within a point where one or two more sessions should be all we need to finish the job.



Before I showed up, Dave had placed the fuel tank on the frame to see if it would clear the aftermarket coils he mounted on the frame. You can see that we still haven't mounted the carbs yet because a yellow towel is still stuck in the carb ports of the engine.



A little closer shot. Dave had installed the coils with the yellow wiring connected to the spark plugs, and everything looks pretty good.



Here is one of the carbs after it was rebuilt. Looks like Dave decided I should be a 'Hand Model'...



Progress at the end of the day. On this side we:Installed the oil pump hoses, pressure bled the oiling system, adjusted the throttle cable pull to the pump, connected the motor electrical harness to the chassis harness, wired up the ignition coils, to include making a Y-splitter for the coils and removing the ballast resistor, trimmed the yellow spark plug wires to length, installed the crankcase ventilation breather hose, installed the rebuilt carbs and mounted fuel crossover tube, installed all of the drain hoses on the carbs, rebuilt the kickstarter assembly, rebuilt the tachometer drive carrier, flipped the tacho-drive cable core because it was in backwards, pulled the oil tank float sensor cable through and plugged it in.



On the left side, the clutch actuation mechanism was adjusted for free play, the oil tank was installed and all of the hoses were connected (4), the tank was filled with oil in order to prime the pump, the gearshifter was installed and the throttle cable was installed (and removed because it was the wrong part). Unlike the too-short clutch cable, this one was too long. We're going to have to get a replacement one in.

As we were working on pulling the the throttle cables out of the bike, Katrina called to inform me it was 10:30 and it was a work night. Oops! We were having so much fun, we didn't realize it was that late. Well, time to head home and regroup for another whack at it later.