Rayne is not afraid to put miles on it with trips interstate and up north...
Despite being maintained in pristine condition Rayne's pan gets it share of dirt roads; here doing 100kph on the dirt 20 ks out of Terowie...
Well, he's caught up on a few other jobs and now figures the time has come for major changes for a third time. First up is a Meatballs 4" over springer and three degree raked headstem bearing cups.
Step one. Put her up on my truing stand. Step two remove the front end...
Thought this was a nice character shot. Better lighting and camera would make this really special, but hey! We're here to make changes...
HD big twins have removable headstem bearing cups between 1949 and 1986 (up to 88 on Soft tails), so we need to remove standard bearing cups so the raked cups can be installed.
Just a note here; Using raked bearing cups allows you to gain true rake of an extra 3 degrees. This increases trail and therefore stability on the road. Raked tripe trees on the other hand produce fake rake and reduce trail and therefor stability. They should only be used over 12" of extension and 45 or more degrees of rake to reduce larger trail figures that make for heavy low speed handling. When mounting a springer on a stock neck it is advisable to add the raked bearing cups as the springer moves the axle a couple of inches forwards recuding trail.
If this confuses you go here... http://www.choppersaustralia.com/definitions.html
3 degree cups can also be reversed if the Man gets out his tape to check whether you comply with Oz's 550 RidikulusRool.
Tool I use to easily knock out the cups is an old file (swap meet cheapie, they make good knives, chisels, drifts etc)...
Drift is used on each of the four axes to keep the cup from pushing out crooked and binding and damaging the neck...
Here's the file modified into a bearing drift. I use a 'half round' file. End is shaped as shown here. 1. ground to an 15 degree angle(A). 2. Then to stop it cutting into the neck a 1-2mm chamfer is created. Works beautifully...
With the cups out, we get the chopper level. In this case we place a spirit level against the rear disc brake rotor. You can also use the tyre, of if you have a swing arm, across the swing arm...
Once levelled, plumbobs are used off the centre of the rear tyre and off the steering head (two blue arrows). These are lined up with a centre line on the truing stand. I use a laser through the centre of the steering head to align the new off set bearing cups...
Now this may seem a bit extreme, but it does allow me to make sure everything is dead true. However, the raked cups are marked front and rear with a punch mark and these can be fairly accurately lined up by eye on the steering head if you are very careful...
The raked bearing cups move the bearing 12mm further apart. This is no problem on telescopics. But the springer hardware has to be modified so the top nut will have enough thread and the top clamp will cover the tops of the rear legs adequately. The long nut that adjusts the bearing tension needs to be shortened in the lathe by 12mm. This involves removing the bottom hex section...
Nut installed. You can see here extra height of the raked cups...
Springer lock stops line up with the top tube. Rayne's tank is 10mm too far forwards and the springer will hit it on full lock. For safety's sake we want 5mm clearance on full lock so I tape a couple of 5mm rubber blocks (red arrows) to the tank. The fork stops are now 4mm on one side and 8mm on the other. We will drill some 5.5mm holes on each side of the top tube, thread them to 1/4 UNF and screw in a pair of button heads with small spacers. This not only keeps the forks off the tank, but also is a very tidy way to stop the paint cracking... tomorrow's job...
I then left Rayne to play. Front wheel on and trying some TCS stainless apehangers and a Bates style headlight (instead of his twin rectangular lamps)...
Tomorrow well get on with the fork stops, axle spacers,brake anchor and front guard...
