NGWClub®, Inc.

Brrr... Glad to see it/you in the basement. Chilled me just looking at that.
I've done a few bikes & cars in the snowy, rainy outdoors.
Those were younger days.

HOTT (following along )

I knew there was a reason I cleaned out the car... The remainder of the '78 frame hardware, all bagged and tagged!

A couple of glamour shots, lol! Next up, a good cleaning and assessment.

You may want to pull the swing arm to see how the cage needle bearings are doing. Mine were caked with dried old grease and frozen solid in the hardened crap. I used some Playdo to make an imprint of the special castor nut and bought a $6 large socket and cut the 4 tangs out of the socket with a cutoff wheel to remove that one side of the swing arm.
The swingarm moved up and down fine on the frame when I was at the stage you are now, yet internally it was in need of a complete flush and clean out of the hardened grease and a refresh with new grease.
I didn't need to replace any parts just clean and refresh the internals.

Yep, I plan on pulling the swing arm, just haven't gotten there yet. I made the same socket tool while doing an 1100, and I think/hope they're the same...

Today, I thought I'd take stock of the carbs that came with the '79. As the photos show, they are generally complete, but someone's obviously been in them before. Several missing bolts, stripped heads and (YUK!) RTV for a plenum gasket?!? I can hardly wait to see what's inside...

Well, not nearly as bad as I envisioned! That's the #2 slide, which is pretty scuffed up. When the time comes, we'll see how it polishes up...

The bottom end. No broken posts, no corrosion that I can see at this point. A good bit of rust in the bowls, lol! One of the bowl screws was replaced by a SAE screw, but the threads don't look too buggered up, and a correct screw seemed to thread in with no problem. Of course I didn't fully tighten it, but I'm hopeful it will be fine. The bowl gaskets look quite new, but a Randakk kit will soon be on order, as will the video. I've not done a set of 1000 carbs, and they are quite different than the 1100's. So, I'll just lightly reassemble them and wait for the kit and video.

Next up, checking out the brakes!

This thread almost fell off the first page, which means I haven't been keeping up, so here we go!

Digging into the brakes, both the '78 and '79... Oops! Dang nabbit! What, again? Drat! For some reason, I seem to be all out of luck and PB Blaster (I'm sure the kid 'borrowed' it and left it somewhere...). I guess I'll have to hone my broken screw/bolt/bleeder skills!

I suppose it's half-dozen of one, and six of the other, but I need to decide if I'll be using the'78 front brakes, or the '79. The broken bleeder screw is on one of the '78 calipers, and the master cylinder with a broken screw is the '79. The brake piston size is different; larger on the '79, so I'm assuming the the master cylinder change was made to best match this change. Other than the broken screw, both masters will need to be rebuilt, with new reservoirs, and all of the caliper pistons are quite rusty and pitted, so unless there's a huge difference in parts prices, it's really a toss up. Any opinions or suggestions?

Well, my left-hand bits didn't work so well, at least not to grab on and back out the broken bleeder or screw in the master cylinder. I finally managed to digg out the remains of the bleeder, then ran a tap thru and cleaned up the threads. The screw in the master being much smaller in diameter didn't allow me too many options, but I did manage to drill a pretty straight hole through the remains just a tad larger than the inside diameter of the screw, then got out the tap again. It worked fairly well, but buggered up the threads at the top coming back out. I'm hoping there's enough threads left to get a decent bite. I'm not sure if I can find a longer screw that matches, but that would be ideal.

More progress! Some pretty nasty snot in the '78 master cylinder. The front caliper that had the broken bleeder also was full of goopy snot. Next will be the two rear masters and the '79 rear caliper, and then I need to decide which set to rebuild.

How did you deal with the taper at the bottom of the bleeder threads?

I just drilled in steps up to the point where I could see some of the threads on the inside of the hole. Because the lower taper of the bleeder screw is smaller, it just broke loose in the bottom of the hole, basically preventing the larger bit from going any deeper. Then I tediously worked my way around the threads with various picks, etc. to clean out the threads, followed by a tap to more or less reshape the existing threads. I guess I'm kind of obsessive, huh?

I'm liking the 'crusty' and faded look of the front master cylinder cup. The inside looks like new except for some crud, and the rubber on the cap looks good, so I'll probably just get a new large o-ring for the cup/master joint.
There's gotta be a snap ring in there somewhere... More crud! Yum!