That Poor Valkyrie

[sgwilly]

Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries

My theme song. There are written instructions that it is to be played at my funeral along with "Supper's Ready" by Genesis, "Turn of the Century" by Yes, the entirety of "Die Moldau" by Smetana, and "Happy Birthday" by the Beatles.

[sunnbobb]

PART 3: Nourishing the Baby

I rolled into the shop after a cold wet, but uneventful ride.  I noticed it was a bit of a challenge to find neutral, going back and forth from first to second trying to hit the sweet spot. The next morning I got up, grabbed a coffee and headed into the shop for a good inspection. 

The first thing I noticed was a 2 or 3 drop drip of something on the floor... THE PO had stated he thought the radiator might have a leak, and had added some stop leak, so I wasn't too concerned.I took the side cover off and noticed something strange about the overflow bottle. There were two distinct layers of fluids!... Good old green antifreeze on the bottom, and.. oil? on the top? 

Well my first thought was a blown head gasket, however, every time I'd ever seen the mix in an overflow bottle, the mix was like brown pea soup.  Upon a closer look, there was very much oil on top. I decided to check the oil level and see if there was any soup in the crankcase. The oil sump level was down under the bottom line, but the oil was clear. I drained the sump and there was no soup, just clear, or brown used oil.  It was apparent that the PO had put oil in the overflow bottle, thinking that's where you fill the oil.. Derrrrr.  I also drained the antifreeze and there was only antifreeze in the bucket.

Next up was to check out the air filter. No easy task on a Valk.  I wonder what Honda engineer  figured out one would need to remove the fuel tank in order to change the air filter -  and then hide the petcock in the center of the tank. Score one for Moto Guzzi, they have theirs off to one side, making hose reconnection easy.  Fuel tank off, and under it looks like an abandoned saloon from a ghost town. I went to town with a brush, soapy water and a shop vac to soak up the over spill. Opening up the filter box, I expected to find food storage for a chipmunk, but nope, it was just dirty and full of dead bugs.  I went online to order a new filter and discovered that every supplier on the planet was back ordered for OEM filters. Covid supply chain issues strike again. 

As a side note, a couple weeks ago, over on the Valk boards, folks noted they had finally received their back ordered filters, and it was like 30 people at once. I can just imagine the post office suddenly overwhelmed by a ton of boxes all the same, all coming from one destination.

So to recap, I changed the oil, antifreeze and final drive fluids. I then set about fulfilling the Goldwing Credo: Thou shalt always change the belts". This bike has 50K on it. Unlike previous Goldwing models, Honda actually had a recommendation when to change the belts! 100K. I thought, well, this bike is 20 years old, probably a good idea to change both the belts and the idlers. Using the same old time tested procedure as previous goldwings, I built the idlers from Gates Pulleys. The OEM idlers are the same on a Valk as on every Goldwing before it. All the parts, including the belts came from Rock Auto. Godd bless their mail order souls.  There is one timing belt cover bolt the manual states to coat with sealant before inserting and tightening. Of course! this is where the drip on the floor was coming from.. Derrrr.

Next up was straightening up whatever was hanging up the choke lever and throttle grip. The choke lever was found to be binding on the handlebars, where the bar is flattened and drilled to pass wires through. A little sanding on the barrel and it was operating properly. The throttle felt sticky and did not automatically snap shut. Well golly gee, I don't know how someone could get the push pull cables reversed and then attached to the opposite carb throttle wheel but... the throttle now operated like it was supposed to with a solid snap back to closed position.

It was time to replace fluids in the brake and clutch system. I'm beginning to sound a little redundant, but yes, the existing fluids were a little "soupy".. One of the cool things about the Valk slave clutch is the brilliant idea to run the bleeder up under the side cover. Easy peasy to bleed! I wonder if the bleeder pipe from a valk could be used on some earlier GL1200's to make it much easier to bleed as well?

Lastly, and at the end of a long shop day, I checked the air pressure in the tires... no wonder the PO had been noticing poor cornering and braking. 15 lbs is not enough air for anything except maybe a wheelbarrow. I am amazed I got the thing home without noticing anything sloppy. 

Aired up, full of new fluids, the Valk was feeling the love, and was put to bed in a warm place. Sweet dreams my monster.

[Fred Camper]

Solid ride for sure. Nice to have a mechanicly sound ride with no major operations.

[Whiskerfish]

PART 3: Nourishing the Baby
SNIP
Well golly gee, I don't know how someone could get the push pull cables reversed and then attached to the opposite carb throttle wheel but... the throttle now operated like it was supposed to with a solid snap back to closed position.SNIP

Ya gotta Love PO's!!

[Lucien Harpress]

Yeah, the Valkyrie is such a weird mix of amazing and amazingly poor design decisions. The clutch bleed is amazing, the choke cable routing of "cable-to choke mechanism on one half of rack-to another cable that loops around the back-to the OTHER choke mechanism half" is odd, but seems to work, and the fuel tank line routing is just bizarre. I didn't have too many issues with my fuel lines, but the overflow line is a NIGHTMARE.

Although my personal favorite has to be the two ignition coils bracketed nice and neat, vertical behind the carb rack, and the third kind of... wedged up under the gas tank on the left side, like the world's most important afterthought.

[sunnbobb]

"cable-to choke mechanism on one half of rack-to another cable that loops around the back-to the OTHER choke mechanism half" is odd,

That WAS interesting, Although I found it rather zen to take it apart and lube every bit of it. I found myself wondering if it was going to go back together easily.. Pretty amazing how well it works.

[sgwilly]

I rely on my 8" hemostats to get that fuel drain hose on/off. I'm not sure I could do it otherwise.

[sunnbobb]

Time For New Clothes.

With a semblance of a running machine, it was now time to go a little deeper in the weeds.

The first thing I noticed when I got it home was how difficult it was to find neutral. Having not used the internet much after I invented it, I took a deep dive into Videos, Articles, and chats about these machines. And believe me, there is a lot out there.

Several people had sworn by a small device that attaches to the shift lever cleverly called a "Shifter Buddy". Upon closer examination, I discovered why they felt this device improved shifting, and I agreed to the idea. The Valk does not have a straight forward attachment of the lever to the shifter shaft. Instead, it has a dog leg to a ridiculously long lever. The lever inherently puts awkward pressure on the shifter shaft, causing seals to leak handily. Luck for me this, had not happened yet. The shifter buddy is a simple idea. It simply places the fulcrum point closer to the end of the lever, relieving the angular pressure and giving the shift lever a chance to operate straight on the shaft. Oh, and shifting actually works like a Honda is supposed to. A 30 buck add on that vastly improves shifting, and prevents the need to continually replace seals.

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Everything I read kept warning about the need to clean and lube the final drive splines whenever changing a tire. Given the history of the previous owner, I doubted this had been done. As with any Goldwing, one needs to remove the rear wheel to get at the final drive splines. Ergo, a small problem. The Valkyrie has no center stand. And it weighs 660 lbs. It also does not have a flat bottom for placement over a bike/transmission jack. I have no idea how a shop can change a rear tire. BUT, again, Valkyrie owners provided a solution. There exists a heavy duty metal frame that attaches to the bottom of the Valk, enabling a standard Trans jack to lift the bike. They are hand made, and made well, by a guy out in Montana. Running about 90 bucks, or the price of a good jack, they take about 15 minutes to mount. Other than rigging up some sort of a crane to the rafters of my shop or building a custom cradle, I couldn't figure out any other way to do it. I decided to spring for the frame. I figured it would be a good thing, in case I ever got a flat tire in the middle of no where. Every shop has a floor jack, but I don't think many have a crane. (Hamster can relate - 2021 Deadwood run flat tire outside of Spokane).

Getting the bike up on the jack and taking off the rear wheel, it actually didn't look too bad. I cleaned and relubed the spines with good old Honda Lithium grease.

Being a Goldwing, I knew I should change the belts. The manual states the Valk belts should be replaced at 100K. I wasn't buying that, and proceeded to open up the timing belt cavity. While I was in there, I discovered the timing belt tensioners where the exact same ones used on every other previous Goldwing made. A perfect opportunity to dig up an ancient article in the NGWCLUB Tech section on how to build better tensioners for cheap. I think the parts where around $40 and it took about 2 hours to build and install them. Belts were also relatively cheap from Rock Auto, about $30 for a set.

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It was now time to tackle the aestetics. First was to remove the clearcoated Valkyrie rider poster from the tank, and to work the dents out. After removal of the tank (See above), and being certain there were no fumes, I used a heat gun to scrape the original paint off. I used a ball end rod to hammered ou the dent as best I could, then applied Bondo to smooth out what was left. a couple shots of filler primer and elbow grease, and it was ready for it's next artistic interpretation. I'm not going to go into too much detail on how I pin striped and layed the rainbow mist on it, suffice to say, 6 coats of Spraymax 2K, gloss in parts and flat in others did the trick. One thing is for sure, if Spraymax wanted me to do a testimonial, I'd gladly do it. The stuff is the bomb. Better than any spray gun clearcoat I've ever worked with. The trick is to make sure the paint is warm. and to apply light to medium coats. It is self leveling, and once you get 3 or four coats on, you wake up in the morning with a flat glossy flat surface with no orange peel. Or you wake up high from breathing the fumes if you didn't wear a respirator.

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My new front fender arrived, and I gave it a light 800 grit sand and clear coated it as well. Then it was on to the rear end. If you know me, I never put up Christmas lights, in fact I pretty much remove them from every bike rear fender as well. I bobbed the rear fender, leaving the Brake/tail light assembly on. I then added some very bright and somewhat hidden LED turn signals to the rear side of the fenders.

For the front end, I also removed the stock lollypop turn signals and replaced them with LED signal mirrors. They are brighter than OEM filaments, and are located at eye level with on coming drivers. This particular pair also had a neat feature. Rear facing LEDs. I replaced all the indicators and dial lights with LED. I could now actually see the neutral light in daylight. The standard machinations of converting LED turn signals applied here. A new LED flasher ($15) and a couple diodes up by the turn signal indicator light did the trick. If you ever do an LED conversion and you bike has only a single turn signal indicator, you will need to do the diode trick. It's well documented on that information infrastructure I invented.

A nice Saddlemen seat was ordered and installed. Very comfortable BTW. I did not care for the Philips screw attachment for the rear of the seat, so I improvised a knob that can be turned by hand, allowing the seat to be removed without the need for tools (which are located under the seat).

I intend to polish the wheels up to a chrome like finish, however, I discovered a long time ago that polishing becomes an easy task if you first vapor blast the thing you are polishing. Thus, the polishing will wait until I go to replace the tires and have the rubber off the rims.

The covers on the ends of the mufflers were pretty trashed, so I thought I might replace them. Upon removal, one finds there are three tubes of different length coming out of the rear of the muffler, concealed by the cover. In honor and memory of Lars "Bulldog" machine gun exhaust, I cut the end of the tubes to even lengths and let them be shown.

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The last and perhaps most interesting legacy of the previous owner was his amazing ability to install the throttle cables reversed. The pull cable and the push cable had been swapped. Swapping them into their proper place resulted in a proper "snap-back" throttle grip.

Today was the first day above 50 degrees and sunny since I started on this. I took it out for a ride and it was glorious. Yes, it's big, and yes it's heavy. But at 70, or heck even 30, it is an indescribable ride. The Norton, Motoguzzi, Triumph, Wards Riverside and GL1100 are pissed, but the Valk won the best of ride contest. Let's just hope we don't have an Animal Farm revolt in the shop when I'm not looking.

Post edit: I added a small windscreen to break the wind on my chest. It works great. The giant OEM screen is off to Ebay.

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[Old Fogey]

Loving that tank! You didn't do that in 5 minutes! And what is the seat from, or did you make it?

[Whiskerfish]

Loving that tank! You didn't do that in 5 minutes! And what is the seat from, or did you make it?

A nice Saddlemen seat was ordered and installed

She looks awesome!!

[Fred Camper]

Wow, just another example of a excellent naked bike build on a tight budget. Love the result. Perhaps I can sent some sun your way for a better outside shot, but nobody should have to send Sunnbobb sun.

[sgwilly]

After riding it for a while, it makes the 4 cylinder wings feel tiny.

Awesome job on that tank.

In the rear end, be sure to get that nylon flat washer in place. Otherwise, it’ll put the drive flange at a slight angle under load and start to wear in places it shouldn’t. Don’t ask how I know this.

[sunnbobb]

After riding it for a while, it makes the 4 cylinder wings feel tiny.

Awesome job on that tank.

In the rear end, be sure to get that nylon flat washer in place. Otherwise, it’ll put the drive flange at a slight angle under load and start to wear in places it shouldn’t. Don’t ask how I know this.

Thanks for the heads up!

[sunnbobb]

Loving that tank! You didn't do that in 5 minutes! And what is the seat from, or did you make it?

Hi John, it's stock seat sold by Saddlemen.

[sunnbobb]

Wow, just another example of a excellent naked bike build on a tight budget. Love the result. Perhaps I can sent some sun your way for a better outside shot, but nobody should have to send Sunnbobb sun.

I'd appreciate that Fred! The sale of take offs from the bike funded nearing 30% of the cost of the reconstruct. If you are sitting down, take a look on Ebay at what OEM tank badges are going for.