Seat
I ordered a narrowcase seat from Road & Race and messed around a long time trying to get the seat to fit with the original rectangular taillight. I finally understood (!) that a rectangular taillight and round tail just doesn't work. I cut the end of the seat off and glassed in a mount for a CEV round taillight. I also had to fabricate some brackets to mount the seat to the frame. The front bracket was made from 2 pieces of .080" Al stock and riveted together. The rear was made from a strip of .100" thick Al riveted to hot formed .063 thick Ti. The rear bracket weighs nothing and is strong like crazy. I used screws and nutplates to mount the brackets to the seat as I wanted to be able to remove the seat to get at the electricals.
Finished seat
Make yourself a polishing rig, I bought a 1/2 hp grinder, removed the wheels and fitted cloth wheels. I polished the lower fork legs, cleaned up the struts, headlight brackets, front axle, points cover plate and lots of bits and pieces.
Warning: my method may be considered a little anal! Get 240, 320, 400, 600, 1000 and 1500 wet/dry sand paper and some crocus cloth. Get 2 cloth wheels and white and red polishing compound. Wash the part in varsol to completely degrease it. Then wash the part with detergent, some say a dish washer is perfect for this...... I then immerse the part in a bucket of water that has a box of baking soda dissolved in it and leave it for a while. This ensures that any acid is neutralized. Rinse really well and force dry the part with heat.
Using lots of water, start with the 240 and sand the surface until all surface markings, scratches or discoloration are removed, this usually takes a while. It is really important to get all the scratches out before you go to the next grit or you will have to start all over again! Rinse really well in water and go to the next higher grit. Use lots of water, if you are making a big mess, you are using enough water. Keep going until you are using the very wet crocus cloth. Wash the part with lots of water and dry. Charge your cloth wheel with the white compound and buff. Wear a mask and goggles and watch out that the wheel doesn't grab the part (experience speaking here) When you are happy with that finish, clean the compound off of the part and change wheels and charge with the red. Don't mix wheels or you will scratch the part up. I then final polish with Autosol.
All the above will get you a part that looks brand new and if you are patient will give the part a deep dark mirror finish. It takes a long time, it is boring and messy. It is the only method, other than paying someone else (who will do virtually the same thing but usually better) to get old corroded alloy to look new.
Polishing steel is the same except it really takes a lot longer and be really careful as removing any deep scratches takes forever. For buffing you only have to use one wheel with black compound.
Points Cover
I had 2 points covers that looked like crap. I took the best one and tore it apart for restoration. The cover is steel and once the chrome was removed, polished up nicely, I will take polished metal over chrome any day. The two mounting tabs were another matter, they were gone. They measured .030" thick which immediately reminded me of feeler gauges. I got some .030" feeler gauges and ground out 2 new tabs using the old tabs as templates and riveted it all together. Looks really good and the tabs will never corrode as they are stainless!
Electrical
The wiring harness from both the SCR and the GT were trash, so do I make a new harness or rewire it my way? As just about nothing from the stock system would be used, I made up my own wire harness. I decided to use a bus system because that's what I am most familiar with. This also meant a few more wires as everything will have its own ground. This is a good thing on a bike and makes it very easy to trouble shoot as each circuit is independent. One of my biggest problem was figuring out where I would put the bus. I decided to use a 4.7" x 7.3" Hammond box and fit it under the seat, if you look at the seat picture the box filled all the space between the brackets. The first box looked good and had lots of room. I fitted the box and started wiring when I realized that the rear wheel goes up when it hits a bump (doh!) and would effectively wipe out my electricals.....
Next was a much smaller 4.7" x 3.7" Hammond box that was mounted as forward as possible, the bracket in front of the box is the forward seat bracket. The rear wheel now had full travel. I used 14 gauge wire and all connections were crimped, soldered and sealed with heat shrink tubing. The heat shrink remains soft after you shrink it. I got the heat shrink from Aircraft Spruce. I also got my toggle switches from Aircraft Spruce as well. The black wire loom stuff came from McMaster Carr.
The silver rectangle on the aft face of the Hammond metal box is the new regulator from Phil. It is from a 6 volt Honda CT110. The socket to the right of the box is where I plug the rear light into. Mount the seat onto the frame and then pull the box onto the bottom of the seat with screws. Works great and hides everything from view.
One of the things that bothered me a was the lack of a front brake switch. I always use the front brake and the rear brake is used to settle down the back end. This means most of the time I would be showing little or no brake light. I was surfing the net and found an old Magura catalog that showed some switches that fit the Magura front brake lever. I have a pair of NOS dogleg Magura levers that I was going to use and dug them out. The front brake lever had a tapped hole for a brake light switch! Further surfing found some of the switches, they come with a rubber weather boot and the connectors. The switch simply screws into the lever.
The switch was also perfect for the rear brake light. I am using folding rearsets from Phil to clear the kick start lever and had to rig up something to hold the rear brake cable and rear brake light switch. The slot enables the brake lever to be adjusted up and down.
The front light is a CEV and has that neat Euro parking light thing. There is a small rectangular cut out by the headlight bulb socket with a small festoon light bulb behind it. When you went somewhere at night with your bike and had to park it on the street, you turned on the park light and your bike would be seen. It is a low wattage bulb so I guess the theory is that it wouldn't drain your battery. Hah! I got a bunch of 6 and 12 volt festoon bulbs of different wattage and tried the various bulbs to get some light and minimize battery drain. A 12 volt 10 watt bulb worked perfectly and I wired it into the main power circuit. This gave me a daylight running headlight with out using the main headlight. When I get some time I would like to replace the bulb with a bunch of white LED's and further reduce the load on the battery.
Anyway the wiring is
done. Keeping it as simple as possible,
no
ignition switch with one mains fuse at the battery. Two toggles
mounted
in the headlight bullet. One is for bus power and powers the
daylight
running light, ignition, horn and brake lights. The other switch
powers the headlight and taillight. I have a CEV switch mounted
on
the left bar for low and hi beam and horn.