Front Brake

The AR's front brake worked when I broke the bike down, but it needed a bit of a refresh.

Step one was clean out the sludge that used to be the old brake fluid.

Step two was strip the old paint.  Same formula as always.  Aircraft remover followed by sanding blocks and elbow grease.

The reservoir window was seriously discolored.  Luckily the spare master cylinder that came with the bike had one that is still somewhat transparent.

On the original bike the mirrors screw into posts on the front controls.  Since I won't be using the stock mirrors I decided to see if I could get rid of the post.

I cut most of it off with the Dremel and a cut off wheel.

I used the benchtop grinder to remove as much material as I could and then switched to sanding drums on the Dremel when I needed finer control.

Finally I used a hand sander to get things as smooth as possible.  Unfortunately there was still a little bit of a divot where the mirror mount was.  Since I couldn't weld it (its aluminum) I decided to fill the divot with Quiksteel like I did on my top triple clamp (which was steel and could have been welded if I owned a welder at the time).  When I did the top triple I learned that the Quiksteel would expand in the oven, so I baked it and sanded it smooth again before powder coating it.

After things were stripped and sanded I masked them off to get ready for powder.

Here they are after powder, ready to go in the oven.

You can barely tell that there was ever a mirror mount on there.  Just a little dimple.

I did two layers of powder on all the parts.  They came out nice and smooth.

For reassembly I consulted my trusty service manual.

Step five of the reassembly instructions for the caliper reads:

Install the dust seal around the piston.  Check that the dust seal is properly fitted into the grooves in the piston and caliper.

While that sounds simple enough, it might as well say:

Construct a rocket ship out of cardboard and fly to the moon.

Getting that stupid dust seal in there is the reason why so much time has passed since my last update.  I tried it multiple times with no success.  Finally today I had the right combination of patience and luck to make it work.  Part of the trick was applying a bit of brake fluid to the seal to get it to slip in place.  I put the seal into its groove on the piston and pushed it into the caliper.  Then I worked my way around the seal using a small screwdriver to push the seal down into its groove in the caliper.

Here is the caliper fully assembled.

When the caliper and master cylinder were done I installed them on my front end assembly.  That way it'll be ready to go when its time to reassemble the bike.  If I keep up my blistering pace that should be midsummer of 2020.

Forks

The front forks on the AR were looking pretty tired, so I decided to rebuild them.  When I took the bike apart and set the forks aside I applied a coat of Krud Kutter to the uppers because they had some scratches that had begun to rust.  The mottled look of the uppers is from the dried Krud Kutter.  It did a great job of getting rid of the light rust though.

First, I removed the top caps and emptied out the old fork oil.  I don't know what color it was when it went in, but it came out a dark and nasty brown.  It also stunk to high heaven.

The oil seals were actually in decent shape but a ton of dirt and grime had gotten under the dust seals.

According to my service manual a special tool is required to disassemble the forks.  This tool is basically a long shaft with a T-handle and a tapered square end.  Since I didn't have this special tool I got a 3/8" square rod and ground down the end to a point.  I actually ended up grinding it "sharper" than in this picture.

The tapered end gets jammed into the top of the "piston and cylinder unit" down inside the fork so you have something to hold onto while you loosen the Allen bolt on the bottom of the fork.  I had good luck with the first fork by pressing the rod end hard against the wall while I loosened the bolt with an Allen wrench.  The second fork decided to be difficult.

For the second fork I had to use my hand impact driver.  This neat little tool is for removing stubborn bolts and screws.  You hold onto the outer sleeve and hit the top of it with a hammer.  The inner core has a bit on the end and is splined such that the impact force is transferred in a downward and counterclockwise motion simultaneously.  This impact force is more than can be generated by a constant force from turning an Allen wrench.  It took a bit of hammering but I broke it loose.  I learned later that applying some heat would have been a good idea.  What a n00b.

With the fork disassembled you can see the cup at the top of the "piston and cylinder unit" that the special tool gets jammed into.  Evidently a lot of forks work this way.  I don't know why they wouldn't put at hex head down there instead.

To get the old oil seals out of the lowers I had to apply a bit of heat with a heat gun.  I was then able to pry them out with a screwdriver.  In a bunch of pieces.

Accept for a few scratches the uppers were actually in pretty good shape so I decided to clean them up a bit and go with them.  I got them damp, shook on some Bar Keeper's Best Friend and gave them a light scrubbing.  Not bad.

After stripping and powder coating the lowers I was ready for reassembly.

I ordered some new oil seals off of ebay.  The rest came from a local shop:  New 5w fork oil, Loctite for the bottom Allen bolt, and liquid gasket for the bottom gasket.

Note to the world:  Use the liquid gasket liberally.  I assembled the forks a couple of times only to have the new oil leak out of the bottom.  That is not especially fun after you've applied Loctite to the bolt and left it to set up.  I had to heat up the bolt with a propane torch and then whack it with the impact driver to get it out again.

My service manual was invaluable through this whole process.

The service manual said I needed another special tool to install the oil seals.  But I just used a large flat head screw driver to gently seat them into place.

The service manual specified 83 - 91 cc of oil.  That seams like a large range.  I went with 90 for no other reason than its nice and round.

There they are fully assembled and looking the business.

Service Manual

This week I finally got the bike title transferred into my name.  When we went to do the transfer the PO gave me a service manual he dug up for the bike.  I was planning to buy a Haynes manual or something like it, but it looks like this thing will be all I need.  It's got maintenance procedures, disassembly/assembly instructions, diagrams, and more.  Pretty much everything you could ever need in order to redo this bike.

This is the full wiring diagram.  That should come in handy considering the rats nest of wires hanging off the bike.

There is an exploded parts diagram and parts list for almost every part of the bike.  This is the oil pump.

There are these cool flow charts for tearing things apart.  It shows the order in which you can disassemble different parts of the bike.  This is the engine disassembly flow chart.

When I was first looking through the book this page caught my eye and made me laugh.  The "Additional Considerations For Racing" section.  I look forward to reading this in case I ". . . wish to subject this motorcycle to abnormal operation".