By Joe Gresh
Part of the reason I bought a Buell was because my life has become too predictable. Except for the Husqvarna, you stand a good chance of getting where you’re going on my old bikes. And the Buell is not disappointing. Lots of fun stuff is happening as I work on getting the bike back on the road.
It’s such a joy to tinker on a single-carb motorcycle. There are no racks and synchronizing to deal with, you only have to do a thing once instead of four times, but watch out for those aftermarket parts. The kit I bought was okay, but the emulsion tube was not drilled properly. And then I managed to pinch the bowl o-ring. It was cheaper to buy another kit than a single bowl gasket, so I did that. Unfortunately, that kit’s bowl o-ring was too small. No matter how I stretched it, it kept popping out of the bowl groove. I ended up reinstalling the pinched o-ring. It was a futile effort to keep my mechanical standards up.
I’m a big fan of lithium batteries, so I bought a Vevor brand close in size to the original lead-acid battery. The Vevor was a bit small and the factory battery location is not far from the rear cylinder exhaust header. To help with the heat I wrapped the sides and front with foam, then wrapped gorilla tape around the mess to hold the foam insulation.
A neat feature on the Vevor is the dual posts (four total). There are positive and negative posts on both sides of the battery; if your cables are in the wrong place, just flip the battery around. I added a spacer on the hook side of the battery strap to keep it tight and a small tube spacer in the bolt side (less threading to do on the hold down bolt), which makes installation 12 seconds faster. When you ride a Buell every second counts. The battery seems secure; hopefully, it will stay put. With the Vevor battery (supposedly 400 cranking amps) in place and the carb back on, I needed to hear the Buell run. The oil tank level was between the high and low marks. The oil looked clean, like it had just been changed.
I removed the spark plugs, put the coke machine key in the ignition, and spun the engine over to clear any excess oil from my previous cylinder lubing. With the sparkplugs back in the cylinder heads I pulled the choke, hit the right turn indicator button, and nothing happened.
Harley handlebar switches are so weird. Pushing the starter button on the inside of the blinker switch worked better, and the Buell fired up in a couple revolutions. The engine popped and farted a few times. Lots of smoke came out the tail pipe but all things considered, it was running good. Then came a loud pop followed by a geyser of oil spewing from the oil tank. The oil broadcast in a 15-foot fan covering the general area with great dollops of thick oil. The spots were viscous, so they stood proud of my clean concrete floor. Except for the spot I was standing. I received a blast of spraying oil that covered my sweater and left a clean, Joe-shaped silhouette on the concrete floor.
What a mess. How long the Buell had been sitting was unknown, but the oil tank must have slowly drained into the crankcase. Some helpful person topped off the tank with fresh oil and I squirted the stuff all over the place. I drained the tank. There must have been a gallon in there if you include the oil on the ground. Once the oil level was correct, I fired the Buell and it settled down to the hit and miss syncopation Harley likes to call idle.
Back to other issues. I didn’t like the way the muffler was held into the bike. The setup relied on the front clamp combined with two rear brackets that bolted up in a parallelogram-like deal. The only thing that held the muffler in place was fastener tension. To achieve a more secure mounting I made a thicker bracket out of mild steel and welded it to the Muffler. Now in order for the muffler to slide back my crappy weld would have to break. Which it just might.
The rear brake on the Buell was stuck. There were several issues contributing to this problem. The first was the brake pedal. It was bent where the master cylinder pushrod attached in a way that made the rod move dramatically sideways when the brake was applied. I used Harley tool 0-U812 (a big crescent wrench) to adjust the brake pedal. Now the push rod moved in a straight line concentric with the master cylinder.
The clone master/slave kit I bought on Amazon that was supposed to fit was just off enough to be completely useless, so I decided to rebuild the original stuff.
The piston inside the master cylinder was stuck but a few raps with a hammer had the piston moving and I dismantled the master/slave. I was having trouble finding seals for the Brembo components, so I cleaned everything and reassembled the brakes.
Bleeding the brakes wasn’t going well. I could get pressure at the banjo bolt on the master cylinder but nothing at the slave. Shooting brake cleaner into the brake line did nothing. The hose was clogged. Out came the battery to access a hose clamp bolt, and I removed the brake line. Removing the brake light switch gave me a mid-point spot to shoot cleaner. The metal brake line was clear, the clog was in the rubber line. I soaked the line in an ultrasonic parts cleaner then worked a 0.30 flux core welding wire through the rubber line. It took a bit of finagling but the wire made it through. Then it was just a matter of soaking with brake cleaner and shuttling the 0.30 wire back and forth until the line was clear. Blowing the lines with compressed air got rid of any stragglers inside the hose. A quick reassembly and I had pressure to the slave. Bleeding the system was a straightforward proposition. The rear brake works.
Next on the list is fixing the kickstand and broken clutch lever.
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