Gas, tires, oil.

After hooking up the bare minimum of wires, some oil the oil tank and some gas in the gas tank, I cranked up the motor to see if it would start after 3+ years apart. It did, though without linkage hooked up, I wasn’t able to open the choke quickly enough and stalled it out. But after cleaning the now fouled plugs it ran nicely. So at this point, its officially for sale. I’m going to keep working on it (needs the brakes hooked up before I can take it for a ride), but I put it on craigslist as is.

Why? Well, the house we live in is on the market, so we may have to move and finding a place with sufficient space for my tools is hard enough, without a big enough garage for 2 harleys.

And since this particular project has this urgency to it, I feel like I shouldn’t start on new projects until its finished.

You can post in the comment section if you are interested in it (there’s a remote possibility of a trade or partial trade).

With the end for the new clutch cable made, now I just had to make the adaptor. I used a section of the old cable with the cable stop installed. I drilled an 1/8″ hole in another pipe plug, threaded the cable through and measured it for length.

Then I silver soldered the pipe plug to the cable. Some flux and a propane torch was all that was needed.

Here’s completed assembly using an 1/8″ coupling to connect the two cables.

Now I just need to make a pin for the clutch handle to finish it off.

The trike needed a new clutch cable; the old one had been pinched and kinked and wouldn’t release the clutch. Unfortunatly, it needs an extended cable and no one locally had one. I called Jireh cycles and they were out of stock. Now, I probably could have found one somewhere, but since it was so hard to find, I thought it might be better to modify the system so a new style (readily availible) clutch cable would work. The new (evo) cables are different in two ways: first, they use a loop to connect to the handle. This just means I’ll have to use a pin instead of the insert that holds a cable stop. But more difficult is that the amount of cable that sticks out is only about 3″, whereas the old style had about 7″. I thought about shortening the outer sheath, but I wanted to be able to buy one at any dealership if it broke on a trip. So I decided to make an extension instead. First I need a way to connect to the end of the cable. I thought about using a cable clamp or one of those clips like you see in the middle of an emergency brake cable, but I didn’t want it to be so big. This connection is going to be inside the primary cover and I definitly don’t want it caught in the primary chain.
So I bought a couple 1/8″ npt brass hex pipe plugs and an 1/8″ brass pipe coupler. I drilled an 1/8″ hole in each one, and counter bored the inside to match the cable stop on the clutch cable. Then I made a slot with a hacksaw.

This allows me to slip it over the cable.

Next time I’ll show the extension that connects this to the clutch arm.

Not only did the awful washboard road in Death Valley cause me to lose a power steering line, the exhaust system and a tire on my ‘82 diesel suburban, but when I went to open the rear door, the button pushed in and fell inside the door. To get the spare out, my wife had to crawl in the back and drag it over our luggage. Later back at camp, I used my makita to take off the door panel and retrieve the push button.

Back at home, I pulled the handle off and discovered the problem, a little diecast potmetal tab had broken. It retains the return spring and centers the rod that extends from the back of the button. The spring and broken piece are shown below the handle:

I rigged up a replacement with plumber’s tape (the metal equivilent of duct tape). If you don’t know, it’s a roll of sheet metal that has a series of pre-punched holes and is used to make pipe hangers and such. A little forming with pliers and a couple pop rivets and it’s done:

While I had the door apart, I wanted to add an interior door lock and latch. Stock, the only way to lock the rear doors is from the outside with a key, the only way to open the door is with exterior handle. This is not ideal, when locking the vehicle, you can just push down all the door locks in the front, but you need the key for the rear doors. We also occasionally sleep in the back when camping and you can’t get out the back, you have to crawl over the front seats. I’ve also had the rear doors swing closed while I was in the back getting something, again having to crawl out the front (a problem if the back is piled high with stuff). While the handle was off I saw how the latch and lock works. The rod on the button pushes against a plate that opens the latch. The lock works by lowering the plate so that the rod passes over it. So, first I determined that the little pull things on for door locks use #10-24 screw threads (at least older gm cars and trucks). Therefore I used some #10-24 all-thread (or “ready-rod”, continuously threaded rod) to make the lock (and latch) pull.

To make the latch pull, I just drilled a hole in the door and the latch plate. I used a nylock nut on the end. While the button on the outside of the door pushes, this interior latch just pulls. The lock knob attaches to the latch by the way of a coupling nut that I cross drilled with a clearance hole (see above). Then it was just a matter of screwing on some lock pulls.

I could have used a more traditional door handle, but this was simple and unobtrusive. It sits nearly flush, so it isn’t likely to interfer cargo.

In case you don’t know, turducken is a dish where you stuff a turkey with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. The rather unprepossesing vehicle below is an IHC Loadstar 1700 moving van that I bought at auction for a couple hundred bucks about 10 years ago.

But it’s what’s inside that is interesting.

My chopped ‘52 chevy pickup, which itself contains another International Harvester: a 1962 Cub Cadet.

And a ton of GTO parts.