A few people have asked me about the progress of my RC163 replica so I thought I would just do a very quick update in the highly unlikely event that anybody else gives a toss.
The truth is I have done very little on it over the last 6 months, I did the fork seals, put it all back together again, got a fairing for it, made the brackets, fitted it and that's as far as I got. My mate's workshop is much warmer than mine, so the last 6 months have seen me hiding in there fixing cars rather than getting on with my own projects. I have found some time on the Prefect v8 hot rod but the little Honda has been sadly neglected.
I finally got round to starting it the other day, that didn't go well because some bloody fool had left the ignition switched on, the battery didn't take kindly to such abuse and although it took a bit of a charge will need replacing. this minor disaster gave me a bit of a sad on, my mood was further impacted when I looked at the tank to see my beautiful paintwork had crazed and now looked absolutely awful. It looks like I had taken bad advice and had left the basecoat a week to dry before putting on the lacquer, the base had absorbed moisture and the results were not good. Long and the short of it is that it will have to be stripped and redone, fortunately the wonderful Robert Cooper is a mate of mine and will be redoing it for me once he has painted the fairing.
It's really gutting, I sought advice before starting the job, sadly there are too many self appointed experts on facebook and the likes, following advice does not always work out.
On the plus side, I charged the battery,squirted in some fuel and within a second of pressing the loud button the bike had fired up and set about doing permanent damage to my unprotected ears. I had kind of forgotten just how loud it is, particularly when coming to life in an enclosed space. My joy was short lived though, the battery wasn't receiving a charge voltage and when I tested the starter resistances at the regulator end the windings showed open circuit. Turned out there was a connector near the battery that had been disturbed when I charged it, I reconnected that and now the battery is getting a good 14v charge. Splendid.
I hope to get the fairing and tank back from Rob before the end of March so I can take it to the Boston Bowl car and bike night at the last Friday and share it's vocal range with a wider audience. More photos will follow when it's all back together, so watch this space....
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