Trail 70 Stand Teardown

Up and onto the table. That was a chore to get it up on here by myself.



Left side off again.


Four bolts hold the pegs and sidestand.

Rear brake springs need to be out of the way.

I figured I would break torque on all the case bolts while it was still in the frame.

Here's my advice about this little impact driver from Harbor Freight. It's the only thing that will fit on some of the heads on the case, but I beat it to death on the tough ones. Use the little one when you have to on these bolts on get a bigger one for the others. Wear gloves. Get a real 2 inch long #3 Phillips, not bit holder and short bit. You loose impact with the extra pieces and the extra bit is now stuck in the little impact. I think my little impact is now junk, but the case all, but apart and I'm only out like 7 bucks.

I believe this is the only case screw that can't be turned a bit with the engine in the frame.

A long bolt holds the left side head cover.

Three screws hold the cam gear.

Three acorn nuts and a regular nut hold the rocker cover. I have no idea why they have the mismatched hardware, but it's correct.

Rockers.

I removed the bolt that holds the head to the cylinder. Tap with the ghetto mallet and the head comes off.

The head should come off with the engine in the frame, but not quite?

Let's try it with a flat front tire.

Perfect!

Wow, look at the carbon on that piston.

A little bolt holds this camchain roller.

Here's the compression leak on the exhaust valve.

Little oil seal here.

Bolt for the cylinder to the crankcase.

Cylinder comes off.

That piston is so cute.

Little oil seal here.

Strapwrench on the rotor to break the center nut loose.

Pull the rotor puller into the rotor. The big threads are left handed.

Hold the outside turn the inside.

The stator/magneto. Seven screws hold this together. Don't loose the woodruff key. Oops, too late, oh there it is.

Two bolts and a keeper hold the front sprocket on.

The engine has got come out to get any farther, but I'm done for now.

750 Oil lines revisited

Okay we didn't have the oil lines correct and that was causing out oil tank cap to blow off. Big thank to FXRSBIGBORE on the Shovelhead.us board. This is the correct oil line set-up.




We had the bottom crankcase vent going to the air and not connected to the tank.

Vintage Stick Welder

I don't know how to use it, but it's suppose to work. I thought I was getting a small wire feed box for free, but it turned out to be this. It's bigger than I was figuring on and I haven't checked to see if it will plug in to the dryer plug. The price was right, now I need to learn how to use it.

12 more inches

I upgraded tools boxes. I had this 40 inch one that I bought a couple years ago during a half price sale. Then they started selling 52 inch for half price a couple times a year. I happened to find a buyer for my old one, when the big one was on sale so I traded up. The best news is that the drawer are the same size, so I literally swapped out drawers and I was back in business with room to spare.

Vulcan 1500 / 1600 Headlight Problems?

Okay after a long and heated forum discussion about a Vulcan 1500 headlight that won’t come on, and several folks suggesting to bypass and rewire the whole thing. I decided to thoroughly investigate and put together a solid and thorough explanation and troubleshoot. If I am incorrect please inform me with proper terminology and logical thought. This only write-up only applies to US market 1500/1600’s, it may apply to others though.

The barebones function of the headlight turn on system is a self latching relay that (should) close the contacts when the engine begins running. The contacts (should) stay closed until the ignition key is turned off or the starter button is pressed.

I’m start with the technical explanation and go through a simpler troubleshoot further on. If you don’t understand how a relay or diode work, then go look that up now, because there is a ton of good info on it and I don’t want to type it up.

Here’s a schematic of the 1500’s fuse box.






Item 9 is the Headlight relay.

The coil high side is feed by a yellow wire from the alternator (outside alternator on dual alternator models) and also back fed from the load side of the relay. The back feed will give power back to the coil high side and allows the relay contacts to stay closed once they have closed. The diodes keep the alternator signal and the relay back feed signal(relay load output) separated.

The coil low side goes to load side of the Starter relay item 8. The contacts of the starter relay are normally open so normally the headlight relay low side is going out the junction box on yellow with red wire that goes to yet another starter relay. All we need to know for the headlight discussion is that the headlight relay coil low is normally grounded, but switched to 12V+ when the starter relay contacts are closed. That should only be when the starter button is pushed.

The power side of the headlight relay comes through a ten amp fuse(Item 4) from the brown wire which is simply key on power.

The load side of the relay covers the latching as previously discussed and of course the power to the headlight dimmer switch. The blue with yellow wire feeds the dimmer switch.

The dimmer switch feeds the power to the red with yellow for low beam or to the red with black for the high beam.

Enough of the technical stuff here’s the troubleshoot when your headlight does not come on when you fire up your bike.

Check the headlight fuse. Low fruit first.

Ohm check both sides of the bulb. It’s unlikely that the both sides have burnt out once, but again check the easy and obvious.

Fire up the motor and shut it off with the engine stop switch not the key switch.

Check the blue with yellow wire on both sides of the 9 pin connector that’s near the steering neck or possibly in the headlight bucket.
• If both sides are 12V. The dimmer switch has issues. Most likely the blue with yellow came unsoldered from the switch terminal.

• If the bike side is 12V and the switch side is not. The connection is bad.

• If there is no voltage on the bike side, then the problem with the headlight relay or blue with yellow is cut or has a bad connection.

Now back to the Fuse box.

• Check the blue with yellow wire at the fuse box. Look for a connection problem there. If it’s 12V with no headlight working, then the blue with yellow wire is broken somewhere.

• Yellow with red should be ground. If it’s not and the bike is starting okay, I think you need a new fuse box. I don’t think you can fix a broken connection between the headlight coil low side and the starter relay load.

• Now to figure other the Yellow turn one wire. You need to find all three yellow wires from the (outside) alternator. Fire up the engine and rev it to 3000 rpm. Here’s the alternator output inspection. Be sure to check the signal yellow wire at the fuse box and need the alternator to make sure there’s not a break in the wire. If it doesn’t check out, you need an alternator.



I believe I have covered the coil low side, coil high side, power side, and load side of the headlight relay. If you haven’t found the problem by now then you may need a need fuse box, because you Kawasaki does not sell the relay by itself.

Another happy tool drawer

I got another drawer ready to go. It was alot like this one, so I didn't do a picture-by-picture on the process. I used two layers of anti-fatigue mats from Sam's Club and spray adhesive to hold them together. I cut it to size with the knife blade on a jigsaw and hole saws and spade bits to cut out all the round shapes. Storing the punches and chisels vertically was a bonus that I hadn't planned on. I still need to label the outside of the drawer.

Trail 70 Stand

I built this motorcycle stand from scraps in my woodworking shed. The bike won't stand up on it's own without the engine, so I needed to do something. I plan on putting it up on my mobile tablesaw bench as a mini lift table. This should save my back and keep the project from taking up garage floorspace.

750 fires on all four, now

Okay, we couldn't get spark to the inside cylinders. We tried every kind of troubleshoot only to be more confused about it. We swamped the condensors to see if one was bad. That's when Bierkan realized that the green wire to the condensor on the suspect point set was on the outside connector and not the inside connector. He swapped the wires and now there's a spark on all four. Not sure when it got crosswired, but we should be running next week.

Trail 70 Clean up

The full teardown is coming, so let's get the engine cleaned and ready to come out. Dump the oil. Take off the sparkplug guard. A nut in the middle, one on the shock tower, and two on the exhaust studs and the exhaust comes off.

Four bolts up top and two under the engine and the big brush guard comes off.

Now to the power washer. It worked pretty good, but it wasn't picking up the soap right.

We got most of the red mud and oil off of the engine, but we couldn't get the bottom to clean up real well. I tried some foaming degreaser and it didn't do it either. Check out this exhaust port. I thought it was broken and I would need a new head, but actually that is normal for the CT70's. I had to ask about it on the lilhonda.com board to verify it though.

Now that it is relatively clean, I plan on building a stand for the bike and a stand for engine for rebuild. I am also planning on breaking all the torques on the screws, bolts, and nuts, before I pull the engine out of the frame.

Bigtwin Oil Pump Check Ball

Bigtwin Harley's will sump a bit a especially after sitting a bit, but this much is way too much. The check valve in the oil pump is a ball and spring, item 11 and 12 on this diagram. I read about this fix. It looked good, but I didn't want to take off the pump. If replacing the ball and spring doesn't fix it, I will try lapping the seat. Clamp off the gravity feed. Remove the inside cap. Here's the cap and spring out. You would think that a steel ball in an aluminum hosing would come out easily with a magnet on a stick, but that didn't work. The oil around the ball wouldn't let the ball out that easy. I has to use the mighty vac to get it out. It also helped to get any crud that may be in there hanging the valve open. The ball had a nice wear mark from the seat so hopefully the new ball and spring will fix the problem.