Neutral Light for the Shovelhead

I've been running without a neutral light on the Shovelhead since I build it, but going to be putting on foot clutch and I figure a neutral light couldn't hurt at least until I figure out how to ride a suicide shift. So here's the switch, terminal, and a Kawasaki turn signal indicator.


The old switch was bad so it's got to go. You need a deep socket, but there's not enough room for a rachet though. So a 5/8 inch spark plug socket and ratcheting wrench work great.

Test the new switch. It should go to ground when the bike's in neutral.

Open when in gear.

Solder the terminal to a wire.

Connect terminal and run wire to the dash.

This is probably not a great idea. I jammed both the voltage meter spade and neutral light spade into the same powered terminal.

The ground from the switch completes the circuit and the light works. It says oil, but I know it's neutral.

Bigtwin Oil Pump and swear words

Well the sumping issues I thought I fixed came back.
So I need pull the pump off and work over the check ball seat. This didn't go very smoothly, but I have to post it so someone else can learn.


Rear pipe has to come off.


Pinch off the gravity feed line.


Unpinch and dump the oil, because it needed to be changed.

Two hex bolts hold the inner housing and four socket heads hold the outer and inner housing to the crankcase.



Some bolts are in tight quarters.

Outer housing comes off.

This tiny circlip holds the drive gear to the shaft. It's tough to get off, and will give me more problems later on.

Clip's off and the housing will slide off now. There's a woodruff key with gear so don't loose it.

With a little a tap housing comes off.

Another drive gear and another woodruff key.

I pulled the cap, spring, and ball. Here's the seat and I don't really see any problems.

I should have gotten more pictures of all the red silicon in the oil passages. Don't use silicon in a motor. This might be what was hanging open the valve.

I had Rusty at Okie City Customs work over my valve seat. He had a special tool for cutting and I believe he lapped with a Evo pushrod, too.

So here we go back together. Cap, ball, and spring go in first.

You can't really screw up putting in the gears. The the wide ones go the crankcase side and the drive gears have the slot for the woodruff key.

Key goes on the shaft.

Gear on the shaft and key. It's a bit tricky to get the gear on there and not knock the key out of place.

Ooops! Put the gasket on first. The bolts are just holding the gasket while I put the key and gear back on the shaft.

Inner housing with idler gear goes into place.

Bottom bolts put in temporary to align everything for the outer gears to go on.

Key and gear go on and it's tighter and tricker than the last one.

Together! Fresh oil and everything.

This is where the swear words started. After the struggle to get it off, how could I forget to put it back in? I have a brand new on the bench, too.

Back apart and struggling to get the ring into the groove, because the shaft wants to slip in a bit.

More swear words! I let the outer housing attached to the hoses when put the ring in. The housing scratched up the ceramic coating on my front pipe.

Even more swear words! Look at that sump. Actually this leftover from before the pump rebuild and hoping my big sump problems are over.

Odds and ends on the Imp

We've been mostly picking at this, but making progress.

Shortened and cleaned up the spark plug wires.

Fresh battery.

Trying to figure out how to make the three phase alternator work with a regulator/rectifier from a late model Vulcan. This will let us mount one unit instead of the two piece regulator/rectifier that was stock on the 750.

hhhhmmm....

The wire colors from 1500 Vulcan manual don't match.

But the 800 manual shows the colors we have in hand.

So the three yellows from the 750 go to the three blacks.

A 750 green wire(ground) goes to the black/white.

750 black(key-on) goes to black/red.

The black/blue from our rectifier goes straight to the battery positive.

Time fix this over flowing carb.

Float needle and seat are okay, but not great.

The float tab is way different than the good carb. So we adjusted it to match. We didn't pull the carb and properly set the height, so hopefully we're close.

New throttle cable.

New throttle sleeve.

This broken screw is stuck. So we soaked in WD-40.

Bierkan want to swap the sprocket back to stock. I forget the teeth counts one these, I think 38 and 45 or so.