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Nothing much happening lately. The frame is at the welder's, and body work is off being painted RD400 French blue. I resisted the urge to do the usual yellow/speed blocks, or white with red stripe. It's been too cold to work in the garage anyway. Only four months left to be ready for Deal's Gap meet!

The RD500LC came with a set of unmounted Chinese bodywork. The paint wasn't too bad, certainly presentable but as you suspect there are minor fitment issues. I couldn't use the seat sides because the mounts were too far out. I had to find originals.
For the money though, it's a deal.

I had some free time so I moved the upper radiator mounts where they will work, and today I made the missing front motor mounts. Yamaha used 1/8 steel on the original TZ mounts so I did the same. It's the usual process; cardboard template, then cut out a solid pattern, make adjustments if needed, then cut metal. I happened to have some plastic sheet that worked perfect for a pattern. Surprisingly the right mount has about a 1/2" offset. The left one is flat.

I spoke with the painter and he will be ready for me in two weeks. So I guess I'll go ahead and pull it apart to finish welding.

She will give up eventually, or maybe not.....

I've been working on building the wiring harness for all the lighting. It's pretty simple with just an on/off to power all the accessory electrics, and a lighting/horn/signals handlebar switch. All of the lighting is LED except the front signals. It takes some time to run each component and solder terminals.
Everything works now, the horn will blast you.

https://flic.kr/p/2nZ3DK5

Too bad winter just hit or I'd try a road test.

I found this oldie at the bottom of my T-shirt drawer

I started on electrics today. I made a bracket and mounted the LED tail light, bought and mounted the battery under the seat, and swapped out the H4 headlight bulbs for LEDs. I'm waiting for the lighting switch to show up and I will start making the wiring harness. I had the three prong sockets in my box O electric junk so I wired the headlights together and tested them.

no speedo?

We don't need no stinking speedo!

Hey Mark, it's all about how you pack the sausage!
I have it all in there, full steering lock both sides and nothing pinches anywhere. I like the look of the original gauges (esp the tach) so I really wanted to get it figured out. Nothing left to do now but replace the final template with a permanent part, and clean up the cut off places on the fairing bracket.
I think it is time to call the painter.

I spent a day trying to make everything fit between the headlights and the handlebars when they turn. There is maybe 1" of free room between them. I have the gauge mount length and shape pretty well figured out. The tach just touches the headlight rubber at the back, and the bars miss the front of the tach by about 1/2".
Everything is packed in tight on these bikes. The steering dampener interferes with where I want to mount the CDI box on the left side. I might have to move it up on the gauge mount if the bars won't hit it there. The dampener has only one exact spot it can mount and not interfere with the fork leg, or the spark plug, or run out of travel. Every part effects where other parts fit and work on this thing.

I'm making an FZ to TZ fairing mount. I'm not going to cut the original 750 fairing/tach mount. I also have another TZ mount that uses a separate gauge mounting I can cut and adapt to the FZ mount. I'll just have to make a gauge mount panel for the tach and temp gauges. It looks like I need to raise the tach as high as I can to make room so the handlebars don't hit when turning. I also found some LED replacement bulbs for the H4 in there now.
I'm still looking for a windscreen and mirrors.

That's great Tim! Nice to see another one back on the road.

Mark

FZ600 fairing looks like it will fit pretty well. The size and shape are good. I'll have to make a new tach and temp gauge mount to work with the FZ fairing mount, and hopefully it all fits behind the headlights. I'll convert the headlights to LED since I'm going to have to run a total loss lighting system.

It lives! It started immediately on the rollers. I tried it first very briefly with no water just to make sure I had everything connected correctly, in case something would need to come apart again. Then I added water and tried it again. There are a couple of annoying small water leaks but otherwise everything works as it should. I ran it a second time to get some heat into it, just enough to move the temp gauge.

I need to tidy up the steering neck area. There is a lot going on up there and stuff is getting pinched before the steering lock. I'll have to do some rearranging/re-routing. I think I decided on an 80s FZ600 fairing upper. I like the dual headlights, and that I can get a fairing, the mount, headlights, mirrors, etc fairly inexpensively. I have an LED tail light coming.

After I have the fairing figured out I can send all the body parts out to be painted. I'm thinking the RD400 French Blue. Then I'll strip the bike back down so I can do something about the upper rad mounts that don't line up, and I need to make the front engine mounts that weren't with the bike when I bought it. Then take the frame to the welder and have him put some nice welds on my brackets that I just have tacked on the frame. Lots of small stuff still to do.

I couldn't attach a video clip here so I had to use Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/2nU9XEa

Hey Mark,
Caswell works great. Just be sure to protect the paint up around the filler cap area. You don't want to get sealer on the paint.