Suspension and Electronics Tray

I finished up the bike's suspension and stance.  I wanted to lower the bike overall and level out the sight line of the frame/tank and with my desire to only have the forks sticking up out of the triple tree clamp about 1/4", this meant lowering the front forks 3".  Bought some steel conduit to fabricate 3" spacers.  The spacers go in between the end of the fork seat and the rebound springs.  This permanently offsets the tube into the case the amount you choose to lower them.  You can always change/undo this by replacing the springs you have to cut.  Took the angle grinder to the springs to cut off the 3" from the top.  Filed the burs off and reassembled the forks.



I went with the Eco-line rear shocks from YSS; it was a good price for performance shocks and it fit the color scheme of the bike nicely.  I debated endlessly on whether to get 320mm or 324mm shocks convincing myself I could tell the difference between 4mm... so when I placed the PO for them I panicked and told them 330mm.  I figured you could shorten the damper rods if it was too long; well find out if that assumption was wrong at some point. Oh well, moving on.  I de-badged the red YSS logo and plan to paint above the clevis gloss black; its mocked up with electrical tape in the picture.

Before vs. After New Suspension

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It looks super low sitting next to my stock 79' CB750.  The sight line just barely points up from level.  I can adjust the pre-load on the rear spring if its a little bouncy.  If the front is bouncy or I bottom out often ill have to replace the springs with something stiffer. The picture also shows a sneak peak of the sanded tank.  I won't be able to finish it without bringing it to a sandblaster; theres no way for me to get behind the badge mounts.  The after picture also has the electronics tray installed I fabricated.  You might be able to spot it if it wasn't blending in with that black bracket on my wall; but its still quite hidden regardless.

Electronics Tray Fabrication

Luckily I had Solidworks/CAD to help make this design pretty easy; the hard part was not having access to a brake.  I measured it up and drew it on CAD, unfolded the part and transferred the flat dimensions to the sheet metal.  I wanted something a little more substantial so I chose 1/16" steel and scored the bend lines with the angle grinder to be able to bend it.  I bought a piece of angle iron and hammered the bends around it clamped to my work bench.  It's mounted using the existing battery box holes and two holes I drilled and tapped in the frame.  It sits about 1/4" under the tubing/frame, undetectable for most angles when looking at it. 

M-Unit from Motogadget

The tray needs to house an m-Unit Blue, the regulator/rectifier, two spark units, and maybe the main fuse/starter solenoid.  As soon as I saw the m-Unit I knew it was the solution for me on wiring up this bike.  Being an engineer working on PLCs at work most days, this was right up my alley.  It cleans up the wiring on the bike, isolates the switches from the powered components, individually fuses all the components and adds a lot of cool features like auto-off blinkers, hazard lights, (Blue model) keyless start, trip loggers, virtual bike lock, GPS tracking, phone notifications if tampered with, etc.  For me, starting from scratch with this is easier than fighting with the existing harness.  I'll be sure to post the wiring schematic when I create it.  

Quarantine soldiers on, with no clear view on when this will end.  Plenty of work to do but i'll run out soon without access to services like sand blasting, powder coating, etc.  The top end of the engine is being held for ransom at my dads while were under the "stay at home" order, so finishing the engine rebuild will be delayed.  This probably isn't the best time to be buying the rest of the parts I need with work slowing down due to the virus, but well see how long I hold off for... I suspect not long.