Da Bronda

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The bits I ordered showed up this week. That's the LH mirror, LH electric control, and the juice clutch set up. Too bad I have to get on another plane this afternoon. But one thing at a time.

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Did a little work on this today. I pulled the starter because I thought it might be locked up. First off, the guy who built this thing did not think about having to make repairs. Besides pulling the front and right side blower covers and dismantling half the right side clutch set up, I needed to unbolt and raise the engine to get the starter out.

The starter was locked up because the armature had rusted to the magnet. Whee! That took about 90 minutes to correct. Got it back together and powered up with my big battery charger. It spun happily.

Got the starter back on the engine and wired back up. Hit the starter button and the engine turned over nicely. I have no spark now, but that's a problem for another day.

[Landsvw]

I love your weird things on wheels!

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Well, no arky sparky. Magnetron coil is pining for the fjords. New one on the way.

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Success. There was a short to ground on the kill switch circuit. Disconnected that from the coil and got a blue snapper that would knock you on your butt. I guess the new one I ordered will be a spare.

Put in some new plugs, properly gapped at .030, shot some ether down the carb, and punched the starter button. Brrapppp! That nice boxer sound. A lot of crap came out of the exhaust, too.

Next up will be the carb. I'm also going to replace the 1/4-20 nuts and bolts holding the dash and windshield together with M6 bolts and rivnuts.

As I'm having some luck, I'm going to update the wiring to the 21st century and try to figure out just what is what. There is no fuse box, just some inline glass fuses. The main bus is a long terminal strip. I'd rather separate that into three or four WeatherPak type plugs. I'm already dumping the twin tractor headlights for a 7" LED headlight. LEDs everywhere else, too.

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Update? Hell, replace the non Honda wiring.

Even though the guy that wired it was an IBEW sparky, he wasn't up on automotive DC. He used appliance wire in place of automotive primary wire. That stuff is so stiff that it may as well be solid core. The wire routing is very good but how it's wired is subpar. All the ignition switch does is send power to the lights, save for the headlight. That has its' own switch. Only way to shut down the engine is its' own kill switch.

That short to ground on the kill switch? Nuh-uh. Someone spliced a chassis ground wire into the kill switch circuit. No way it was going run. The spliced wire had the same tag as all the other ground wires. I'm starting to wonder if it ever did run.

I'm thinking about putting a relay between the ignition switch and the kill switch circuit. Wire it up normally closed so when the ignition switch is shut off, power to the relay is cut, the relay closes and grounds out the coil. Also going to rewire the Hondas' kill switch, all that wiring is gone. I may throw a Ford style starter solenoid in the system so I can use the Honda start button instead of the B&S heavy duty dimmer switch used now. That would give me a spare dimmer switch for the DeSoto.

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Well, 'eck. I was digging around behind the main buss and found a rolled up piece of paper. The paper was a list of what number wire went where and did what. Guy had some nice hand writing, too. After going through the list, it looks like someone else changed the kill wire around.

Got the carb redone today. I had to beat the snot out of the main jet to remove it from the carb body. The rest of it came apart really easy but it was full old fuel and crud. It took most of the day to clean it up. Found the float was way off, too.

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The lump runs, and not too badly, either. I think it starts better cold than the Honda starts hot.

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About done with the engine. I'm pretty happy with how it runs. Again, no thought was put in about making repairs or servicing the engine. Getting the air cleaner assembly off this pig made me want to change out the Ural battery instead. That's how much a PITA it was. It didn't help that the air filter was original 1991 issue and the rubber parts had fossilized. I got smart and cut away every thing on the air cleaner base that was bigger than the air filter and eliminated the cover all together.

My Hot Rod Briggs.