Hand Grips

Piece by piece the bike is coming together.  I am now able to work on some of the small odds and ends.  I recommend that you keep a small box of everything you aim to polish and clean on your restoration and take it inside when you are watching TV and such.  Polishing is tedious no-brain required work.  I wish I was not wasting my time with it at this point in the game.  I move back West in 26 days and my painter needs time to touch up the paint.  The bike was due in 3 days, but I bought myself an extra week.  I hope to have the bike no less than 95% complete if not 100% before it goes to the painter.

Before you install your hand grips thoroughly clean the headset bars and you can even sand with very fine sand paper the rough or rust of it. Sand perpendicular to the grips so that grips grab better. You can heat the grips up in some hot (not boiling hot) water to make them more pliable. That was not necessary for me. Use a good and rubber friendly glue and bead it from the half way point back around the whole circumference. This way you will have little to no excess glue as the grip comes to the end. Once it's al the way on check to make sure that the logo is centered in Neutral on the clutch and idle on the throttle. Now working from the midway point to the inside corner work the grip like an accordion so it will stretch out properly . Repeat for the full length of the grip now.

Note: make sure that your throttle grip does not have glue on the inside end, because it needs to spin freely.

Transmission Oil

This is the easy way to install your transmission oil. Heck, it's an easy way to run anything through these bottles, since the caps are universal. Just make yourself a cap, tighten it on the bottle, and cut the bottom off of the bottle and you're good to go -- you have an excellent funnel now. Pore your tranny oil through your funnel and it's as easy as 1-2-3 and no clean up required.

Through the funnel was pored SAE 30 non-detergent oil.

Horn

A while back, before I was scooter shop snob and became a much more picky restorer, I ordered a horn gasket from Scooter Works. I know that Palmog ordered a gasket (from who I don't know) and the rubber was poor quality and actually ate away at his paint. I am going to keep a very close eye on this gasket to be safe.

When I look at the original gasket (pictured left) verses the new gasket (pictured right), I am bummed. They clearly look different. I need NOS for this. The stock one is much more intricate and pleasing to the eye-- not to mention the diameter is larger and fits 100% perfectly in the frame is was designed for. Luckily, this is something that is easy for me to replace later on.

Using a very mild abrasive pad I polished the rust off from behind the screw and made the horn shiny. I used compressed air to clean it out behind the horn grill. I decided not to sand the rust behind the grill too much because (1) I need to get the bike to the painter very soon for touch-up and (2) I didn't want to scratch up the exposed grill by reaching sand paper down there. I did use a tooth brush to clean off the surface rust.
If memory serves me correct, when sitting in front of the horn, I attached the white wire on the left and green on the right (pictured at the very top of this post). And I also covered the terminals in a protective connection grease, which will protect the terminals from the elements and also improve the electrical connection.

I used fine grit emery paper to clean up the pitted tops of the hardware for the horn, but I will replace the hardware to shiny stainless steel after I move back West this summer. I leave in early June. At this point, my take is I won't loose it if it's installed on the bike and if it's easy to replace late . . . then no big deal.