A little rebuild update: It's Feb 9th already and I'm still working on the 82CR.
Our oldest granddaughter is on the 7th-8th grade cheerleader squad at her school, so we had to go to all of the basketball games, which ate up two nights a week for the last month. Ugh!
Back in early January I had ordered clutch parts, as both my center hub and basket were damaged. As I waited for parts, I continued work on the case halves, tranny and crank, and had managed to finally pull the engine case back together. I had a lot of hours getting everything cleaned, checked to spec, aligned and assembled.
Ordering clutch parts got really hairy as I had to discover the hard way that the 1982 has a one-off clutch assembly keeping me from using 81 or 83 parts. The schematics on the OEM parts sites show that the 82 & 83 use the same clutch, but from all my digging and studying on it, the 83's are definitely different. To make it more challenging, doesn't appear that anything aftermarket exist either.
So, to begin with I found a really nice 1981 basket, received and discovered the center shaft diameter is smaller and uses a bushing instead of needle bearings. So back it went. Then I found what appeared to be a decent 1982 basket, ordered it and again had to wait for shipping. The day It arrived I immediately tried it on my engine only to find that someone had remounted the ring gear and it wasn't correctly aligned. The teeth were worn unevenly around the gear and the basket would only rotate about 180degrees before binding up against the crank and idler gear. I didn't notice but the ebay seller had "Accepts "NO" returns on parts" on his sale listing. I contacted the seller, explained the issue, sent pic's and then he began the hunt for another basket for me. Long story shortened, he found me another basket and I returned the bad unit back to him and we closed the deal. What hurt me the most in all of this was the extra expense of returning two clutch baskets, and all the lost time waiting. I lost over a month on just the clutch.
And then of course you have several orders for thrust washers, seals and hardware through RM-ATV that cost too much in shipping costs and take too long to arrive.
Sunday evening, I got the water pump impeller installed in the side cover, but again lost a lot of time cleaning parts and getting the old bearing off the shaft. I still have more cylinder work to do and engine painting.
I made the decision that I need to be able to work on other bike parts as well as wrapping up the engine, so Tuesday evening I power washed the bike down, and then tonight with this weather warm up, I was able to finally get the bike stripped down to the frame. After a lot of thought on this I want to strip and blast the frame down myself, really inspect the frame and welds over closely and just paint it with rattle cans and clear coat. I know it's the slow and hard way, but that's my anal personality at work there, haha.
I wish that I could just snap my fingers and turn a bike around a lot faster and cheaper but by making myself really slow down and take my time, I enjoy the process and the bike so much more. I've also reached the realization that I don't want a polished perfect show bike, I just want it to look similar to 1982 standards with a few upgrades here and there. Hell, sometimes I enjoy just sitting and staring at my bikes in the garage or hopping up in the saddle and taking in the moment.
When I was a teenager, I loved wrenching and cleaning on my motorcycle. And back in the eighties I would've loved having these bikes but couldn't, and now... here they are sitting in my garage.
