Thursday, May 3, 2012



The forks are finally done! 
May 4th. Less than 3 weeks to go before the OVM show that I plan to display this thing at.
I've spent more time on these things than  any other single part of this project.
A couple of finish details, and I'll finally be ready to assemble them for good.
Tomorrow, I'm dropping the last few bits off for powder coating. I got the gas tank and fenders painted dark grey. Sadly, I'll probably have to get them redone, the painter I hired left a bit of an orange peel finish. I think he mixed too high a ratio of curing agent.
I might have a go at rubbing it down. I've done that on my rattle can paint jobs before, and it always works out pretty well.
The engine is on the workbench getting cleaned up, and I ordered some gaskets and a few nuts and bolts to make it look better. I'll be sandblasting and painting the cylinders black this weekend.

The rear wheel is ready for truing and a tire. I'll clean up the Suzuki front wheel and get a tire for it too.

I've verified that one of the two late-70's Kawasaki rectifier/regulator modules that I got from Cycle Psycho M/C Wreckers is functional. The other one rectifies, but it doesn't regulate. Just passes the input voltage straight through as a DC voltage. Oh well, one out of two is better than none out of two. I'll worry about the other one later.

The rear shocks have been cleaned up and reassembled. I have four Armstrong shocks. All of them with good damping, and the springs seem ok. I wasn't paying close attention when  I took them apart, and it wasn't until I was sandblasting the springs that I noticed that two of the springs are shorter than the other two. I just assumed these things were identical.
Holding a long and a short spring next to each other, the coils line up perfectly, so the short ones aren't just sagging from age, they were made shorter. Two fewer coils than the longer ones.
I suspect they came off a Meteor Minor 500 twin. Those were based on a 250cc Enfield with the 500cc engine in it.
The problem is that the damper rods are also different lengths, as are the painted covers that go over the springs. Guess which pair got painted red to match the Interceptor's frame color?
The short ones.
Guess which covers got painted gray to match the Tomahawk's planned frame color? That's right, the long ones!
So, I put the red shocks on the Interceptor with the gray  covers. Not what I planned, but it works out alright, because of the rest of the sheet metal for the Interceptor being gray.

So here are the forks with all the bits. I still need to powder coat the little top cover tubes, and my "fork bridge" Royal Enfield badge needs to get some red enamel added to it. Then I'll nickel plate it.
Later, I plan to do an entire post covering what I did to make the forks go together.

Two views of the forks with all the bits installed.
The custom made fork bridge. Etched nickel copper bronze.


The red shocks with gray covers.


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