Month: September 2015

The cables appeared to be original. Both the clutch and brake cable had broken strands. The housings on all of the cables were stiff and with the vinyl cracked or missing in sections. They all needed to be replaced.

I decided to make cables for several reasons:

• The OEM cables appeared to be a bit too long for the stock bars.
• I installed new handlebars with about 1″ less rise than the original bars so the new cables needed to be even shorter.
• One of the cable sections is no longer available.
• I like making stuff.

After reading about them, I made a simple solder pot from a short 1.25″ diameter piece of steel rod with a short handle welded to it.  The pot is heated with a MAPP torch. The mass of the pot keeps the solder liquid for several minutes. It took some experimentation to find the right flux. But with the right flux the pot makes soldering fittings onto cables an easy task.

I also made both 6mm & 7mm ferrule compression fixtures. A ferrule is compressed via the fixture with a vise. These fixtures were made from two pieces 1/4″ thick steel plate and a couple of short sections of 1/4″ diameter steel rod.

The gas tank was rusted though along the bottom in the back. Looking into the filler, the front part of the tank was rust free. Perhaps the bike sat for an extended period with about a 1/4″ of water in it.

The injector pump was leaking oil. I ordered a seal kit from HVCcycle. After installing the kit, I discovered seals were not the primary cause of the leak. The pump shaft had rusted and was pitted enough to let oil seal by the seal.

Turns out the TY175 and RT180 share the same oil pump. Pumps for the RT180 are common and cheap. A “eBay” pump cost less than the rebuild kit and stopped the leak. The newer injector pumps lack the manual pumping wheel, so that cannot be primed by hand. I made a quart of pre-mix and started the bike with it before switching over to straight gas.