The BM has been siting on the stand all summer. It has been used as a rack, a support, it has got in the way. I have been thinking about what I shall do once the summer tasks have finished and the weather is too wet to go outside at the weekend. Last weekend the clocks went back to GMT [Greenwich Mean Time]. That means it gets darker earlier, however the weather is still quite warm. Warm enough to go into the garage at night and tinker with the bike. I have had the new charging and ignition gear since February. I have had the bits out of the boxes and bags several times. I even read the instructions a couple of times.
I started tentatively by disconnecting the battery. Then I fitted the beefy rectifier. The thing that has held me up in the state of the cover for the alternator. The old alternator was covered in oily grim. I needed something to get it off but I was not happy about using a smelly degreaser. I was in Halfords one day and came across a Lemon scented degreaser. I took a punt and bought a tin. True to the label on the tin the contents smelled of Lemon. H came in to see what I was doing. She said the air smelt zesty. I passed the test. I can carry on cleaning without stinking the house out. I bagged some wire wool and having degreased the cover plate I polished the surface with the wire wool. It has come up nice. I then had to tackle the tricky bit.
The next task was to connect the three wires leading from the alternator windings [The stator] to the distribution block. The block received the wires from the rectifier. It was a right beggar to position all the bits to solder the ends to the distribution block without cremating everything in site. After a false start, leaving things overnight and coming back with more patience, I managed to complete that task. Once the distribution block was fitted the other connectors and brush set were fitted to the plate. It was then a matter of fitting the rotor to the bike, easy enough, but then the stator and cover plate has to fit over the rotor. It was a bit fiddly to get the brushes to locate onto commutator but I remembered a tip. Place some card between the brushes and the commutator. The brushes, which are spring loaded, just slide over the card making the job much easier. I finally got the stator positioned and secured. It was a mile stone to connect up the wires of the charging circuit.
There was another job to do. The bike would normally have a mechanical regulator. The old one was junked for a solid state item. The new item went straight onto the bracket on the right side of the frame and accepted the block connector.It took longer to select the bolts than fit the item.
