Road Testing delayed

We ran into our first snag, today, with a short in the wiring.

The first little snag was that one of the tiny screws for the wiring hub that connects the battery to the harness was completely stuck. We had to replace that piece before we could connect the battery. To do that, meant removing one exhaust pipe, deflating and removing the rear tire and the seat. Not a big deal, but it added on a bit of time to a "simple" job.

Once we'd hooked up the battery we found that the headlight didn't work, even with a new bulb. With a little electrical digging, we found that we had raw power before the light switch, but no power downstream of the switch. My first reaction was, "Who cares? We're replacing all the wiring, anyway!!" But before we do that, we have to ride it a bit more to see how it acts when it heats up and when the engine's run a bit more and we need to have the brake light and turn signals working to really take it out on the road. Also, how else will we know if the headlight works and the brake light and the turn signals and the switches for all of those? So, we have to fix the wiring to test everything, before we tear it all out. Bob, who works at Black Kat Motorwerks will be troubleshooting that today. It will save hours to have him chase down that short quickly and I will learn enough about the wiring when I put in the new wiring harness on the restored frame...so I'm happy to let him take care of that one...

I've been reading up on converting the bike to 12 volt electrical. It would change the whole charging system to something more powerful and more modern. It would make the lights brighter and would be able to power lights on a sidecar if I decide to do that one day. It would also make it a little less of an authentic restoration... That is something you have to think about every step of the way with a restoration. Is this just for me, or am I trying to keep it authentic? I think that, for now, I'll stay with the 6 volt electrical system, but I'll use a halogen bulb for the headlight and an LED for the tail light. I probably won't be riding it too much in the dark and it's not something that is too hard to convert later on. The different bulbs will give me more light - Rick says it'll be about 2/3 of what I could get with a 12 volt system, so it sounds like a reasonable compromise for now and will make it more desirable for a collector.