My first 440 "cafè'ish" build.

You could sell those.... I just paid 22$ for the stock replacement t on fleabay....

How much?

Some fantastic work, I particularly liked how the top yokes turned out.

ok weird, tried to fire it out of spite, and got short idle then dies. Soooo guess my coils not bad? I'm gonna go through my wiring for the 9th time to make sure all is honky dory. I'm still using (possibly the original) stock coil. The carbs aren't rebuilt (yet, probably order a kit or opt for a less finicky set). wonderful..anyways.
Bike looks good off the table..


still have a few little tidbits to make like a front fender and mount my speedo.

How much?

Well Random that's a good question. I'd consider selling them if the placement of the O-ring can be changed. Making those grooves on (my 197? Cincinnati) lathe is the most time consuming. The cool thing is though, instead of having a hose and clamp for the feed, you can have like a male AN fitting welded in it's spot. Oh and of course, it'll never break..ever! lol. If you really want one, PM me.

Gordy wrote: Some fantastic work, I particularly liked how the top yokes turned out.

Thanks Gordy. I would've liked to use the 400s upper forks cause the top screws on. I've gotta come up with some sort of prettiness on top for the forks I got now. That's later though..

I_Tig_in_piece wrote:
Well Random that's a good question. I'd consider selling them if the placement of the O-ring can be changed. Making those grooves on (my 197? Cincinnati) lathe is the most time consuming. The cool thing is though, instead of having a hose and clamp for the feed, you can have like a male AN fitting welded in it's spot. Oh and of course, it'll never break..ever! lol. If you really want one, PM me.

What's so challenging about that? Grind a bit to the precise width and go to town. I'd do it all day long if I had my own equipment to do it on.

Nice looking fitting. Was there a chance you could weld an aluminum pipe to the original? Then you wouldn't have to spend time on the grooves. Plastic saved them some money, but they couldn't really expect that to last... surprised to see they did that.

loudhvx wrote: Nice looking fitting. Was there a chance you could weld an aluminum pipe to the original? Then you wouldn't have to spend time on the grooves. Plastic saved them some money, but they couldn't really expect that to last... surprised to see they did that.

It's all about cost, weight and life expectancy/designed obsolescence of the machine, in that order. That part survived the ridability of probably 95% of the bikes they were used on.

That's exactly what I had to do GP, I have a few "custom bits" already made to cut grooves into flanges that'll accept stock crush rings for exhaust that we do. Being that we don't have a rock wheel anymore (hardly ever used it except to make the bits) had to use a cut-off wheel and my belt sander. I could go and buy the right sandvik bit and holder to add to my collection :dry: but that would take the challenge out of it

Thanks Loud for the comment, and yeah probably could've welded to the stock one, but that shits tiny as hell and I'm not the greatest at welding aluminum that small...yet so did it this way cause I "can" weld steel that small and smaller

So my update to update this thread. Hope I have the pictures ready to back it up also. Rode the bike around a large parking lot I he in back of the shop and dammit, she feels great! Mind you this is still on an old tank of gas and I ( :blush: ) still haven't torn apart the carbs. Had my buddies over at Trophies motorcycle order me a rebuild kit. Anyways still have one more daunting task to fab up, and that's the rear cover over the battery and tire. I was gonna make it out of fiber glass so it'll be done quickly, but it's just too damn hot in my neck of the woods and I don't really feel like/have the patience to get all itchy. So went the alloy route. Well I ran into a few snags. The first and biggest being, I don't have the tools or experience in making a dome shape out of a single piece of aluminum. The only thing I had readily available was a leather chair and a small headed deadblow hammer. :lol: Wasn't getting anywhere fast banging on 16g alloy. So I measured and nibbled out another piece then stared at it and the back of the back for a long wasteful amount of time till I took that sheet and wrapped it around a steel support beam that supports the roof of the shop. lmao! Some trimming, more nibbling, staring, marking and sanding then finally some tacking and I've got this!
This is still work in progress..it'll sit level with the new seat pan I made.


Not sure how far I'm gonna have it over-hang the rear yet alone the final shape? I do know that a brake light needs to go in there though..


The front of it..still gonna trim it to fill in that gap between the back of the seat and front of the tail.


Rear shot..can see the relief cuts I added to my seat wear my inner thighs go. feels ALOT better now.


Better shot of the seat..


Made a new seat pan as well. Only had 1/8th alloy diamond plate on hand soooo..diamond side up. needed a small raised area to fit the starter noid under the pan. which of course isn't in this pic??


Hey Loud, I might ask for your Jedi powers on a wiring diagram? I still need to wire the headlight into the right switches "on/off" then over to the left switches Hi/Lo..


ed..

Man, Murphy's law is just kicking my ass every which way. Finally overcame my lighting issues, (think I have a bad ignition switch?) So the lights are on a toggle right now. But now, bikes not charging. Gotta do some tests today to confirm th problem. So far what I know is when the bike is running, voltage at the battery is 12.7 idle or revving. Reg/rec does get hot to the touch, but I'm assuming it's shunting like crazy cause there's no elec. load. I'm not all that familiar with the charging system so I gotta do some reading.

But she looks good outside the shop..


had to park inside the office after my test ride and discovery of a charging issue.



Always seems like I take a step forward then my ow project that I love doing stabs me in the back and sends me 2 steps the opposite. But I press on.

Looking good! I just noticed the question about the wiring from 5 days ago.

How much stock wiring do you have? Or are you going to completely custom wire it?
What accessories do you plan on keeping? Horn? Turn signals? Gauges?
You want a switch to turn the headlight off, but what switch were going to use for that? I thought the 440 had the headlight on all the time, and thus has no switch for on/off, but only hi/low.

If it's basically bare bones, I can probably draw up a simplified schematic for a 1980 440... I may already have one.

You think the key ignition switch is bad?

Are you going to use the kill switch?

Ok update on the bike. Wish it wasn't so damn hot out by me?! Ive gotta buddy that's gonna do my tail section in fiberglass(better him than me, I don't wanna deal with sanding it while it's gross out) The one on there now was just to cover the battery and look decent at first glance. Couple things Id like to change.
Redo the battery box and how it's mounted. It'll stay in the same location though.

Rearrange/redo the electrical tray. I don't know how managed to get all the wires going to the tray to pile up on one side right er the reg/rec? Lol..

I just might redo the entire wiring harness with new wires and such (already have various 2-9pin locking connectors but also have some Mil-spec round connectors?) Either way, if I do it, I'm also gonna draw out a wiring diagram as I go.

Think I might switch to a smaller headlight diameter wise. 6.5 or smaller? Smaller though for sure.

Gotta work on the shift side rearset some. Shifting down is easy after adjusting it so the selector peg wouldn't fight with the side stand spring. But up shifting requires actually pulling my leg up just a tad. Not cool..could arrange it all to make it 1 up 5 down also??

Need to make a nifty iPhone mount between the fork tubes cause I found a cool app that has mph, mileage, trip a/b, and gas level guesstimator. Replaced all my gauges.

That's itfor now..sorry no pics? Oh another thing..don't need to cut the rear hoop just over the rear tire. Hit a few monster dips on the freeway with my backpack full of crap and never hit. I kept the rear brake stay the way I fabbed it originally, Using it in combo with the front, so far so good. I'll be keeping an eye on it. My front brake however, I gotta get new pads, tossing the idea around of hunting for a 650 wheel (which ever used dual disc) and put that up front? Idk..that the least of my problem(s) right now.
I'll get some more pics up pretty soon..

loudhvx wrote: Looking good! I just noticed the question about the wiring from 5 days ago.

How much stock wiring do you have? Or are you going to completely custom wire it?
What accessories do you plan on keeping? Horn? Turn signals? Gauges?
You want a switch to turn the headlight off, but what switch were going to use for that? I thought the 440 had the headlight on all the time, and thus has no switch for on/off, but only hi/low.

If it's basically bare bones, I can probably draw up a simplified schematic for a 1980 440... I may already have one.

You think the key ignition switch is bad?

Are you going to use the kill switch?

Thanks for the help Loud. Well as it sits now, I'm still having a charging issue. Had the battery on a charger all day Monday. Took it off an hour before I wasgonna leave to let it get to ambient temp. Battery volts were 13.8 solid on the bench. hooked it up, spins the motor nice. Tues. morn, bike starts up fine before and after work. 2 blocks from home and the bike cuts out. Couldn't even pop start. A Good Samaritan helped me out with a jump. Jammed home and cuts out again just as I pulled into my driveway. If course I got no volt meter at home?? Took voltage readings and did some testing after finding some info from an ancient post on here. Dummy me didn't write anything down. I do however remember that all seemed within range except the voltage at the battery while at idle and revving. Only tested the signal wire (brown) on the reg/rec to the batts posi then neg terms. Fully charged battery, bike running volts were at 13.02. When I switched on the headlight. Dropped to 12.87 then held at 12.9+? No changes when revving. So..I'm leaning towards a bad reg?
Far as ignition switch goes, was having problems trying to figure out why my tail light wouldn't come on when the ignition was in run? Turns out the red wire wasn't getting 12vs how it should when the key is in that position. Only the brown wire (for the coil) was hot. The solid red would only be hot when the key was in the parking/lock position. I think that's when the red/blue wire was 12v hot also? So the headlight and tail are on a toggle on its own 15amp fused circuit.
The harness is still stock (color wise) just shortened 2' or so and not stuffed into the HL bucket also I completely removed the self canceling turn signals deal and used a wiring diagram that was a mirror image for my bike minus the SCTS.
Handle bar combo switches are aftermarket flebay. The new Left combo originally had a 6 pin connector plus 2 bullets. I snipped the bullets and repinned the wires accordingly into a 9 pin.
The right has only 2 differences from the stock one combo. The new switch has a 3 position "headlight on-off-emerg. flasher" slide switch on top instead of the "run-off-run" round switch. The kill switch is positioned like if it was the signals and sits right above the start button. I guess that's kind of a big difference for the stock one really? Ummmm...this is easier?
Right combo..


Left combo..


Sorry you had to read all that
As far as what I'm keeping...
Signals (have running lights up front, stock config in rear but gonna put the running lights in back and signal only in front)
Headlight (duh)
Oil press
Neutral
No gauges
Kill switch and the ignition switch
Possible to do 1 idiot light for both signals?

It would be nice to have the headlight power on the right combo switch (pulling up someone's driveway with the option to blind them?) It'll definitely be through a relay cause the wires are only 16g in the switch I think? I know the slider switch on the right is 5 wires. Don't recall what colors went together in the 2 positions, but I can get it. Just an FYI. It didn't come with a wiring diagram as to what color does what.

But right now. I've got a bigger concern in regards to charging. Damn bike is mechanically sound cept for a rattle here or there (my rear solo hump) and new pads. I've got the material ready to go now to build a 2-1 exhaust :woohoo: but a pretty exhaust doesn't look good attached to the bike on the side of the road wow...am I venting?? lol..

I posted a simplified diagram in the Mattylight thread.
kzrider.com/forum/4-electrical/172746-19...ght?start=360#687129

It sounds like one of the contacts in the ignition switch is bad. You will probably want to open it and check out the red/blue wire contact point. I have drawn the ignition switch with the contacts doubled up for more reliability. The tradeoff is that the parking light feature is no longer functional.

If you decide to do a rewire, hopefully it will be easier to trace down any wiring issue you may have with the charging system.

You will first want to make sure the brown wire at the reg/rec is about the same voltage as the white/red output wire of the reg/rec. You will also want to make sure the ground wire is near zero. (These measurements use the battery negative post as the ground point for reference, which means that's where you connect the black lead of the meter.)

You could use one light for oil and neutral, but that would seem very confusing. Also, it doesn't really save you any connections, other than the bulb. Besides removing one bulb, you may be able to reduce the wiring by one wire (actually less than one wire since you would have to combine the two switch wires at some point, you will still have portions of the wire connected).