WORDS AND PHOTOS: STEVE COOPER
HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE
Project Yamaha CS3C part 5
Fettle and finish
It is reassembly time and things are going suspiciously rather well!
I
’ve now reached the stage in any rebuild where, hopefully at least, the positives have begun to outweigh the negatives. The bike is slowly being reassembled or at least I’m building sub-assemblies ready to reinstall. Everyone has their own sequence of rebuilding but mine generally commences as follows. Install the centrestand with its associated fittings i.e. the spring, the C-shaped centre stand link, and, if applicable, the rear brake arm. Over the years I’ve been frittering away my life on old bikes it’s become obvious that if the stand and its gubbins don’t go on first they’ll be a pig to do later. It’s almost as if the bike is built around it, not unlike a French car of the 1970s where the entire vehicle is constructed around the cigarette lighter… if you’ve been there you’ll know exactly what I mean! The original centrestand pin wasn’t in the best of health when I first looked at it 68 / classic motorcycle mechanics
One stand pin!
and the percussive persuasion needed to evict it didn’t help. My NOS and recycled spares yielded several likely pins but they were all too thin; the CS3C’s pin is unique to the pre-1972 bikes and, of course, is no longer available. The groove that locates the retaining E-clip didn’t look healthy so it should have been either a replacement, or re-manufacture job but my mate Bob came up with an effective and ingenious repair which I think does the job fine. The remains of the retaining shoulder were
machined off, a 6mm hole drilled and tapped then a stainless steel penny washer machined to suit as a retainer; I seriously doubt it’ll stand out once the bike is back together. Next up was the suspension, both ends having been cosmetically refreshed and/or rebuilt. The fork legs unfortunately yet predictably bore Stilson scars (other pipe wrenches are also available) so they went off to A M Philpots for fresh hard chrome. The rear shocks were variously rusty and covered in rattle can silver so they were stripped, re-chromed and rebuilt. The most labour intensive part was fettling the grey inner shrouds that supposedly protect the damper rod and seal when the bike is ridden off-road… yeah, right! Hideously scarred and spectacularly stained with rust from the springs, a whole afternoon was squandered on two plastic tubes. Sand paper, wet ‘n’ dry, kitchen cleaner and plastic headlight polish finally got them back to being reasonably tidy.