While it always seems a surprise here in August, fall often comes early to interior Alaska.
But the birch are soon to follow. After two weeks of rain and cool weather, it's finally cleared off and sunny. Amazing weather when the sun shines!
Besides rebuilding the carbs this winter, decided to replace the v65 handlebars. They were so low and narrow that they put a lot of weight on the wrists and forearms. As I got older, this became increasingly uncomfortable, I'd put old Triumph western style (cowhorn) bars on the 850 for this reason, so looked for somewhat higher and wider bars for 650. Found a set on the MG website, but they turned out not that much different, so they sat for a while before I decided to try them out. Unfortunately, the handlebar controls aren't easy to remove, so it took a lot of grunting to get them off, and as luck would have it, broke the turn signal switch. I went ahead and put it all back together and rode the bike a few times, but then decided to replace the switch. Since the switches aren't repairable, had to find a complete used switch console and harness on ebay, not easy for a thirty year old bike, but did find one and ordered it. This is what I got...
While the switch he sent looked the same, the wiring harness (a dozen wires) is almost a foot shorter, so had to reroute the bike's main harness, attached to the frame, and then it was still a stretch to hook the two together. I was able to get it to work like that, but am trying to get the seller send me a longer one. Will see how that goes.
Update: I got the replacement switch but it had wiring problems. So I was going to send it back, but no, maybe not, just got this email: "we don't take returns....these things are all 4 decades old....so best thing is to take the two you have and make something work." So it's back to work on it, no matter where yah go, there yah are!
It's all back together now and after some carb and throttle adjustments, runs like a top...so far.
