Another Throttle Cable Replacement

Last week, I had yet another throttle cable breakage. Luckily, I've got two cables going to my carburetor, so I was able to get home. But I don't like riding with just one good throttle cable. I wasn't sure how long I could ride like that, and the good cable seemed to get a little too loose. That left me taking the van to work for a couple of days. 

With my first breakage a while back, I replaced the inner cable with 1/16 wire rope from Home Depot keeping the same cable housing. For this, I created a mold from pieces of aluminum flat stock for the carburetor end barrel fitting, and did what this guy did, more or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3XLAG3jx8. Additionally, I soldered a small bead on the control end to act as a cable stop to fit inside the ferrule. 

Later on, the control end of the cable broke. I had trouble soldering on another bead, since my silver-soldering skills kinda suck, so I just welded a bead of RG45 on the end. This seemed to work quite well, but I didn't think about the lack of corrosion resistance. I think this may have lead to last week's cable break, which happened right below where I welded on the end of the cable. I bet I burned off the zinc coating from the wire rope right below the weld, allowing it to corrode.

Without enough length left for a repair, I replaced the inner cable with some more wire rope from Home Depot, but I did things a bit differently this time.

To start with, I decided that instead of trying to fool with another molded solder barrel fitting for the carburetor end, I decided to just use a piece of 1/4" rod. I was initially going to use steel, but I worried about rust and wear. Luckily, I found some 1/4" zinc rod at the local Tractor Supply store. Using Zinc should take care of corrosion, and I can use grease to deal with wear.

After grinding a small flat spot on the side of the rod, I used my drill press to drill a 1/16" hole through the rod. Then, I used a larger bit (can't remember the size, sorry), to drill roughly half way through to provide space for a cable stop. I then cut the rod to approximately the length I needed.

Next, I brazed a bead of bronze on the end of the cable. After feeding the cable through barrel fitting, I compared the size of the bronze bead to the opening. I ground it down until it was about the right diameter, and lightly tapped it into the opening with a hammer. Next, with the bead tightly in place, I ground it down until more-or-less flush with the surface of the barrel fitting.

The assembled carburetor end of the cable already looked nicer than the old cable with the molded solder barrel fitting, but the new barrel fitting needed to be trimmed down a bit. Grinding with the grinding wheel on my drill press seemed too slow, so I used my angle grinder to speed things along. I did, however, use the grinding wheel to clean up the edge a bit.

After confirming that I could hook up the cable to the carburetor, I moved on to the control end of the cable.

I knew from past experience that feeding the cable through the metal portion of the cable housing with it's 90 degree turn was difficult and often lead to the cable end fraying. To prevent that, I brazed the end of the cable a bit. I still had quite a bit of difficulty getting it through. I tried a few different tricks without success, but finally had luck by welding a copper wire to the bronze coating on the cable end. (I say welding here, since I joined copper to copper-based alloy). Feeding the copper wire through the metal part of the housing was easy, though I did have to grind down the sides of the brazed end a bit to pull the cable through.

Once I did that, I cut away the copper wire. For whatever reason, I was having trouble getting a nice bronze bead on the control end, so I trimmed the bronze section off, and welded a bead of RG45 to the end. I then brazed over that for corrosion resistance.

With minimal cleanup, this fit into the ferrule quite easily. I did do just a tad bit of grinding to shape the brazed-over bead flush with the surface of the ferrule. Then, it was a simple matter to install on the throttle control. After making a few adjustments, I took the bike for a test ride and could not find any problems.

Hopefully, this holds up better than the last cable. After looking back at the pictures, I am concerned by what looks to be some unprotected cable below the bronzed bead cable stop on the carburetor end. Hopefully, just keeping both ends of the cable properly greased will prevent any corrosion. Time will tell.

Just Scored Cheap Parts From an Auction!

So let me tell you about my experience with an auction advertised on Craigslist! It was very different from an Ebay auction. The post-auction was much less convenient, but on the flip side, there was much less competition. After it was all over, I spent just a little over $100 for a complete, almost mint condition 4 speed transmission for my '88 Sportster and a set of very-good-condition turn signals!



I habitually rummage through the motorcycle parts listings on Craigslist, and I ran across two different links to an auction closing in about a month. There was quite a variety of parts listed with considerably low starting bids - low enough that I was somewhat suspicious. Among the various items were headlights, gas tanks, tools, exhaust parts, and one mostly-complete motorcycle. These parts were being auctioned as a part of liquidating the assets of a motorcycle shop in Pompano, Florida.

I saw quite a few things I was interested in. I liked a few of the tanks - though the ones I liked weren't Sportster tanks, I thought I might could make them work. I saw a set of turn signals that looked nice. I plan on making some, but at an initial bid of $10, I thought they might be good to use in the short term. If they were nice OEM turn signals, I figured I could eventually sell them for much more. I saw speedometers and tachometers that looked interesting, but there was no indication of whether they worked.


One thing that really caught my attention was a "mint condition" four-speed transmission for a late-model Sportster. At a glance, I was certain it would work for my bike. Now I couldn't tell if it had a late '84-'86 gear ratio or a '87-'90 gear ratio, but that's ok. There's only two gears that actually differ between the two. For an initial bid price of $50 - about the low-end cost for a single gear - there was a complete transmission. With a few of the gears and the shifter forks in my transmission being beat up a bit, I'm sure a spare transmission will eventually come in handy.

I would periodically check to see if there were any bids on the parts. I would notice a bid here or there, but most of the parts had no bid at all. Maybe folks were just waiting till the end of the auction? Luckily, I saw no bids on the parts I wanted, but I knew that even with the extremely low initial bids, I could only afford a few things. And who knew whether they would be bid up dramatically on the day the auction closed?

So during the week leading up to the auction, I narrowed down the list of things I might bid on. I saw a couple of welders at a bid prices that almost amounted to theft - except who knows if they work? I decided that while a nicer tank would be good, there were more practical things to bid on. I decided to bid on the transmission and the set of turn signals. I figured that if I were outbid on the transmission - and I wouldn't go much beyond the initial $50 due to my low budget - I'd bid on some other things like the large rack with spools of electrical wire or maybe the heavy-duty looking bench vices.

So I followed a link to register as a bidder. This felt a little spooky. I had never heard of the auction site before, and had no idea whether to trust it. I did a little research to see if it was listed in relation to any scams, and decided to take a chance. I bravely entered my information and credit card number, and ... jumped through a few hoops, the details of which I don't remember ... and I was registered.

So I placed my bid on the transmission, and then had trouble finding the listings for the initial auction. "No problem", I thought! I went back to Craigslist to find the link and ..... and.... hmmmm, this site said I wasn't registered!!! WTF! So I registered again, and the site seemed unfamiliar. I felt like maybe I was a fool, but I then bid on the turn signals. Turns out that two different sites posted two different links to the same auction. That's kinda weird. So I ended up registering for both sites, and bid on each item on a different site.

So on the day of the auction, I checked and checked and NO ONE AT ALL bid on the transmission or turn signals! While I didn't see anything explicitly saying so, I got the impression that this was some sort of hybrid internet-live auction. Maybe there were bids on site? If these were on auction on Ebay, there's no way in hell I would be without competition. But sure enough, I got emails declaring me the winner for both the transmission and for the set of turn signals. I looked at the other listings, and so many very good items had no bids at all. I don't think I saw any listings with more than one bid.

So was this a scam? I got an email from yet another guy working for another business. He didn't seem to be affiliated with either of the two auction sites, and based on his name seemed to be the owner of his own business. Despite having provided credit card information, he emailed a form for me to fill out giving authorization to use my card as payment. He also said "for some reason you have 2 invoices." He had a very pretentious sounding name, which made me wonder even more if this was bogus.

But I did some research on him and his company. There was nothing negative about the guy. I got the impression that he specialized in auctions where businesses or estates are being liquidated. There was a YouTube clip with a segment of "60 Minutes" showing him conducting an auction of some crooked lawyers assets in that lawyer's former office. I guess he was actually conducting the auction and simply used the two sites as a means for allowing online bidding. Then the two sites posted the redundant listings on craigslist.

There was a lot of going back and forth with this guy regarding payment and shipping. I totally missed this, but after the auction I saw clearly in the information about the auction that neither the seller or auctioneer would be responsible for shipping, and that buyers would have to make their own arrangements. So it looked like I needed to take a day off for a road trip to get the items in the time available.

After my initial email exchange with him, he told me that he was going to ship the items as a favor. How cool! It still seemed kinda confusing. Through out our exchanges, his responses where quite brief, and I wondered if he actually read my emails close enough to know all that I said. And you know what - that totally makes sense. I got the impression that he was juggling arrangements with many different buyers. He was no doubt quite busy. Going ahead and shipping despite the original plan to have buyers make their own arrangements no doubt made him that much busier. All things considered, he was providing good service.

So he sent another form asking to either be sure my card info would clear or to please give authorization for another form of payment. Granted, I told him to wait until the last pickup day to run my card. I kinda bid knowing that my paycheck would be direct deposited before the deadline for payment. So maybe telling him to wait spooked him a bit.

Much of my concern about this being a scam would have been alleviated had PayPal been an option for payment. It seems to me that it would likely have been much simpler for him as well. But then again, I don't know much about these kinds of auctions. He might just not be tech savvy enough to setup PayPal payments, or maybe there are very good business reasons not to use PayPal for these kinds of auctions? It's hard to imagine what those reasons might be, but who knows?

So on the last day of the pickup window arrived, everything went to plan. He confirmed that he took everything to the UPS store, they sent me their invoices, and I paid them online. I got tracking numbers for both shipments..... both shipments? What? I asked for everything to be shipped as a single shipment! I paid about $40 for shipping in total. That's what I would have paid for gas to ride my bike down there to pick up the items myself!



Still, I know the guy was really busy. Everything to be shipped was probably grouped by invoice, and I had two. And I had to keep in mind that originally, the deal was for buyers to pick up the parts on their own or to make their own shipping arrangements. And while I kinda half-way looked forward to the ride, I also kinda worried about my 30 year old motorcycle breaking down on the side of the road.

I was very happy when on the very next day, the transmission and turn signals arrived. They were as good as I expected! I had nice turn signals with metal housings for less than the cost of plastic Chinese ones that one can find on Ebay.


The transmission wasn't quite mint, but very close to it. I could see just the slightest indication that it was once in a motorcycle. The part of the mainshaft that sticks out of the housing showed the surface rust you'd expect from a used transmission. The inner bearing race showed just the faintest indication that it took a few turns inside the mainshaft case roller bearing. If they had said that the gears themselves were brand new, I would maybe have believed them. It wasn't mint, but it was damn good, especially for the $50 plus fees, plus sales tax, plus shipping, etc. which was still only about $80. I bet it would have sold for at least a few hundred on Ebay. I doubt that if it were a never-installed, NOS transmission that it would be any more reliable.

So moral of the story - look for these kinds of auctions! They're not quite as convenient as an Ebay auction, but if you do your research on the folks conducting the auction and they seem to be legit, you can get some insane deals! You can not only get parts you need for your bike, but parts you can sell on Ebay for much more! Actually, I really wish I had enough to do just that!