Changing Out the Handlebars - Part I

I ordered the handlebars on Monday and they arrived on Thursday, so naturally I staged some photos of me taking them out of the box... on Saturday.

Then I headed down to Flying Tiger Motorcycles for some supervised work on the bike.

First we removed the lever controls for the brake and clutch and then we removed the clamps holding the stock handlebars, the hand controls and the throttle housing.

There is wiring running from the hand controls, through the stock handlebars, down by the gauge cluster and under the gas tank.

After unhooking the wiring and threading it back through the stock handlebars they were completely off of the bike and I put the new handlebars in place to make sure they still worked with the bike.

There are a couple of things that have to happen before we can fully install the new handlebars.  First we removed the top of the triple tree to get it cleaned and repainted.

The top of the triple tree was showing its 36 years of use, so it was ready for a nice cleaning.

In order to make this part look like new again I used the bead blaster at Flying Tiger.  This machine shoots a stream silicon beads which are about the same size as grains of sand.  The beads are shot out of a nozzle inside the machine.  The silicon beads provide enough erosion to strip anything off of the aluminum part, but are soft enough to keep from hurting the underlying metal.  

To work the machine you put your hands in heavy-duty gloves mounted to the machine.  If you have seen the opening sequence of The Simpsons where Homer is working then you can imagine how the bead blaster works.  Next to the machine is a vacuum which removes the beads as they are shot out of the nozzle  You look through a window to see your progress.

It doesn't take very long for the metal to be stripped totally clean.

Once the part has been cleaned it is ready for a new coat of paint.  Then it looks like a brand new part.

We put two coats of paint on the top of the triple tree and it needed to dry overnight so we were done for the day.  The next steps are to drill holes in the new handlebars to run the wiring, mount the new handlebars to the bike and reattach the hand controls.  Meanwhile I'll also be working on getting a new seat and tail section.