Subject: Re: The Eldo has landed....
Author: Greg Field
Date: Oct 21, 2003, 8:29 AM
Post ID: 1714941380
Lannis:
Glad it got there.
The stock brakes are too wooden for use in 2003 with anybody you care
about riding the bike. Add a second disc or substitute an F09 caliper
and smaller m/c and stick with one disc. You can still find F09s for
the left side (opposite of stock; right ones are tough to find), but
that's no big deal because you can flip the front wheel and make a new
brake line to easily put it on the left.
Adding a second disc is easy, but you do have to have a spacer made to
accommodate the second disc, an dyou have to get a second disc. I think
there are some discs on ebay right now.
I have a drawing of the spacer you need. Actually, disc Eldos came with
two different left-side bearing blocks on the front wheel, so the width
of the spacer depends on which bearing block you have. Bob Nolan has
always made the spacers for me, but any machinist could.
Try the stock m/c with dual discs before you decide to discard it. If
you go with an F09, definitely discard it. They often have a "crunchy"
feel because they need rebuilding (and even sometimes after rebuilding,
if you dont put a little lube on the pivot), but yours may be OK. A
properly working 15mm m/c gives OK feel, but a 14mm would give better
feel (I use a 13mm, and it's like power brakes, but requires a lot of
lever travel [that's the tradeoff: lever effort v. lever travel]). Best
is to buy a new m/c. Second is to get a used one off of ebay. Get one
with a mirror mount (ones for fully faired bikes often don't have the
mount). I'm looking for one right now, too, so please don't bid against
me. They come along often enough.
In 120 tires, the best combo I've found is an ME 880 front and ME 88
rear.
The easy way to get a rear seat to go with the solo is to buy the
Harper's set-up, which consists of a rack with a bolt-on seat. This
combo looks good and is fairly reasonably priced (for Harper's). It
looks pretty thinly padded to me, so unless she's a real lightweight
and real tough, my guess is she probably won't be happy with that seat
for long. I've never sat on one, though, so I could be wrong about its
comfort. One of these seats is on ebay right now.
Another company (can't remember the name right now) used to make sprung
front and rear seats for Eldos that were really comfy. I think a friend
of mine has a matching set he's trying to sell.
As for bags, the best are the hinged cop bags used on the late Guzzis
and cop Kawasakis. I can help you find a set if this is what you want.
Another excellent (and more period-looking choice) is Buco bags. Wixoms
are good, too. I have some plastic Bates bags laying around. They work
well till you tip over, and then they shatter. (I bought the Beetle
bags from Mike, so they're off the market, for now anyway.)
Stock airbox is a good idea. Really cuts down on intake roar. There are
several on ebay right now, I think. Mine runs fine with it, even as a
950 (like yours). I haven't done any dyno runs to see if it lost power,
but seat of the pants says no.
Also, remember that after brakes, the best bang for the buck is longer
fork dampers and the heavy-duty springs from the G5. Even better for us
big boys might the Wurth progressive springs (though at 240 lbs i
really haven't had much bottoming problems even riding hard with G5
springs).
I did not drain the gas, so you shouldn't have to gas it right away.
You will need a new battery, though, in all likelihood. I think you'll
like it, but don't judge for sure till you've replaced those dampers
because it makes all the difference.
GF
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 09:35 PM, Lannis Selz wrote:
| ...right in my shop. A really pretty blue-and-cream two tone 1975 Eldorado with a sprung solo saddle from Washington State. Picked it up at the Richmond, VA ForwardAir terminal tonight (they were open at 10:00 PM!!) courtesy of Greg Field who took a lot of his own time shipping it for me, and am charging the battery tonight prepatory to gassing it up tomorrow and trying it out. Already planning on things to do to it. Change the ten-year-old 110-profile Avons to 120s, put the stock airbox back on it instead of the K&Ns, find a way to mount a second solo seat and backrest (I bought it for my wife to two-up with me!), find some period hard bags for it...it has a sprung solo seat, windshield, footboards, police bars, and crash bars but no bags. And speaking of disk brakes, it looks like a second disk and caliper would bolt right onto it; the bosses are already there on the fork leg. I'll have to look and see how the wheel is set up, and whether a disk would bolt right on to it, or maybe someone already knows. (I just realized that I have only read the 4-valve paragraphs in Guzziology; I'll have to read the rest of it now.) Ron K was speaking of a bigger master cylinder for double disks....do you have to adapt one off a modern bike or is there one made for this app.? Looks like it's going to be a lot of fun and a good stablemate for the Centauro. Lannis |