Does this airhead make me an airhead?

krehmkej said:

And to make removal even easier, I placed a 8mm washers over the petcock barbs before slipping the hose on. Makes pulling them off a real breeze.

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That's a great trick. I'm going to have to do that. It can be a PITA removing the hose once they've been there a while.

krehmkej said:

And to make removal even easier, I placed a 8mm washers over the petcock barbs before slipping the hose on. Makes pulling them off a real breeze.

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That sounds like a good little trick.

Especially if you use one of those camp stoves that burn gasoline.

sumran said:

When you change out the fuel lines, don't forget the crossover line that runs under the air cleaner box.

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+1

..and I haven't used a single hose clamp on my BMW's and haven't dripped a drop.

Consensus beats LoneLobo about the head and Wins!

Ok, ok I bow before the court and promise to undo the already done... may take a while though as the building inspection (top up)for my kitchen remodel is scheduled for tomorrow. Hopefully my plumbing and electrical work will pass (I studied the building codes for weeks trying to figure out every way an inspector could sink me) and if it passes I will move on to insulation and then sheetrock. In between these chores I will reward myself with Bike Days here and there. If I can get the garage/workshop finished the bike will finally have a decent pit to rest in out of the weather for once.

I wouldn't count on that master cylinder being rebuildable considering the amount of rust around it. I'd give it a 50/50 chance, and that's being extremely optimistic! But I have been surprised before, so you could get lucky.

I've enjoyed your narrative and can certainly relate to the wiring harness woes. The 77 RS I got last year was pretty bad (bad enough I replaced the whole harness), but didn't have the clever Texas HZE of yours.

Electrical Tape is always up to no good!!!

The building inspector came today and my top out passed inspection and I can move on to more gratifying inspections in the near and distant future. Did I mention that my first $300 building permit expired and I had to pay another $300 for another permit. Now, that was Renegade's money and to show her displeasure she started coughing up electrical tape cocoons like a mothra in triple heat. I started by looking into the abyss of the headlight shell. Here's a taste.

So I pulled the ignition switch out of it's hole as well as loosening the relays so I could get some wiggle room to start removing the left handlebar switch loom.

While I was at it I removed the loom that was installed for the Luftmeiser fairing.
Better already...I can see the circuit board a little easier.

Left Loom, two, three...

So I get the left handlebar loom out finally to take care of all that crazy splicing and dicing. Here it is on the bench stripped nekkid....please don't let children watch this!!

I've removed what was left of the loom cover and all the electrical tape that WAS almost half the loom. The 2 yellow wires were obviously tied into in the past and never buttoned up.

A little yellow shrinktube...it's not the waterproof kind cause it is being covered with the black waterproof shrinktube you see being worked up the cables.

And here's the almost finished product. I will put new connectors on as soon as they arrive.

Right handed people suck!

Moving on to the right hand handlebar loom was a bit easier. I ordered a new assembly and put it on the handlebar....but wait, there's no screw with the new switch assembly. How can they call it an assembly if there's no way to assemble it? Where the H#LL did I put the old broken unassembly that is useless so I probably threw it away.... searching....searching.....found it! So on it goes....doesn't quite look right, but it is a rat bike after all.

The loom was easy to pull through, reconnect AND HEY, there are some loose blue wires? TRacing, TRAcing, TRACing, TRACING, HEY LOOK WHAT i FOUND!@


That's going to make installing the front turn signals a lot easier. Finally, a break. Thank you!!!

Looks great so far. If you use the cloth covered fuel lines, a chunk of heat shrink tubing on the ends helps them keep their round shape and stay on. It also looks good.

See thru fuel line....Ooo lala....

I am trying to find clear fuel line. Supposedly Bing makes it but my emails to them has gone unanswered. Any ideas where to find some transparent or translucent fuel line rated for gas & alcohol? Please don't ask why....even I don't know why....

lonelobo said:

I am trying to find clear fuel line. Supposedly Bing makes it but my emails to them has gone unanswered. Any ideas where to find some transparent or translucent fuel line rated for gas & alcohol? Please don't ask why....even I don't know why....

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Well, a cursory check says that clear polyurethane has good fuel resistance, but it isn't so great with alcohol. Good alcohol-resistant clear tubing isn't great with fuel. So there's no clear winner (pun intended - or not).

Depends on how much you want to spend and how much alcohol you'll have in your mixture. IME, solvent-related failures of clear tubing show up either as opacity or gross swelling, so basically, when you can no longer see through it, or it looks way too fat, you'd want to replace it. Since there's no real pressure on it (other than the gravity effect of the 2-foot drop to the carbs), I'd just give it a try and see how well it works. It's not like replumbing all the fuel lines on an Airhead is exactly rocket surgery ...

Call me a Tim the Toolman wannabe but dude, those are some AWESOME hose clamps!!! Sure, I admit I've never leaked a drop of gas without clamps on my cloth line. But there's no way I would ever have learned the cool tricks of using the 8mm washer or the heatshrink tubing to make the cloth line work even better if it hadn't been for your AMAZING posts.

If by chance you end up with an excess inventory of unneeded truly-stainless hose clamps when this project is done, would you consider selling some? I'd be proud to keep a few slightly used Renegade hose clamps in my toolbox ANYTIME.

How soon do you think you'll have some more pics?

myonan said:

I'd be proud to keep a few slightly used Renegade hose clamps in my toolbox ANYTIME.

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Is that like buying chewing gum on ebay that has been in the mouth of someone famous? Does Renegade have DNA so it can be verified as an authentic Renegade clamp? You may haved stumbled on a way for lonelobo to finance the restoration.

Have your picture taken with the RENEGADE

In an attempt to fund RENEGADE's reluctant restoration, any of you can, for a small fee, have your picture taken with RENEGADE. For a little extra, I can supply a coon skin cap that looks a lot like SnowBum's from a rabid critter that mistakenly entered my garage last summer. But for the ultimate RENEGADE FAN OBJET' DE ART, I can arrange for a toothless topless dancer to pose with you AND RENEGADE. Classic AND Classy.

Buy the way, Bing just called and they sell Cloth, Blue, and Clear tubing. It's on it's way so I can see all the rust in the fuel lines.

How about a package deal on 3 Renegade hose clamps with certificate of authenticity and a pic of me and the dancer (wearing only the coonskin cap) on Renegade? I keep the cap.

lonelobo said:

Buy the way, Bing just called and they sell Cloth, Blue, and Clear tubing. It's on it's way so I can see all the rust in the fuel lines.

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Blue? Cool.

Renegade Blows Fuse

So, I've been busy working on my house and dialing for ducats but today I got a few hours to fiddle with more electronics. I got an open barrel crimper and a bunch of uninsulated open barrel terminals to make new connections. Plus a bunch of multi-colored wire. So I replaced all crimped wire extentions with twist and solder covered by waterproof shrink tubing. All the wires of the left hand switch set were reterminated. As I was fiddling with rerouting wires the ground terminal on one of the panel mount fuse holders fell off.....THIS IS WHY I DO ALL THIS...that flaky fuse ground terminal is the kind of thing that can take literally months of troubleshooting to find so I'm glad it happened now....

The arrow is pointing to the fuse holder in question.


That being said, I can't seem to find a replacement at any auto parts store nor home improvement mega store. Anybody got a lead on where to find this thing.

I can't find it on the fisch at any of the regular parts sites either.

Also, in true Hillbilly form, I noticed that all of the headlight washers are not present. It's missing rubber washers and flat washers and wave washers. I guess it didn't matter to the PO since he ran the RENEGADE fairing and didn't use the original headlamp.


I bought a bag o seat parts off Ebay and got around to putting the hinges back on. Here is a picture of what the previoius Hillbilly used to torture the seat pan.

Yes, it's SAE...what would you expect from this guy?

You ain't got no friends on your left, your right, sound off....

Just a quick note and pic to show the remounted front turn signals.

Is it just me or does the process of getting ready to try to start the engine for the first time take forever. Once I am satisfied that the harness is in some semblence of order I will try to fire the Renegade up. Of course, I need to clean the gas tank first....and then there's that pesky front master cylinder. That MC is my biggest fret to date. It's pitted a bit and there is no consensus as to whether the $70 rebuild kit I bought will even work. I may try to find a machine shop to sleeve it. Does anyone know a good shop for this in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metro area?

crazydrummerdude said:

Blue? Cool.

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I use orange on my shifter kart. I used to have the blue it's pretty cool.

have not laughed so hard in years,thanks