DucatiPete wrote:
As for the side stand: I've managed to hack it so that it no longer self-retracts - this i like! though it's still a bit of a pain to kick out.
When I bought my '82 RS it was in very good shape--but that damned sidestand was nearly impossible! (An '81 RT project bike of mine has the same problem, only to a lesser degree.)
The problem was that the pivot joint so was badly worn that I had to actually lean the bike to the right to deploy the side stand.
Either that or hold the bike upright as you kick the stand into place with it digging into the ground.
I "fixed" the problem by installing a Brown Sidestand. Had I not done that I would have attempted a repair. Taking the L/H header pipe off to remove the sidestand revealed what I believed to be the problem. Simply the slot in the kickstand leg had worn to a keystone shape while the tab welded to the frame wore to a matching but sloppy geartooth shape. As I recall there was a bushing in the pivot, but I determined that the bushing, though useful as a pivot bearing, was essentially useless to keep the sidestand from "sagging". To accomplish that, I determined, meant that the slot in the upper end of the sidestand had to be returned to a square slot and the tab on the frame had to returned to mating square configuration.
I saw two ways to accomplish that. Both ways involved depositing some weld material onto the frame mounted tab and then grinding and filing to the required shape. As for the slot in the upper end of the sidestand, that was more problematic. It would be difficult to get at the inner walls of the slot to deposit the weld material. But I figured it could be done, but only at the more "accessible" locations, making the repair a bit of a kluge. A second method that occurred to me would be to re-forge the top slot in the kickstand by heating it with an oxy acetylene torch and judiciously whacking it with a hammer, then grinding and filing to fit.
A third approach did occur to me, which I quickly discarded. That would have been to rework the frame tab as mentioned, then to mill the slot in the kickstand back into square. This would mean that a spacer of the required thickness would need to be fabricated.
My ultimate conclusion about the '81 thru '84 sidestands is that they are a piss poor design, inferior to the /5 /6 /7 design, and I wonder if even diligent greasing of the pivot joint would have been enough to make the sidestand last for a reasonable time.
In summary, my advice would be to acquire a Brown sidestand even though they are increasingly hard to find and more expensive when you do. And even the Brown isn't perfect. It needs a tab so you can catch with your heel to deploy it. (putting a small hose clamp onto the kickstand gave me something to catch with my heel and deploy, but the fix is decidedly inelegant).
Ken
