Homemade tool ideas and problem solutions

Got a nifty tool or way to do something to make bike maintenance easier??? Post it up!

I’ll start.

I went to sync my carbs last night and remembered what a pain it was to do this without an auxiliary tank. Although they look nice, I was never a fan of spending $40+ on a hanging aux tank that gets used for 20 minutes a year. So I set out to find something that I “repurpose” to an aux tank. I had an acid container floating around the garage from my last battery replacement that looked like it could fit the bill. I drilled a .250” hole it the side and stuff an unused battery vent line in the hole. The vent line had to be squeezed in there and was gas tight without any other sealants or whatnot. The vent line also fit snugly inside my fuel line going to the carbs. I filled it ¼ full, pulled the red cap on the top to vent and placed it on just in front of the rear fender. It worked perfectly and easily provided enough gas to warm the engine and get my sync done.

I figured I’d share it with you guys cause I know I’m not the only one who doesn’t have a aux tank.

 

I'll give it a go as well. Is your YICS passage gunked up? Need an easy way to clean it out? Try a 40 cal bore brush. Worked like a champ on my 550. you can also run a bore swab and hoppes #9 to clean out the gooeys in there.

 

My favorite Homemade too is:

"Airbox Boot Fitting Shoe Horn"

Cut 10-Inches of solid C-B Antenna Rod
Heat an end and bend it to make a 90-Degree angle - 1/2 Inch long.
Heat it again and flatten-out the 1/2 Inch section to form a narrow, flat, finger.
Heat; let cool.
Sand the "Spoon-end" to a polished finish to allow it to glide and not snag the Boot Lip.
Heat. Quench; to re-harden the Rod and Spoon.

Heat the opposite end and bend a 2-Inch Handle matching the Angle of the Spoon to be able to guide the Spoon, ... accurately.

Add 2-Inches of Vacuum Line epoxied to the "Handle"

Use this tool to slip into the open ends of Airbox Boots to lift and guide them over the Intake Horns when reinstalling carbs.

 

I made what I believe to be a unique sync tool. It's a two bottle sync, but the bottles are upside down. The manometer portion end just at the mouth of the bottles, and the intake portion ends at the "bottom" of the bottles, so that the relatively small amount of fluid (brake fluid because it's light, viscous, and what I had at the time) cannot, under almost any circumstance, get sucked into the cylinder but the fluid remains in the manometer portion.

You can't really see it, but the intake portion is constructed of several tubes and valves (from the irrigation section at Home Depot) that allow me to attach all four cylinder while only measuring two at a time, and being able to switch between any two extremely quickly.

There is a patch in the manometer section because it got too close to the exhaust headers one day...

 

Awesome, I have an acid box just like yours sitting on my work bench right now that I am going to modify to fit the bill!

Rick, that looks like a much needed tool! Is that little hoop-d-do needed in the center section or can it be straight as well? Boots are such a battle to get back on, especially the inner ones.

 

A snowblower tank also makes a great aux tank for tuning. The already have fuel lines and shut off valves, and are made to hold gas

 

Hoppes #9 and my cleaning pick set did a great job on the inside of my nasty caliper too. Brake clean wasn't even moving the junk in there.

 

An 8 foot tall u tube manometer made with 25 feet of vacuum tubing and a few ounces of transmission fluid.
It can suck the fluid into the carbs but it would take about a week!
Also the ginormous amount of hose dampens the pulses out quite nicely.
Just used the thing to FINALLY sync my carbs well.
It now will pull from 800 RPM to 8500RPM nice and smooth ( though I don't dare to give it more than 1/8 throttle below 2000 RPM for fear of beating the bearings out of it).