Tales of a Ratty 75 - what I did this weekend

[Winter]

It was nice on Saturday, so I pulled out some of the two-wheeled toys to get them ready for the road. Here's an old Hawthorn that my wife picked up a few years ago. It needed new rubber and a few other minor adjustments.

You can see the ratty '75 in the garage, next to the lady's tdi New Beetle. The beetle is a cool car, get's about 50mpg but pretty zippy with the tdi on board.



As happens with the first real day in the garage after a busy winter, one thing led to another and I started to clean up the garage a bit and organize some tools. At the bottom of the bike toolbox I found this interesting wrench made in West Germany. It now resides in the '75.



I then moved onto this oil cooling system. It was attached to the car when I bought it, but not hooked up to the 2.2 that mysteriously resides in the car (the engine to thermostat lines were gone). It's now getting applications of penetrating oil. I've looked at some of the threads on the forum about how to deal with this, and it looks like it's a PITA. Eventually I may try the pipe wrench method. Until then, she soaks.



Finally I decided to fix the "off" trigger for the turn indicator, as I was turning them on and off manually. I'd gotten the horn working last summer by installing this part:
113415660A, which I thought also would fix the switch problem, too. (maybe the experts can chime in?).

Regardless, some home-made pins did the trick.

The "pins" cut from common nails, be sure to "nail" the correct length as you don't want interference or damage with anything inside the hub! Two holes already existed in the proper places on the horn ring, so placement was simple.



The "pins" installed:



Finally, a parting shot of the engine bay. Enthusiasts will note the "factory-plus" special 3 tone paint job with the underside of the deck lid's blue setting off the metallic brown of the lip of the bay. The exterior appears to be Grand Prix white at first glance, but possesses the sought-after "spyder" treatment, with intricate cracking of the paint for a one-of-a-kind patina. A beautiful machine!

[Playa76911S]

Cool turn signal switch fix...love these stories of abused and neglected 911s slowly coming back to life!

[mikeferg75]

Awesome work, I'll park you next to a Ferrari next month

More pics of the bike