Oy, vey. Been a doozy of a few weeks with the bike sitting forkless in the driveway on a jack. Thought I had everything set for the fork swap for a disc setup. New pumping rods drilled and springs cut to fit the valve emulators, everything painted, new top crown...yadda yadda.
Then it turned out nothing fit (imperial/metric issues, but a few other compatibility issues) and it took a few weeks of running around to get all the hardware that meshed. Worst part was my valve emulators from the old fork won't fit the new one--the new stanchion tubes are just a bit thicker. That meant my cut springs and drilled pumping rods were also useless, so I had to get new un-cut ones...the agony continues.
While the bike was down, I pulled the distributor shaft which had frozen stuck to the timing advance unit and replaced the points cam, which was a non-factory bodge with a strange profile, and which didn't run true. Bonus...I think I may be able to keep set bike for a steady idle now.
Worst part was the bar clamp on the Thunderbird triple tree--it's some bizarre thread; still don't know what it's supposed to take. No dealer couldn't help and kept trying to foist 1/4-20 studs on me, which do fit every other top crown in the world, but apparently not this one. Alternator studs, strangely enough, seemed to fit but a bit loose, and I ended up with a stripped-out clamp. Which is fine--I kinda needed to have them re-tapped for a more available thread anyhow. But it did make my triumphal ride pretty ginger, since I had the bar clamped down properly on only one side. It was also short, since I needed to remove the top crown again to get it fixed.
It was kind of soul-crushing to have to take off the bars, the dashboard, etc. to get the top crown back off and leave the fork just hanging there, but I'm not going to half-ass the machine work by trying to do it with a hand drill in situ; plus, I think it might be best to fill the existing holes with weld and re-drill/tap.
Next up, maybe a new custom tail section with electrics undertray, and re-re-wire job now that I know how to do it better, along with some other possible doodads.
Fireball is going to be in the works Stateside as soon as I can get the engine parts to Ace and Chumma...hope the shipper can put them in the mail soon.
[/soliloquy...for now.]