Greetings Bulleteers. I am new to the forum and this is my first post. After 35 years without a bike, I bought a 2000 500 Bullet a year ago on Ebay. Didn’t know if it ran or not, as the seller hadn’t ridden it in the 3-4 years he’d had it. So I’m about 4th owner I think. Came with a swag of parts and factory engine tools. Previous owner(s) did a disc brake conversion and some mods to give it a bit more original look – Smiths replica speedo, new Amal carb, single seat.
I have removed the enormous sausage silencer and replaced it with the short bottle. One of the first things I did was hard-wire the headlight ‘on’. This seems a no-brainer to me, that bikes and less-visible vehicles generally should be lights-on at all times. Here in South Australia, with our mostly clear weather, many don’t consider visibility as much of a problem but obviously, every bit helps, especially with texting and other driving distractions. I got a white helmet too. Anyway that’s all boring stuff.
Indicators –
Second job was get rid of the ‘80’s Japanese-style indicators, replacing with some little chrome units off Ebay. The indicator switch is not self-cancelling so I need to know when they’re left on. The earlier change of the speedo to a Smith's replica unit lost the indicator warning lamp. Better than just a lamp, a site in the UK showed me the idea of fitting a small weatherproof piezo buzzer which works very well, pic shows it siliconed in place just under the handlebar bracket. However, this was after I had already installed new dash warning lamps using a single LED for each side, not one for both, so I would know which way to push the indicator switch to off. This is useful for anyone developing or already suffering from CRAFT syndrome (Can’t Remember A F’n Thing)
Installing the LED’s – This is quite a neat and unobtrusive solution. Simply drill the alloy casquette to the size of a single LED, push it up from underneath with a drop of superglue and it's there to stay. Wire each LED with a suitable resistor to its indicator circuit. I used bright white LED's for indicators plus a blue one for high beam. In bright sunlight, they’re very obvious. Being standard LEDs with a domed top, most light is focussed straight ahead, this being well ahead of my view, making them not so visible when riding. To diffuse the light a little wider and softer, I just ran a file across the top to flatten the top 1mm or so and also matt the finish.
All this worked brilliantly until a couple of the LEDs blew on two separate days. I replaced the LED each time and had to drive them out with a punch, they were stuck so well with that drop of superglue. This chipped the paint a little bit, which had been perfect around the drilled holes.
So why had the LED’s blown? The clue to the cause was that I'd used the horn both days. As all who have fiddled with coils and relays know, a wire coil (the horn's electromagnet) will produce a 'back EMF' when disconnected - a high voltage as the electromagnetic field decays, occurring many times a second as it rapidly switches on and off to vibrate the horn diaphragm. The solution to this is simple – fit a ‘quenching diode’, a plain 1 amp 400 volt diode, in reverse polarity, across the horn, so the back EMF produced by the horn is simply shorted out through the diode. This is soldered and spliced into the horn cable and completely hidden.
Dodgy electrical connectors-
On the topic of electrics, I had quite a lot of connectors to repair. When I bought the bike, quite a few things just didn’t work well – feeble horn, dull lights etc, indicating bad connections. The first step was looking for loose connectors, by eye and with a voltmeter across the suspect run of wiring while the relevant device was in operation. Horn, for example had a lot of voltage drop traced to its spade connectors being loose (hardly surprising with the vibration of the horn and the poor quality connectors.
Push connectors in the wiring loom are there for two reasons: the convenience of replacing components, say if you break off an indicator, but mostly they are for quick assembly on the production line. For the owner, they can be trouble, especially with the heat, dirt, vibration and moisture of life on a bike. The connectors on my bike were of such awful quality, while examining them I wondered if they had come from some child-labour sweatshop where old soda cans get cut and bent into spade connectors. Truly awful. Once installed, these get vibrated loose and any metal temper that may have been there is lost by the localised heat caused by poor electrical connection. The simple solution is to cut out the offending connectors, solder the wires together and neatly tape or sleeve with plastic spaghetti. Thus I have eliminated all suspect connections more easily than replacing the poor connectors and done so with the reliability of a continuous wire.
For somebody to buy a bike like this without knowledge of electrical circuits and soldering would be a frustrating experience. I wonder how many Bullets are languishing abandoned or disassembled by frustrated owners, driven to despair by the disgracefully poor quality of the electrical connectors. Such a simple item, but a potential nightmare. Cut ‘em out, solder and tape. If you need to replace a connected item later, just cut then do the same again.
So I’ve had this bike a year now, it runs well and has been totally reliable. Still runs points ignition even though I have a Boyer Mk3 electronic ignition in its box. I can’t see any point fitting it except for a possible improvement in the advance curve, but I’d welcome any advice on that topic.
She’s a cheap ride, easy, slow and safe as can be, oozes character and best of all, spares are cheap and readily available directly from India. I do building inspections for a job and can’t resist mentioning it to my Indian clients, all of whom wax lyrical about the Bullet. Having been lovingly appropriated by India, it’s still as British as the chip. Lost in time. … or as the Snidal manual says, a ‘Living Dinosaur’.
Topic: Bullet Newby - I like it! (Read 11699 times)