Chooper kit

I had added a few chrome bits, new handlebars and slash cut the pipes. Other than that, the bike is stock at this point. When the AME order arrived, there were two boxes. The first contained the AME chopper kit parts. Included were the upper and lower triple trees, steering stem, steering head adapter block, steel braided speedo cable, steel braided brake hose and a couple bags of miscellaneous hardware, spacers, steering head stop block, front axle and a headlight bracket. The second box held the extended upper fork tubes, tube caps and the fork spring spacers. Everything was either chromed or made of stainless. Once I saw the stainless braided brake hose and speedo cable from AME, I just had to have stainless clutch and throttle cables too! The forks are off and I'm ready to start dismantling the triple trees and steering head assemblyThe first thing I did was get the bike up on a lift and tied down for safety. I was also getting a new paint job from Benny Bryant at Fantasies on Wheels so I removed the tank, fenders and side panels. The fenders are each held on by four bolts. I had also removed the exhaust system because I wanted to do a little more work with the slash cut stock pipes.I loosened the brake hose at the caliper and drained the brake system. Once the brake system was drained I removed the brake hose from the caliper and the master cylinder reservoir. Two bolts and the brake caliper was off the fork. Next was the front wheel. This is easy. Loosen the axle pinch bolt and then the axle bolt itself. I put something under the front tire to take the weight off the axle as I slid the axle through the wheel hub and the lower fork assembly. On the Custom, the front turn signals are mounted to the forks. The fork clamps were removed and the turn signals were removed from the forks as well. I loosened the fork caps while they were still clamped in the trees but I didn't remove them. The two pinch bolts on each tree were loosened and the forks slid out of the triple tree. I took the caps off the forks, drained the oil and removed the spring spacers, spacer washers and springs. The stock spacers, washers and springs are reused with the chopper kit. I took the entire stock fork assembly and the new extended upper fork tubes to a local shop and had them remove the stock upper tubes, install the extended upper tubes and install new fork seals. The cost was about $40 for labor and $40 for new seals.




Here, the entire steering head assembly is off the bike. I'm almost ready to start installing the chopper kit.

There were a lot of wire harnesses and cables in the way so I removed the side panels to get to all the connectors and cable linkages. Before working on any of the wiring, the battery MUST be disconnected so that there is no danger of shorting anything as it's being worked on. I unplugged the turn signals and headlight harnesses. After removing the turn signals and the headlight I started disassembling the handlebar controls. I disassembled the throttle grip and housing. Then disconnected the throttle cables from the control housing. Next, I removed the grips from both sides. The clutch cable was disconnected from the clutch lever and the cluth lever/left mirror perch and the brake lever/master cylinder were removed. I left the throttle cables and clutch cable on the bike so I could measure the length for new stainless cables with the chopper kit installed. I unplugged the handlebar control housing wire harnesses. This normally wouldn't have to be done but I was going to hide the wire harnesses inside a new set of bars and chrome the housings, so I disconnected everything. After the handlebars and risers were removed, I was ready to start dismantling the steering head and trees. The steering stem nut was removed from the top tree. This exposes the steering stem, ring nuts and top bearing. There are two ring nuts. The main one and a top one that is used as a jam nut. I removed the top ring nut and loosened the main one. The steering stem is attached to the bottom tree, so the bottom tree has to be supported as you remove the primary ring nut or the whole thing will simply fall off the bike. Once the main ring nut is removed, the top tree can be lifted off and the bottom tree with the steering stem can be pulled down through the bearings and off the bike. All that's left at this point is the bearing races in the steering head tube.