Clubman Part 2

Saturday morning time to finish the Clubman bars.

The first point of order is to prep the bars for the wiring. The bars we got ($28 including shipping on eBay) had no holes in them and had 10" arms.

• Looking at the bike we felt the bars would be a little to wide so we cut 1-1/4 inches off each end. This was done by wrapping the bars with tape to mark the cut line and clamping them in a soft-jaw vice. A Dewalt reciprocating saw with a fresh blade made quick work of the cutting. We dressed the cut ends with a flat file on the outside edges and a round file on the inside to remove all sharp edges.

• Next we laid the old bars next to the new bars and marked the holes for drilling. Each housing has a "hockey-rink" hole for the wiring with a round hole that is for a pin on the hand control. The position of this hole determines where your grips clock. We transferred the hole patterns to the new bars and proceeded to cut them out. First I hit the bars on a grinding wheel at the place I wanted to cut my hockey-rink hole this created a flat spot to drill on. Then I hit the bars with a center punch once on the position hole and 3 times across the hockey-rink. We drilled the holes one at a time and opened the holes with progressively larger bits until the holes connected to each other. We finished opening the holes with a carbide burr bit.
  
• Finally we marked the center hole (where the wires exit) and drilled and burred the hole. After creating each hole we spent time hand filing each opening so there were no sharp edges to catch the wiring.

With the prepped bars in hand we moved forward with installing the bars.

• The first order of business is to pull the wires attached to the hand controls in through our hockey-rink holes. The easiest way to do this is to get a 12" length of ball-chain. (I took my off the ceiling fan in our living room.) The cool thing about the chain is its heavy and will fall right into the bars. Also it will snake through almost any shape and fall out the hole on the other end. (Thanks Jim!) We used electrical tape and taped about 4" of chain to the wires. Try to get the bundle a small as possible. Start at the end of the chain about 4" before the end of the wiring. Then spiral-wrap tape down the harness tapering to the end. Feed the chain into the hockey-rink hole and out the center hole. Pull firmly as you push the harness into the hole. Squirt a little WD-40 to help it slide. We had to try this a couple times as it is tight and working the wiring past the 90deg bend in the Clubmans is a task.
  
• Reconnect the controls to the bars. Be careful not to pinch any wires, this is usually where people get shorts.
• Use a little more Windex and work the left grip onto the new bars. (Be careful on your test ride the Windex will take 24 hours to completely dry.)
  
• After trying to sandwich the clutch/brake cable in between the handlebars and the speedo/tach we found the brake cable was binding. So we fed the speedo/tach inside the clutch and brake cable and every thing worked fine.
  
• We reconnected the two bolts on the speedo/tach and then reconnected the handlebar clamps.
• We reconnected the headlamp ears to the headlight bucket and the reconnected the wires inside the headlight bucket. Ours were a color to color match except for one wire that had been previously spliced. But since we marked it and took a picture it was easy to remember where it went.
• We put the screws back in the headlamp bucket at 4 and 7 o'clock, reconnected the battery and waited for the moment of truth.
• We turned the key, headlamp on--check, neutral light on--check, hit the starter and the CB200 fired to life.
• We rechecked all out bolts (especially the bar clamps) and took the CB200 for a test flight.
  

I was right, the bike is faster. In fact I got a little high-speed wobble at about 60. We need to have the front rim trued. Here's the final product:

The cb200 with Clubman handlebars and getting a quick oil change. :)