It's been a minute since I posted last, so I wanted to get something down on the page lest both my readers think something happened to me, and I guess in a way it did - IT WARMED UP!! THANK GOD!! 

There hasn't been a lot of 'bikey' stuff going lately on because it's been too damn COLD in the garage, although if you recall I was pissed because my vapor blaster buckets had frozen solid and I was worried that it might have broken or otherwise crushed my water pump - well, I was only half-right...it only broke the base off it!  

You can see where the expanding ice pulled the base off the pump base - those little rivets there. If you look closely you can see where the rivet points were pulled or pushed off the base, leaving me to wonder how to get the base back on. I have some 5200 Marine adhesive coming that I hope will allow me to reattach the base; it's supposed to be the schizznit for gluing stuff down, and even (supposedly) works underwater, so we will see. 

The steel bucket itself was deformed by the ice around the bottom rim, so I'm hoping I can seal IT up too and re-use it, fingers crossed. So far I've used some Brute-brand plastic 10-gallon buckets that eventually cracked around the handles so I went with the steel ones, but all the freezing managed to do a job on them too. I'm hoping I can re-seal them with the 5200 Marine instead of regular caulk like I had before, but we'll see if all the hype around the 5200 Marine sealant lives up to its name. 

One of the things I AM working on is this neutral switch rotor for my 1974 CB550k; this little thing here tells the engine when it's in Neutral, which comes in handy at stop lights, etc. 

The above pic is of the backside of the rotor, but that's not where the problem is...it's here...

See that little 'smudge' there...? There is SUPPOSED to be a little tab sticking out there that goes into a shaft on the engine that aligns with the Neutral position on the gear shift, and it's not there - this is actually a common problem with these fifty-plus year-old bikes. This part is pretty much unobtainable anymore, so the 'fix' is to put a small drill bit in there to catch the notch on the neutral shaft that that part fits into. I haven't done this yet, so we'll see how it goes.