Wohooo...
Apart from a little tidying here and there, she's all finished and back on the road!
My new steering stem finally arrived from Raleigh to replace the one I had to saw in half. It's a bit bulkier than the original one and therefore the foam cover sits slightly higher than it would normaly.
Here's a comparison between the original stem and the new one.
This enabled me to connect up my new brake cables and get everything adjusted right. I think I need to allow the rear brake to bed in a little (it hasn't been used for years) before I can get it adjusted properly - it's still a little sloppy.
This is what she looks like now.
The only thing left to do is tidy the wiring to the 'throttle' switch and optimise the routing of the brake cables.
I just took it out for it's maiden voyage around the local roads and it ran brilliantly. Even my 10 year old daughter jumped on my knees and came for a blast with me.
Now... having never driven a C5 before today I wondered if anyone can answer a couple of questions:
1) The turning angle of the handlebars is quite small - the tip of the grips hits the very edge of the seat and this results in a reasonable-but-not-great turning circle. Now I can adjust the bar height so it can overlap the seat and therefore turn more, but I wanted to know is this is how a 'standard' set up is supposed to be?
2) General driving around causes the rubber grommets at the top of the seat back to loosen. Is this a common problem and does anyone have any suggestions to stop this happening? 'Glue them down' is probably an obvious one but is this the best solution? I don't want to loose 'em!
Thanks,
C.