Lacing the Front Wheel

I received the parts a couple weeks ago from RAD Mfg. but its been super busy since then so I haven't been able to make the time to go out and put things together.  Well now it is cold and snow is on the ground, making the garage a might chilly and since I only have an hour or so to work no sense in putting a fire in the wood stove. So I will do what any other motorcycle enthusiast would do. Bring the project inside to the kitchen table.

When I put the rear wheel together it had been a very long time since I had attempted to string up a new rim so it was a bit of trial and error to get it all right.  This time I had a better Idea of where to start with the wheel set up and I went straight to work.  I will describe it in a bit more detail then I did with the rear wheel.
 First I slid in the spokes on one side of the hub making sure the top and bottom spokes laid in overlapping properly so they don't bind on each other.

Next I slid them into the rim making sure that each spoke hit the proper hole with the angle toward that side of the hub. I loosely put a nipple on each spoke just to hold them in the rim.

Next step was to lace each of the spokes through the other side of the hub and into the rim making sure to hit each hole in the rim with the proper angle as well as making sure the overlap of each spoke is correct. Don't want any binding.

Then with a standard tape measure I started to tighten the spokes up with just fingers and measured from the hub to the outside of the rim all the way around to center it up.  Also measured the offset of the rim while laying flat on the table and checked it against the measurement of the original wheel before I took it apart. I continued to tighten and measure until all spokes were tight with just fingers and made sure that each one was seated into the hub.  With all the spokes finger tight when I have time to put it on the forks and true and tighten the rest of the way it is already very close.  I don't have the new wheel bearings yet so I will have to wait for those as well as some extra time to get out in the garage and finish this up.

Front Fender & Brake Caliper

Today I was just fooling around trying to find things I could do in the garage, there are plenty of things still to be done but also many of them require the ordering of more parts and right now the budget is not allowing that.  Ebay sales have been slow lately.  I took the opportunity of a slow day to drill and mount the new front fender as well as the front number plate. Its starting to look pretty sharp.

I took the Caliper apart and cleaned out the old oil and bled the air out with new oil. Mounted the caliper up to the fork. I used the old brake pads, they have about 30% left on them, good enough for now.