I agree re the needle cage; it's very short for the length of the available opening in the shifter proper. I had thought maybe a longer bronze, brash, etc. bush could be made up and pressed in, but as long as the orig part was available I figured I'd go with it.
So "progress" on the forks. Pulled off the fender, instruments, wheel and caliper, last night, getting down to the nitty gritty. Undid the four pinch bolts on the triple clamps (tree) and expected the forks would just fall out. Ha! This thing is fooked! The bends in both forks had them well jammed into the lower clamp. Eventually I pulled off the bars and removed the upper clamp, no problem, with minor tapping with a plastic mallet. But the forks were still uber-jammed in the lower clamp. Pounding with a sledge resulted in some movement, but not much. Heat and WD40 helped, but by the time the top of the fork tube got down to the lower clamp, it was flared enough from my enthusiastic pounding that it wouldn't pass through; it's a very close fit.
So I undid the steering head nut and just pulled the whole fork/clamp assembly off. Now I need a new triple clamp, but (1) I'm not really surprised, and (2) that's probably good considering how much stress it received from the forks' bending. Got a line on a couple, so I should have it in had early next week if all goes well.
See pics.
Andrew
