Finally started putting it back together.

[Mori Man]

I use Tea strainers on my trumpets - work perfectly

Look in your ell cheapo shops for chinese teapots - they usually ahve stainless strainers in the for making loose leaf tea or find a shop that sells the replacements for them.

Don't polish your BEET if its got a "fire effect " clean with melamine sponge , hot water and rince well. Spray with some tyre& leather wax and buff off with a fleece/microfibre cloth

Should be doing a post on oil filters next few days - been occupied painting my Ohlins spring the proper colour

MM!

[Maxticate]

Cheers for the advice Mori Man. Tea strainers, hmmm do you just zip/cable tie them on? I'll definitely look into that.

Not sure what a melamine sponge is but I'll find out.

Max

[Mori Man]

I have used:

Superglue, instant bond but heat & fuel makes it go brittle, easy to remove strainer though.

2 part epoxy, takes a time to bond and lasts longer but still attacked by heat & fuel, easy to remove.

Copper silicone , takes time to bond but is fuel & heat resistant as used to seal zorsts - still easy to remove strainers.

I use this on both bikes now.

Do a search of my bike pics and you will see them on my 50mm stacks.

Melamine sponge invented in Germany so you will find on evil bay or shopd like Lidle / Aldi etc.....

MM!

[Maxticate]

Cheers mori man. I picked up some melamine sponge and gave the header a scrub. It made them look slightly better.

I also picked up some aluminium body repair mesh from Halfords and I'm going to use that to do the covers over the air intakes.

The man news is that I turned it over last night and had it running

Video to follow!

[Maxticate]

Ok, so here is the bike as it stands at the moment.





The oil cooler is only on there temporarily while a friend of mine knocks up a nice bypass plate in aluminium. The overflow bottle is an aluminium water bottle meant for hiking made by Karrimor. I cut the ring off the lid and drilled a hole for the tube and put some smaller breather holes in the top.

The oil level is low but I topped it up before running the bike. It started easily with full choke and a little twist of throttle, I had to set the manual idle to a little over 2000 rpm to get it started and then could drop the idle point back to 2000 rpm. Any lower than that and it ran really lumpy.

I let it run for a good long while but it didn't seem to come up to temperature very quickly. I let it run for probably 10 minutes and it had only just moved onto the red part of the scale. After switching it off and letting it sit for a while the temp needle crept up to halfway and then started to drop.

Here are some videos of it running.

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk31 ... CF0134.mp4

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk31 ... CF0136.mp4

Comments on how is sounds are welcome as I have no idea. Sounds to me like the throttle bodies need balancing as it felt quite viby

[RedexRobB]

The sound is over modding the mic on the video but i get the idea.

Have you balanced the carbs? And did you empty the old fuel out of the carbs before you stripped it? May well be gummed up carbs.

At 15/16 seconds it sounds like its coming out of misfire and started firing properly, so maybe plugs/HT leads need to be looked at. I had a problem a few years back where one plug was messing about causing a misfire under 3/4krpm. One way of checking is feeling the temp of the headers as it warm up, but do this with a wet finger!

[Maxticate]

Yes the reverberation is totally overpowering the camera mic!

I haven't balanced the carbs, I don't have the necessary kit at the moment as I've only balanced the throttle bodies on my 675 using a laptop connected to the ECU. I did empty out the fuel from the carbs after I stripped them off all that time ago and I gave them all a good clean through. I've dropped some red ex in the fuel as well to help clean it through.

I will try the header test tomorrow, thanks very much for the tip! What sort of RPM should the bike be idling at? It doesn't sound happy at anything lower than 2k and seems lumpy.

Cheers
Max

[Tirpitz]

You'll definitely want to be balancing the carbs. These bikes seem to knock their carbs out of balance just for devilment If they are even slightly out it affects the bike and it will run like toad on tickover. They do sound a bit lumpyish anyway down there but they tick over fine unless you have a problem. Tickover should be 1250prm. Deteriorated plugs will also cause poor tickover. Don't be fooled by a good spark when testing. I recently had lumpy tickover and hard starting issues with plugs that had been cleaned and gapped, and were low mileage. But they had gone (age rather than mileage) and a change for new sweetened everything up lovely. I also changed the HT leads while I was at it as new lead is dirt cheap and there's no point not doing it while you're at it.

Ebay around for plugs. You can get them way cheaper than RRP. I got a full set for about £16. Try waterski dealers Kwak make jetskis which take the same plug and these dealers don't seem to have the same rip-off gene as bike dealers have developed

[Maxticate]

I touched all the headers this morning and it would appear that the bike is firing on all cylinders. It's definitely not happy idling at low RPM though, although things do improve somewhat when the bike is warmed up.

I think the plugs are new I can't remember for sure, it'll probably be worthwhile purchasing some more just in case. How are the HT leads fitted, I haven't attempted to dismantle what is there. I suppose at the very least I could colour match the new leads . Thanks for the advice tirpitz.

Is the battery another possibility? It is very old and there is no alternator on this bike, I've had it sat on the charger whilst the bike is turning over but could it be deficient?

It's going to be annoying having to do the balancing as I'll have to buy the kit and remove the ram air box again and fitting it wasn't the most delightful process in the first place!

[dan]

Did you drain the float bowls on the carb?

You will need to do this if it's been stood with fuel in for a long period of time.

[Maxticate]

Did you drain the float bowls on the carb?

Hi Dan, yes I drained the carbs dwon completely when I stripped it and they were refilled with fresh fuel the other day when I first tried firing it up.

I had it on again last thursday and let it idle at 2500 rpm, it seemed happier up there and sounded strong. I did a search and it seems guys in the race section are running there idle between 2000 to 3500 rpm. It is a race tuned engine so maybe it needs to be idled higher to be happy?

Nothing done lately as I got married on Friday, the garage is currently out of bounds

[Tirpitz]

The HT leads simply screw into the coils and caps. When you take off the old ones you will see a rubber grommet on the end of the lead which goes into the coil. This sits in a narrow section of the OEM leads and helps to pull the lead firmly into the coil connection. It's worth taking this grommet off and slipping it over the new lead (make sure you put the lead through the screw cap first ). Even though there is no narrowing on the new leads the grommet does still form a seal to keep damp out, so it's worth re-using. Then you just screw the lead into the coil as far as it will go, then secure with the screw cap. At the plug end you simply screw the lead into the plug cap as far as it will turn.

You will need 1 metre of lead. If you cut to exactly the same length as the old ones this is enough with a tad left over. Final job to help in future is to wrap some tape round each one and write the cylinder number on for easy reference.

Job done. Cost of 1 metre of HT lead at my local bike spares place was £1.50 so it was a no brainer

You'll find it's easier to take the coils off the frame to fit the leads. Bit fiddly if you leave them on.

[Maxticate]

Thanks for that Tirpitz.

Sounds easy enough to give it a go. My coils just sit zip tied in the ram air box so they are nice and easy to get to. Just getting the box itself off is a pain!

[Maxticate]

If it's not one thing it's another.

I got round to looking at fitting and testing the brakes. Things are not looking good, the fluid is orange in colour so that needs to be changed. I pumped the front brakes up and only one of the pistons actually moved, the rest are in there tight. So using a piece of wood I tired isolating pistons and getting them to move I managed to get some of the ends out and so I decided to split the front right caliper and see what was what.

With the caliper apart i could get a good look at the ends of the pistons. They look pretty graunched and the red inserts were all chewed up and damaged. Looking at the top edge of the pistons they weren't even really level in places (probably from someone levering them apart in the past)

As the tips of the pistons were in a poor state anyway I took a pair of mole grips and pulled the pistons out one by one. It took a lot of effort, they probably wouldn't have come out any other way. The dust seals were all surrounded with the white fluff of aluminium oxidation and looked a right old state. The piston seals themselves looked ok and could probably be reused.

I'm planning to clean the end of each piston up slightly and the body and reassemble the calipers minus the dust seal. the deformed parts of the piston heads should sit above the piston seal and so not be a problem. If I clean the calipers down with brake cleaner after every track session I think they should be ok without the dust seals in place. I'll get some pictures up of them tomorrow

[Maxticate]

Here is an example of how bad the pistons are. However all the damage is above the caliper seal line so I cleaned everything up and reassembled the calipers minus the dust seals. The pistons all move freely which is good but I'm having a bit of difficulty bleeding all the air out of the system. It is a braided line system with a splitter.

I have got pressure in the lines and there is power enough to stop the wheel rotating but I still have a spongy feel at the lever. It is possible to pull the lever all the way back to the lever fairly easily. On my 675 you can pull the lever all the way to the bar as well bt if you tried that whilst moving you'd be on your face long before the lever touched the bar. Therefore I'm not sure how much of a problem it really is. I have a vacuum bleeder now anyway so I'm going to try and bleed them again later this week.