The Joys of Fixing Old Bikes

I came upon a sweet (!) 82 LTD 1000 and swapped a perfectly good and soul-less Honda CB1000 for it... The LTD has beautiful paint and is in great shape, except for a few little issues. When you buy a used bike, these are some of the things you get to deal with:

1. Carbs - this one sat 6 years, so the carbs needed a full rebuild. Took a long time, should have sent to Wired George.

2. Brakes - PO had sprayed it with a deep-store product to keep the bike from rusting. This worked great, and it also preserved the brake pads so they would never stop another bike. Replace 3 sets of pads, scrub the stuff off the discs.

2a. Brake pads too thick and brakes drag... had to get them to fit without dragging. Another few hours. Don't forget to loctite those bolts!

3. Tires - Bike had new Chen Shin tires when I bought it but a funny wiggle when I rode it the first time.. .because the front tire bead was not fully seated. Oops! Easy to fix this one

4. Wiring - turn signals did not work on the bike. Put my little test light and they were getting power. A bad flasher! Replaced with a spare one and now I have 4-way flashers! Wait - now they work fine.

5. Front master cylinder.... gummed-up. Cleaned it out, bled the brakes, ok so far. Wait - no front brake switch. Got one out of spare parts and wired into headlight wiring area. Works now!

6. Triple clamps - noticed that the triple clamps had the nut on the outside of the clamps, so that if it went full-lock the nut would scrape the gas tank. Reversed the bolts, all is well and no tank damage. That was a close one.

7. Don't forget I have to get it running PERFECT as that's how Kawasaki's run. I need to check the valves and figure out why the cam chain is noisy. I'll bet the tensioner is stuck... 9,000 miles in 24 years and you'd be stuck too!

I'm still working on #7... tell us about the problems you've found working on these ancient warriors.

Biggest problems...
Timne and finding parts

learning to say no to more projects(still cant!:evil: ),trying to make the plating guy believe my mountain of parts is as much of a priority as everybody elses stuff hes got piled up! ,making the engine builder believe my 2 piles of engine parts are as important as the the other 100 engines hes machining:S figuring out how to make a front mounted turbo-fuel injection-nitrous bottle fit on a 74z1 like it all belongs there without being so obvious it scares off every hyabusa and zx-14 in a 50 mile radius!:S :evil:

No problems that can't be resolved with a little bit of study and research. For being somewhat "advanced" in their day, they really are reasonably understandable machines.

As you've found, it's wise to carefully go over any bike that one aquires. First step is to do routine maintenance and then look for those areas that need further attention. I certainly don't mind the time I've spent working on this summer's project. It beats sitting on the couch.

The only problem I have is that I now would like to get the body work painted as close to the Candy Emerald Green that is correct for the model and year.

- Nate >>

No regrets on time spent. It's finding the time. Here, no garage so bikes are kept in rental space sub-let from a machine shop about 40 miles away. Good thing is when I go to work on them I get in 12-14 hours. Bad thing is finding a full day to spare.

Parts is a PITA mainly because it's real hard for me to spend $ on a new part when I know a perfectly good used on will turn up for much less and 'any day now'. I don't watch TeeVee so snatches of free time go to looking for parts, kz , or if I have an hour I'll go for a ride.

Anyone know the weights of the two lightest Kawasaki fours?

Want to compare to...
CB350F (air cooled 349cc four) 170kg
CB-1 (water cooled 399cc four) is 180kg

-Duck

Duck wrote:

Anyone know the weights of the two lightest Kawasaki fours?

Want to compare to...
CB350F (air cooled 349cc four) 170kg
CB-1 (water cooled 399cc four) is 180kg

-Duck

Here's one:

ZXR250 (transverse four) 144kg

Not released in North America:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

I think one of the biggest joys of fixing old bikes is taking that piece apart... again... for the third time.. before getting it right. :lol:

and the biggest joy is seeing some guy out front of the 7-11 looking at your bike with a puzzled expression on his face. "What is that?" he says. "Yeah," he replies, "I useda have|want|race one of those!" with that bittersweet shake of his head, trying to get those old memories to settle back down.