We had another day in the garage yesterday and made some good progress with the project.
With this much access (particularly at the rear) I decided it was a good time to prep thing ready to fit the new exhaust. Having removed the old OEM cut system this combination is what I discovered had been holding the front headers on…
So two normal studs, a random bolt with a plain shank and an 8mm Allan bolt? Obviously at some point the owner had an issue with a stud and has oversized and tapped the hole.
I had x4 new studs in my stash and a few old ones, as well as the proper nuts, in my box of odds and sods. Out they all came and had the threads refreshed with taps and dies so I could pick the best ones to re-use.
Having done that I found myself a length of 8mm bar and made an 8mm stud to fit the oversize hole. When fitting the 8mm stud it became apparent that when the previous person had drilled the hole out, they hadn’t got it quite straight so the two studs were far from parallel. This made subsequent fitting of the exhausts particularly challenging, but with added swearing we got there in the end. Speaking of exhausts, I had a couple sat on the shelf to choose from. I have a Yamamoto half system and a twin stack full system. Again I picked them up years ago and got help from RCV (forum member) restoring them to tip top condition.
This was the twin stack system when I picked it up ages ago.
That picture is actually quite flattering as there was actually a fair bit of damage to the cans and sleeves. I spent a while trying to find some replacement Kevlar sleeves to maintain the original look, or even to find some new Ganador exhaust badges but no luck. In the end I decided to just go with good old carbon fibre instead and having done that and applied a bit of Autosol to the rest of the system…..it has sat in a couple of boxes, until now.
Having replaced or at least refreshed all the studs, and despite the slightly wonky 8mm stud, the front pipes were fitted…..
…and then the rears…
Having got the pipes on we then decided to fit the rear shock absorber. The bike came with an early model rear shock and I had the late model shock from one of my other bikes in the garage. This was only removed from my first bike when I got my Nitron and again from my second bike when I fitted an overhauled/uprated OEM shock to that. As such it is still a good shock and in the principle of trying to use garage spare wherever possible, that was dug out and fitted.
We then moved onto stripping out the rear hub to give it all a good once over.
It was all actually in pretty good condition despite the rear disc being fitted the wrong way around, as was the rear sprocket, and of course the compulsory pile of crap in the swing arm.
As always I have a few spare bits in the garage ….
…so the best bits were selected and fitted.
With the rear end done (for now) we turned our attention to the front end. Purely for the bling factor and because it has been sat looking at me from my shelf, I removed the fairly tidy top yolk from the bike (which had obviously been polished at some point) and replaced it with the very shiny one that came of my last build.
Whilst swapping the ignition barrel over I discovered that it was held in by these two very random bolts.
Thankfully I had a couple of nice new 8mm Allan bolts laying around, so they were put to good use.
Mind you I did notice some more rather worrying signs that there may be a few electrical gremlins to sort out further down the line..
That aside, my spare forks (complete with Rick Oliver springs etc) and a set of lightweight clip-ons were fitted as we started to rebuild the front end
That was if for the day. Jakes last day here today and he has said he would like to hear it run with the twin stack on if possible. That will need rads fitting and various other bits so we will have to see how we get on. Fingers crossed.