Somewhere.
Bike was in good nick when I won it on EBay. A little rust in the usual places, but a runner with a full MOT.
Haha! I soon put paid to all that!
All I was going to do was give it a little spruce up here and there, but ended up stripping the whole thing down to to the frame and making the garage look like a MT350 abattoir.
Using my vast experience and knowledge of putting Airfix kits together as a lad I then started to re-asssemble. I mean, it's just full scale and there are lots of manuals right?
First, everything green and metal got stripped down and then got re-sprayed with primer and Olive Krylon. Everything green and plastic got cleaned and sprayed with Olive Krylon. In hindsight I think it would have been a far better idea to go with powder coating on the metal, but I put this down to naiveté and being tight.
Engine was cleaned down, gaskets, filters, timing belts etc. replaced and and a few coats of VHT black paint applied. Ditto with the VHT on the exhaust sytem. Combination of spraying and hand painting. I also cleaned down the carb and had the mod done.
Now there is the PC phrase of somebody being "horizontally challenged". Hate it. The fact is that I'm way short. So I have lowereed the bike by replacing the shocks and taking out the pre-loads from the forks. At the same time I have had the kick stand shortened and re-welded as well as the centre stand. (This might be a problem which I'll come on to).
The brake cables have been replaced with stainless steel ones, brake calipers "refurbished" and had new piston kits fitted. Twice. Because I tried to paint the calipers and combined with brake fluid it just ends up a really horrible nasty mess.
I'm also a stainless steel freak so almost all the fasteners have been replaced with........stainless steel.
I also seem to have acquired a lot of new kit on the way, like torque wrenches, (why do I need three?), vacuum pumps, various bolt/screw removal systems, motorcycle jack, Krylon, acid etch primer, oil, lots and lots of brake fluid (don't ask), filters, new parts, second-hand parts and enough stainless steel nuts, bolts and washers to put an Italian cruise liner back together.
Suffice to say it's been 18 months of blood, swearing, sweat, swearing, tears and swearing to finally come up with this
I have to give lots of credit the to MT Riders site for the manuals and the enormous amount of knowledge here and to Aphophis and his excellent rebuild DVD and parts site. Also KLM Motorsports and Forces Motorcycles for parts and Stig Fasteners for, well, fasteners.
Lastly, I have one last niggle before I take t'bike down for it's MOT. If you look at this picture
You'll see that the centre stand has been shortened so that it is just hitting the rest. You'll also see that I've used one of the frame grommets to pad it out a bit. Think this will survive/pass MOT (thinking of the chain tension et al)? Comments and solutions greatly appreciated.
