Ben's MT350 Rebuild

[neoxerox]

A nice box of bits arrived from Apophis parts this morning so I can get on with rebuilding the forks tonight! May make up a coupld of 30mm spacers for the springs, seems to be a popular mod.

[neoxerox]

Not been keeping on top the updates recently!

Prepped most of the metalwork now, waiting for paint to be picked up tomorrow then it'll be painting at the weekend! Before and after pics will be done, don't worry!

In the meantime i've started rebuilding the front wheel, with the original MT350 hub, and the rim from the random front end that was on there.



24/36 spokes done! Then to true it.

It may be usefull to someone: I've been using this site to help me with the wheel building

[neoxerox]

Finished off the wheel this morning and trued it up. The broken fork yoke came in useful for holding the forks in the vice





That reminds me, the forks are now rebuilt (prior to be stripped down again for paint - suppliers taking ages to get it in!), this was breaking them down:



Is it standard that the forks are "slack" when not laden? Is this why some have put 30mm spacers in?

[neoxerox]

Next I stripped the lower framework from the engine and took everything outside for a good pressure wash:

Plastics



Engine came up fairly well, just a couple of patches to retouch with some black paint I think.



Lots of thick greasy muck



After cleaning I serviced the engine: cambelt and oil filter. Any further recommendations whilst it's out of the bike?

Well that's it for the moment, i've done lots of metalwork prep but am still waiting for the paint to arrive so that's taken a back seat now.

Will find some nitromors tomorrow to strip the paints off the plastics and and rebuild the cut wiring sections - Just the horn and rear indicators/tail/stop I've found cut so far.

[ZIP TIE]

Do the tappets while it's out as well, and maybe check all six head bolts are torqued properly.

[ZIP TIE]

Nice job on the wheel by the way.
Did you need new spokes or did you manage to reuse ones from the old wheels?

[neoxerox]

Do the tappets while it's out as well, and maybe check all six head bolts are torqued properly.

Sounds like a plan!

Nice job on the wheel by the way.
Did you need new spokes or did you manage to reuse ones from the old wheels?

Thanks! Its my first motorbike wheel, but i'd done a few bicycle wheels before - my first attempt at this I didn't notice the directional spoke holes in the rim, but reading info on the site linked above put me straight and after that it was easy

The spokes from the replacement front end wheel were in excellent condition so just re-used them. I know it's not best practise but they looked too good to be honest.

Anyone want a random hub, disc and front end from an I don't know what...?

[frenchy3]

You are certainly cracking on with the project! The forks do have slack in them as standard and fitting the preload spacers does improve them as they are a bit firmer and are closer to matching the iron hard rear end.The front end also feels more planted and does not dive so much under braking.
Steve.

[neoxerox]

You are certainly cracking on with the project! The forks do have slack in them as standard and fitting the preload spacers does improve them as they are a bit firmer and are closer to matching the iron hard rear end.The front end also feels more planted and does not dive so much under braking.
Steve.

Thanks for the info, wanted to make sure the springs weren't knackered! Will look up some spacers in the scrap bins at work

[neoxerox]

Well I managed to do some paint stripping as planned at the weekend. Not nitromors, but found some old Polystrippa that looks like it had been in the garage since the early nineties. It seems to have done the trick though

Fender after brushing with stripper


Side panel before


Side panel after


Pannier after brushing


After a first wash I found one pannier had a layer of yellow underneith the green paint. Only on the outer face though, does anyone know why? Its not a sandy colour.

All parts after stripping, returned to their proper unpainted state