Last on the list for love... a Mini Trail saga... circa summer 2009

Part One:

My 1978 Honda Mini-Trail 70 has had the best I can figure a long a tough life. As you will see later in this report the toll of neglect of past owners will show, but the bike played true to Honda reputation and kept running, I can honestly say I know why this is the most produced motor (the Cub 50 / XR50 / Z50 / CT70 / XR50 ect) in the world. The odometer reads close to 4,000 miles and the speedo cable was broken for an unknown amount of time. Many of you here have rode this fine machine since I have owned it and have learned to deal with adjusting the choke depending on the RPM range you were riding. When I acquired this bike many years ago I knew it needed work, but filling its roll as a play bike (read: drinking beers in the backyard with some friends) it was always at the bottom of the list of things to spend money on. I finally put it on a milk crate and said it was time to get the bike back to 100%, I am more than a bit embarrassed after what I have found to have put it off this long...


Milkcrate time

I had pulled the bike into the living room over the winter to rewire it, it ended up sitting on a milk crate for months with the wiring loom hanging from the handle bar. I have managed to take the wiring harness form this:

The unrapped stock harness.

A view of the wiring diagram.

This is what was left on the bench:


The bike stock was set up to be street legal, full lights, I have no plans of it ever leaving the yard so that all went into the bin. The wiring it pretty much a total loss system with a kill switch. I did a quick test ride to make sure the streamlined wiring harness worked without any issues.

Now that the electrical issues were sorted it was time for the motor, and I knew there might be things found here. I pull the motor out to get in on the bench and check the topend. I know I could do that in frame, but depending on what I find a total rebuild might be called for as this is a bike that has lead a long and largely unknown life.


The more I look at this picture the DR and KTM seem to be looking at the ripped apart CT70 with the CB is looking away.

When I went to pull the motor I found out that one of the two motor mount bolts was missing its nuts, the bent bolt was just unable to back out more. Finding stuff like that make me feel like a bad motorcycle owner, I have noted it to myself to do better pre-ride inspections on all of my bikes.

Bent bits...


With the motor on the bench it was time to scrub off as much of the dirt and stuff as I could, a few drinks later I was ready to crack her open. My garage isn't the first place I would thing of for open heart surgery but it would do. Oddly enough this was the first motor I felt bad about not cleaning more, I think I'm just getting older many before this one have been much dirtier. Before opening the motor up I found more bad things...

Half of the hardware for the pegs missing, and the are both different sizes...

The front sprocket badly hooked, I wonder if it is stock...

Some carbon but still ok.
After getting the head pulled I am relieved to see it still looks ok, but the jug will be a different story...

Massively worn and pitted...
Once I get the jug off I can see and feel that it is toast. I know when my Dad bought this bike for my sister the air filter was missing I don't doubt that helped make this damage. The order for an 88cc kit happen shortly for this now, if I am going to replace the parts they might as well be bigger.

The piston is a cute little thing I think..
I pulled the wheels and checked the brakes and brake drums, new shoes will be put in lucky both drums are still ok.

I never thought I would end up flipping a motorcycle bicycle style to work on it, but it made things easier. So far my list of parts needed is as follows:
(1) 88cc Bigbore kit
(2) sets for brake shoes
(1) New kick stand spring (last one lost during snow riding)
(1) Giannelli exhaust system (stock one is currently held together with soup can)
(1) Set of chain and sprockets
(1) New front tire (Might be a 30 yr old stock on still on there, massive dry rot present)
And assorted hardware both missing and bent to be replaced, still debating repainting the frame too.

Part Two:

I know I could buy a pretty much drop in motor (other than converting to 12v from 6v) for the bike for the same price or less then the rebuild would run me, and I would be able to get a manual transmission, but I really want to keep the Honda cases. No good reason other than being able to say it is a massively improved 1978 Honda CT70. The big reason I am not currently planning on plating the bike is I will have to run through all of the lost title paperwork (NH doesn't title old bikes) and I can not think of when I would run it on the street. I do still have all of the lights and such in a box so maybe later down the road.

Right now I'm fighting with myself over which big bore kit to buy, and what other work I will do while I'm in there. I think I have it pretty much figured out and will spend the extra money for the "better" parts. With the fifty craze that happened there are tons of parts and kits (both good quality and bad) for this bike now, and I have been doing lots of homework to figure out what to buy. These little bikes are evil, parts are really cheap compared to a bike bike (under $400.00 for a 88cc kit with a race head and carb) but $35.00 here and there adds up. As much as I would like to throw tons of money into the motor I am realizing that I do not need a race motor in this, I have had tons of fun on it with a crappy motor. How much do I really need for a bike to ride in the yard while drinking beer with some friends? My updated parts list of stuff I have to pay retail for looks something like this:

88cc Big Bore kit (Not sure which one yet): $124.00 - $184.00
Giannelli Performance Pipe: $175.00
High Volume Oil Pump Kit: $30.00-$54.00
Kitaco Performance clutch spring set: $20.00
Total: $349.00-$433.00

The other things like brake shoes, carb rebuild kit (or new carb they seem to be pretty cheap), chain, sprockets, valves, valves springs, and tires I will order though the Triumph shop that I work at with my discount. I hate seeing the numbers add up, but I figure this will be a job I will do once, the stock motor lasted 30 years. I am also going to rebuild the head after talking to the mechanic at the shop, $30 bucks in parts now will be better than having it drop a valve after the rebuild, its not like I do not have the tools and knowledge to do it.

Now that I'm waiting to order parts I don't have too much to do on the bike. Last night I pulled the tires off and found rust on the rims so I'm going to clean them up and repaint them. I'm kicking around painting them a different color, sorta leaning towards red at this point but haven't decided yet.



Part Three:

It looks like this project will drag out for a while, I couldn't bring myself to blow the large wad of cash needed all at one time. So for the mean time I will collect parts and get stuff ready one thing at a time. Back to the progress, as nice as it would have been to keep the wheels the stock color the rear was really rusty and needed to be stripped. To be honest I was really too lazy to try to match the OEM paint and had a bunch of black rusto spray cans sitting in the garage so they went black. I forgot to take pictures of my drill with a stripping wheel clamped in my vice but I was able to bang out some of the dents in the rims when they were apart.

Primer

Paint

All back in one piece
I think they came out well, I like the two tone effect.

The next task on the list was to take care of the head. I was debating buying a new race head for it, but figured I should save some money and try my hand at a polishing job. The first fight was getting one of the tappet covers off, it was totally stuck. After starting to round it out using a wrench I tried to slot it and use a screwdriver, that failed too. So I resorted to cutting it apart, I'm glad I have tons of extra from my CB360 projects.

Hacked to pieces
With the tappet covers off I used the oversize socket method of removing the valve keepers. The valves had a bit of build up on them, at $7.00 a piece I will replace them when I put it back together.

Lots of crap on the intake valve
Looking at the ports on the head it was easy to see that there was no finishing work done to the casting, really that isn't shocking considering the bike. I will be a sicko and clean up the head the best I can.

Stock nastiness

After a little time with some sandpaper
Tomorrow I will pickup a Dremel tool to speed up the work, the casting is pretty rough and a few spots and there are big seams that will take forever to sand down by hand. As a parting picture look at the cute little cam...


Part Four:

I picked up a Dremel tool and started working on the head last night, after a few beers progress was deffintally being made. I think I still have another nights worth of work to do before it will be ready to go back together. The toughest part is the motor being so small, my fingers are too big get in some spots for the finishing sanding. Now for some pics.


Exhaust side still needing alot of work


The intake side is a bit bigger, that makes it alot easier


My camera doesn't really like to focus this close



Part Five:


I figured that since I did not have the required engine parts to move forward with that aspect I should work on other things. I decided to change the fork oil. I found tool marks on the drain plug so someone else in the past 31 years changed the oil, but it was a long time ago, this is what it looked like coming out. No, I did not pour my white Russian into the drain pan...

Milky goodness...

This is what went back in, fresh 10wt fork oil, all 95cc of it per leg.

Clean and blue oil...

This is why I need a new pipe for the bike, besides the general awesomeness of having a full system exhaust on a minibike. In the middle of this winter's snow riding I had to use a soup can to patch the head pipe (a PBR can and a Fosters can both failed at the roll).


This should be one piece not five.


Pile of exhaust parts

I also looked into changing out the stock throttle, front brake, and kill switch with the Magura on that was sitting in my parts bin.


Stock
Well I guess I forgot to take a picture of the fancy parts on the bike. Anyways while slacking on at work and trying to sell my DR350 I found something on Craigslist. After leaving work a little early and grabbing my truck this found my way into my garage...

It's a mostly complete 1977 Honda Z50 (less the bars and exhaust) in boxes with a second motor and an extra 70cc top end. I am sure the newest bike in my garage will soon have its own build thread. For some unknown reason the last owner thought it would be wise to split the cases then dump the parts into a big plastic bag on one of the motors. So I call Rebecca to join the party in the garage and start sorting things out. As the laptop provides the tunes and the cocktails go down the parts get cleaned and sorted. Rebecca makes quick work of both sets of carbs while I fight with the wheels (the fight was not won until the next day).

One carb starts its tear down, yes I rock my laptop in the workshop.
After the night came to a close I found myself making new parts lists due to new to me parts coming into the mix. It looks like there will not be big bore kits in the future just gasket kits, an extra set of tires, and second carb kit.

Part Seven:

The bike ran and fun times were had, I am sure this is not the end of this, not buy a long shot. I have a feeling this will be a long term back burner project...

To close for comfort... circa April 2008

I had a close call today on my way to work, a not so subtle reminder that “Familiarity and prolonged exposure without incident leads to a loss of apreattion of risk.” Most of the time close calls are the cop you didn’t see and got a warning, or a near crash where you and your bike would have got banged up but would still live to fight another day. Today’s close call wasn’t on of those by any means, in retrospect I was all in and failure would most likely been fatal or close enough that I might wish it had been.

Just as a little back story last week I was stopped and lectured about my “reckless driving” and how I was endangering peoples lives, my veterans plate kept me out of handcuffs and I have been riding less aggressively since then. The cause for that stop and chat with local law enforcement was spawned by my rapid acceleration down the onramp and passing a slow moving car (it was a two lane onramp) in the process. I was riding a Triumph Scrambler so there were no land speed records broken, the less than 60hp at the crank and a 450lb dry bike do not lead to such things. I think my loud pipes and smooth line in conjunction with the slow moving car made it appear that I was going much faster than I was. Anyways for the record I am very grateful to have gotten off with just a verbal warning and understand that from the cops vantage point I must have looked to be very much in the wrong, we all have our jobs to do after all and he was doing his.

Back to the story at hand of this mornings encounter and my close call. I was commuting up I5 from Olympia to Lakewood (same exit as McChord AFB for you Zoomie types) during the morning rush hour times, between 8-9am. Outfitted in my typical commuting attired to aid in people seeing me and my survivability if people didn‘t, I was in my FieldSheer armored jacket and over pants with my ever so fashionable Icon Mil-Spec reflective vest and brand spanking new Arai XD3 brain bucket. The Scrambler in addition to the afore mentioned loutish pipes is also running a high output PIAA Super White headlight, I’d like to think I’m pretty conspicuous, guess I was wrong. Anyways in my newfound more responsible riding I was slowly passing a sliver Mercedes Benz C-class sedan in the far left lane when the driver decided that properly checking there mirrors and signaling did not apply to them. They start to slide over into the chuck of highway I was occupying, while I do not have my PhD in physics I do know that two things can not occupy the same space at the same time, ohh did I mention it was starting to rain too. I start to get on the brakes and lay on my horn, my front tire was somewhere next to either the rear driver side door or the rear quarter panel at this point. Generally this will get the driver attention who’s lack of situational awareness to decide they should get back in there lane and not kill me, I guess maybe this waste of air was busy on his or her cell phone or just didn’t give a damn. The left side breakdown lane is generally cluttered with enough random shit in the 20 miles I commute on to rebuild the million dollar man a few times over so I didn’t think that would be a very good escape route. Now hard on the brakes I am able to have my front tire dodge the rear bumper that is poised to takeout my front tire by about a foot or so In retrospect I am glad I upgraded my front brake pads to Sprint ST spec. units put in the Works Performance dual rate springs in the forks, every little bit counted today that is for sure. Now if that was it this wouldn’t have been noteworthy enough to even write up, it would have been a normal close call. With the danger of the car hitting me avoided I find myself in a new even more dangerous situation, I am fishtailing, not just a little fishtail, think a tank slapper but the front wheel is still pointing straight. When this whole this started I was going a little over 70mph indicated on my speedo, I failed to note the speed when the fishtailing started, I was sorta busy to recheck after the initial braking, sorry guys. Anyways I fucked up and failed to properly modulate my rear brake to prevent the ass end from braking loose, I was able to fight it out and straiten the Scrambler back out. What do I see in front of me, the fucking Benz dropping the hammer and hauling ass away, I guess they final saw me. I doubled down into 3rd gear since I’m only going 45mph at this point and started to drop the hammer myself, I wanted fucking blood. If I hadn’t been so busy manning the back brake I could have kicked the shit out of the car as it was trying to take me out, we were that close. I yell into my helmet and realize it is best not to chase (what would I do when I caught the car?) and slide over a few lanes to wait for the adrenaline dump to leave my system. The truck that had been behind be gave be a big thumbs up as he passed me, I guess my save was impressive to see, the alternative would have been a very nasty high side into traffic, that would have sucked a lot. I was a bit shook up the rest of the day, when I got to work I walked in and said “This bright fucking orange vest is pretty easy to see right?” I firmly believe if I had failed to recover from my ass end breaking loose I would be either dead or wishing I was. A high side at those speeds in rush hour traffic (50/50 odds that I would have gone over the center divider into oncoming traffic) I would have go run over, I’m sure my gear would have got me through the crash, but getting hit by a few tons of steel going 65mph or more nothing would have save me.

I guess I’m posting this as a reminder of the risks we all take by shaking off the steel cage, and to get it off my chest, I have made a few calls to share this with people who would understand. Sometimes you go all in and don't realize it at the time, I didn't going into this and that shock me up the most. The other thing that I want to get across is it seems that running you over is ok if they kill us. Part of me wishes I took something off that car as a trophy for living through it and to remind everyone of what can happen, there were no brake lights other than mine. Be careful out there and watch all around, people might not want to kill you but that doesn’t mean they care if they do. My skills were not good enough to save me, luck is what did it, and sometimes being lucky is better than good, you just can not count on that. Lady luck is a great mistress, but a very unfaithful wife.

On Forks... circa 2007

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”- George Bernard Shaw

Rebuild forks has been a thorn in my side since I started working on motorcycles, and I started working on motorcycles before I actually started riding them. People who have brought up fork rebuilds to me know of my disdain of doing them. I know that it is a pretty simple process to do replace fork seals and the like, I just deep down hated to do them. I would ride with blown seals, many times with replacement seals sitting in my toolbox. Safety wiring of torn or rotted out dust boots to the fork leg so I could ride without addressing the issue, was also not an uncommon sight. In retrospect it was a stupid thing to avoid doing, I had rebuilt both conventional and upside down forks and knew that it wasn’t hard to do, I had even told people it was easy. For some reason I still hated the task.



Over the past month or so I’ve had to work around this issue and around a half dozen sets of forks were rebuilt. The hatred is no longer there, I’ve got my system down and the task is now cataloged with the like of timing an old CB360 motor, and that I can do in my sleep. I’ve also figured out the root of this hatred. Pneumatic impact tools are your friend or you need weird factory tools. They, just like buying a compressor, cost more money then I normally have on hand. I am a bit ashamed to admit I still haven’t bought a compressor with all of the fun pneumatic tools, and my specialty fork tool collection is very limited. Another factor is that it seems most people either hate maintaining the front suspension on there bikes, or the bikes I seem to work on most have sat quietly for a decade or so to let the fork seals become nice and hard. Cases with hard dried up seals will almost guarantee that the forks are on a bike older than me, and that mechanically do not allow for the use of the slide hammer method of removing the seals. Rather I end up sitting there prying the seals apart with dikes, pliers and screwdrivers, not the ideal tools for the job.


With the fear and intimidation gone, so is the hatred. At the end of the day when I dump out old, smelly, burnt up, used up, nasty, and contaminated oil I get reminded that the task is reaping rewards. Not once have I finished the job and said "Damn it, the thing rode better all fucked up."

Project Bike: 1972 Honda CL175... circa 2007

Note: This bike was built for a friend of mine "G-Man" and this was pulled from a message board where it was originally posted so it might be a bit choppy. I put alot of hours into this bike and have quite a bit of pride in how it came out, hence the effort to bring it over.


Part One:
Written by G-Man

So this week I ordered the first wave of parts, totaling about $600. no big deal. They will arrive on Tuesday and Thursday. But much work still needed to be done.

Let us remember how she looked at the start of Saturday... This was not to last.



Firstly, I procured some coffee for myself and the FBR (who was gracious enough to help me through this endeavor). he promptly added grease and jaeger to it, my hero.



Now on to the fun. first we took off the seat, removed the side covers and exposed to air boxes so
we could get some pod filter measurements.



Next we decided to remove the taillight and add my low-profile one and bob the fender with an old plate.



Rear fender before...


FBR with his angle grinder...


Rear fender after...


Later on we will remove the bracket, paint it up real nice and it will be good to go. At this point the several pizzas we ordered showed up and we promptly devoured them in record speed. They were meatlovers... it was good meat. Next we decided to remove the baffle so that my ride didn't sound like a hairdryer humping a lawnmower while taking on water.

We did it the old fashion way they did abortions before Roe V. Wade...with a screwdriver and a hammer.


This worked fine for the first 2 layers... but the third layer was being a bitch. An hour and two screw drivers later a brilliant idea came to mind... SHOTGUN PIPES!!! Get the angle grinder back out.


Before and after on the exhaust...


Now we reach a holding pattern. We did flip the bar to get a feel of that the new one will be like, but other then that there is nothing much else we can do until the parts start showing up. So we put her back into the shed, said goodnight, and went inside to drink some more.


Stay tuned for next weekend when the parts are here...

Part Two:

Righto so more progress was made today, and since G-Man forgot his digi cam. I took the pics, ready here we go...


It was time to pull the levers and ditch the old style MX bar for the clubman, damn buttery soft bolts that hold the levers on got frozen, time for the angle grinder yet again.


Time to clean the pipes before final trimming...


"This doesn't feel right"


"I'm pretty good at this job, I've been training my whole life! "


Trimming up the top pipe a bit, these spark filled shots never seem to get old.


A nice stagger to the twin "free flow" pipes.


With it been cold as shit outside we opted to smoke out the shed and not waste any of the heat our poor space heater was trying to kick out.


Another picture of the pipes but with the side cover in place.


The wiring mess as we swapped out headlights.

We would have took more pictures, but with cold the batteries in the cam were dieing like it was cool. As it stood when we locked up the shed we had the pipes sorted, all the lights worked, a Harley style 5in headlight was mounted, and the wiring was about half done. New turn signals are on order as well as all the other parts we are waiting for. And just to note the pipes sound evil, it doesn't sound like a 175cc twin at all. It's a very sharp clean sound, almost a race bike type note, not blatty at all. We'll have to see how the local law enforcement likes it. Oh and the whole endeavor was fueled by (well for me at least) PBR or pre-mix (Coffee with the German additive Jager).

Part Three:
I was at work, this was written by G-Man

Well, all parts have arrived... now we just need to put them all on. This will take place sat the 24th and it will be an excellent day. Today myself and Adam did some minor work to pass the time...

First off we took the old tires to the Suzuki shop to have them put on the new ones. They won't be ready till Monday however


ahh ammo cans...is there anything they can't do?


Next we tried to put on the pod filters... They wouldn't fit. This wasn't due to size, just location and direction of the carbs. Well a quick trip to Home Depot and some moxy and we were good to go.

Surprisingly the side covers fit right over these bad boys. Terrific.

Also my plate arrived. Bought goddamn time... and some ass hammer already got G-MAN and some OTHER ass clown got GMAN...if I ever find them...


Tomorrow is the huge push... expect alot of pics.

Part Four:

Well, it's 99% done. All we need is to put the tires back on and remount the taillight bracket and then we can roll her out and ride her.





It wouldn't have been a good day if I hadn't busted out the angle grinder...



Part Five:

Today we will do the taillight and tomorrow i will grab the tires up from the Suzuki dealer. Then its done save for a few minor upgrades: need to purchase a front brake sensor for the taillight and slapping on some nice rear sets.

Righto, so she's back in on piece, we still have some small tuning issues to finish up, but this is how she looks after a few weeks in my workshop. I did manage to take a quick spin on it, she's loud, but feels like I need to mess a bit with the jetting (we did chop the pipes and put K&N pods on).



Getting the wheels back on, took the shop long enough to mount them (I was just to lazy to do it myself).


Two very nice machines, I can only imagine what the people next door think.


Done Sir, Done!!! (My other pics were blurry).

Part Six:
Written by G-Man again...

I got some more pics... this thing oozes sex. All that's left to do is some minor aesthetics such as replacing the current sets with rear sets, tuning her up, slapping on a kickstand, tracking down a front brake sensor and, eventually, putting on a solo seat and a paint job. But as of now she is ready to ride.
My nifty starter switch.





GOD DAMN... that's nice.

Part Seven: Not Really Done Yet...

This is a sample of what was done in the approx. 10 hours solid work done on Saturday. The tank is from my Super Rat project (1979 XR250 framed CB360) and fits beautifully with the frame and the seat. It's as if they were made to be be all up in each others. We fabricated mounts for the rear of the seat for stability and modified the forward mount for easier access. G-man grinding off "unneeded parts" Currently, the bike is apart and sanded down and waiting to be painted. It's going to get a solid OD Green to begin with. Once decals get made, it's going to have a badass little red/black star and stripe in homage of "Gravity Kills."

Part Eight:

For this fine machine parts have started rolling in like my humble workshop in a shed is a "real" shop. We are on a paint prepping spree, and I'm getting ready to start fiberglassing part of the front of the tank where the tunnel is since it sits much higher on the frame than it did on the proper 1979 XR250 frame. So now for the pictures of some of the yummy bits, there are some really sick fully adjustable rear shock off of a CB750 on the bike now, but I was too lazy to drag the bike out of the cold storage shed for a photo shoot at one in the morning.

New Lucas style tail light

Another angle of tail light

EX500 rearsets, they mounting holes on them almost line up dead nuts to the passenger peg mounts on the bike.

The rearsets after I gave them a little love with the angle grinder.

The tank all stripped waiting for glass and paint.

Another angle of its shiney self all sitting there, stripped naked.

Here are the tools of the painting, classy with the Rusto...


And here G-man is... Is he painting or molesting stray woodlands creatures?


Tank all glassed up.


Tank being primed.



and painted


and here are the side covers and seat



Part Eight and One Half:
This is a product of too many cameras being used at once, didn't feel like fixing it.

Since we had two cameras out there the past few days, here are the rest of the pictures of out progress. We also managed to get the rearsets mocked up. We will also have to lengthen the kickstand due to the rear shocks being a bit longer than the factory ones were, but they are fully adjustable so its all good.


The new rear shocks.


The badge mounting holes all smoothed out.


Mmmm smooth...


A super high-tech method to lift the rear of the bike...


The EX500 rearsets mocked up.


Another angle.


Now do we run a GP shift pattern, or find a longer shifter linkage rod and stay standard?

Part Nine:

All right I just finished putting in another good 4 or 5 hour block of work, hell this stuff is becoming a pretty good second job, well other than the fact that I get paid in booze, subs, and bike parts (well even that isn't that bad.) Anyways the shift side rearset is now bolted into place, we are going to run it with an upside down shift pattern for now till we find a longer shift linkage, this way we can start road testing and get the carbs in order. After we installed the new rear shocks (they are about 1.5in-2 in longer) we noticed the side stand was pretty much useless, hell the center stand didn't lift the back tire off the ground anymore. Since my poor super rat project has become a major league organ donor the kickstand was scavenged off of that, and it worked great. I don't feel too bad about doing this since on the super rat bike the added weight of the CB360 motor made that kickstand way too long. Anyways this kickstand is kinda special, I had attempted to cut it down a wee bit and re weld it years ago when I was still in Quantico, well I suck at welding and the welder I was using pretty much sucked as well (cheapo wal-mart arc jobbie), so I went to the scrap bin to find a sleeve. Well the sleeve is a chuck of gas tube from a M249 SAW, so I guess that will give G-Man some street cred points within the North East para-military cell. Fitting the rear light assy pretty much sucked, it is one of the plug and play jobs for the new Triumphs, and it is designed to go on a fender. The other thing is I have some commitment issues and I was drilling into the fiberglass tail cone, so I ended up doing some classy measuring with 550cord and prayed that I lined it up centered, I think its pretty close. The other issue that I will addressed later this weekend is the light body grounds itself, well fiberglass does not conduct well, so I'll have to run a wire for that, no big deal since half the wires were too short to reach anyways, time to break out the soldering iron. The tank looks pretty good, although I wish I glassed up the dent in it, but G-Man said he didn't care and really wanted to get it done, I'll have to live with it. The centerstand assy and stock rear brake had to be cut of since the were frozen to the pivot rod that they shared, so a few more pounds of dead weight to the scrape pile (note not thrown out, I almost never throw out parts, even silly things like cut up gas tank chunks). Well now for the pictures, I hope to get this done soon so Rock's bike can start getting some attention, then maybe mine...


The new tail light and turn signal setup, note that the tail section is not bolted into place, so I'm blaming any and all canting on that for now.


The "new" tank in fresh paint, the flash really makes the dent jump out.


A high front view, the top of the channel filled in and cleaned up pretty nicely.


The shift side rearset as she sits now, the good people at Kawi were nice enough to have the shift lever pivot on a bolt so there is nothing in the way to run this set-up for now.


The kickstand with brace.


The other side of the kickstand.


Some dead weight gone...


As she sat when I locked up the shed, I really like the new lines that tank brings to the bike.

Part Ten:

Here should be the final few pictures for this thread, the decals for the tank came in, we got it to idle ok, and G-Man took it home with him. The jetting will be tweeked a bit at some point, but is good enough for now.

Right Side.

Left Side.

Getting used to the feel and control set-up.

First ride for G-Man on his bike.

Part Eleven:

The head gasket was leaking on one of the cylinders, so that had been the real problem when I could never seem to get it tuned right. Honda has long since discontinued stocking the head gasket, and aftermarket ones just don't seem to exist either. After a few weeks of searching we found one place that has a N.O.S. one, we are still waiting for the guy to cash the check. Anyways here are some sad pictures of the broken dream that is currently this bike...


Guts ripped out and stuffed in a corner...


Waiting for rebirth...

Part Twelve:

We got the head gasket, installed it, and still had tuning issues. Part of which is the guy doing the tunning (me). Anyways the bike was going to go to a pro to do it right, and I figure its alot easier to tweek a carb in if we make other changes once we have a solid baseline. But no shops would touch it. So it was time to baffle the exhaust in hopes that would bring the exhaust (and in turn the carbs) closer to the stock baseline. It sorta worked, anyways here is what we did, if I had a lathe it would be alot nicer, but it works.

All the parts needed for a home made baffle system for straight pipes.

After drilling a hole in a plumbing cap and stuffing the copper rod into it.

Cross drilled 1/4 inch holes for the baffle effect.

Threaded holes for mounting to the exhaust pipe.

Exhaust packing...

Mounted up...

And from a little back...

Overall it sounds pretty good, and my attempts at tuning worked much better. Should be pretty close to finished now, maybe...