I had a small win today, part of stripping it down to clean means removing the primary gear. I didn't want to spend $400+ nz bucks to buy a puller so thought I'd give making one a go. Using CAD and getting some bits laser cut was my preferred option as I find cutting thick steel tedious and my scrap pile is very low but with business closures over the holiday period and the post being overloaded I had to make do. I didn't have much, some 5mm plate and a thick section of 65mm square tube opened out to a vaguely cylindrical shape. It's ugly but it's all I've got The first attempt showed the top plate was bending a lot so I added the remains of the steel plate as bracing. With a little heat I hit it with the impact and it popped off nicely. A relief after dealing with other stuck parts!
I have a question about engine paint for everyone, what kind of silver is the engine paint of this era? Mine currently is a warm silver, almost a champagne hue, is this just the result of oil staining and aging? Photo's look to show it as more of a regular aluminium silver, I don't need it to be perfect just thought I should try and get it close.
Small update, things have been on the backburner the last couple weeks but I'm back at it now. I have all the bearings out and have cleaned and paint stripped the cases ready for paint. All the fasteners have gone off to be replated and gold passivated so anything still attached is held on with odd bolts from my spares bin.
Progress on this has slowed as I'm now more focused on restoring rather than just fixing. The cases have been paint stripped, cleaned, painted and had new bearings put in. I picked up a cheap oven for a dollar so I could bake parts in the garage without stinking out the house New bearings, seals and stickers going in. The exhaust got a tickle up, not polished but silver again (for now at least). Talking to a mate who is into brewing, he recommended sitting it in a citric acid bath to passivate the stainless steel, he does it to his tanks to maintain corrosion resistance. Easy enough to do so I filled up a bin and left them for a while to soak. I have had all my hardware back from the platers, here's a pic of the first batch that got done. It's all bagged up according to position ready for reassembly. The last of the factory parts I need also came in so I'm currently up to shimming the crank and gearbox shafts.
Looking good! I've just done my disc carriers, disc centre (rear) and oil cooler in satin black pj1 paint and am waiting to cure them in the oven to but will have to wait for gf to go out for the day before daring to use the oven. My 900 is a bitza so its going to be black with added black so the gold disc centres just had to go but were a total pig to mask up accurately, however my longer term plan is to go with 5 spoke S4 wheels and newer / better quality floating discs.
Cheers That reminds me, I need to paint my rear disc as the black has faded but thankfully the gold on the front has held up ok. I was not looking forward to masking them so props to you for doing it!
Only good when viewed from a meter+ away but good enough until I can find some S4 wheels and also the cash for some better discs
After diving so deep I'm starting to swim back to the surface now. I glued and screwed the case halves together today, the eagled eyed will spot a gasket in there. I intended to go without but thought I'd test the cylinders first as I'd read on here about them potentially not fitting and sure enough I couldn't get them to seat properly. Checking the shims went smoothly, the stock shims put the crank at 0.3mm preload, some 0.35mm ones got me down to 0.2 The dealer supplied some Cagiva Group Motors old stock Gearbox shafts are as close as I could be bothered to get them, was aiming for 0.1 on input and output and 0.3 on the shift drum. Last job was fitting the detent and shifter mechanism, adjusted and torqued to spec.
Bit by bit it's coming together I had no flywheel holder so made one from some scrap steel. I took advantage of a large drilling in the flywheel and turned down the shank of an M12 bolt to fit. I fit the incomplete engine back into the frame to help with torqueing up More parts painted It's nice putting the clean bits back together I'm just about to paint the heads and cylinders so they'll be able to go back on soon
Looking good! BTW I think your hoop lower bolts are in the wrong way around. The nut goes to the outside Can I ask - under your swingarm pinch bolts are there washers?
Good spotting there mate, I'll flip them around. Swingarm bolts definitely have washers, according to my notes they are M10, 16mm OD and 2mm thick
Cheers mate. Ive got the same swingarm as you and it's been a nightmare finding the correct pivot shaft and absolutely impossible to get a hugger anywhere
Thank you for the comments, It's been a long process and it's only just starting to come together nicely. I'm normally the kind to not worry about how clean my bikes are but have found myself almost doing a full restoration The last hurdle was cleaning up the heads so I finally dug into them. Everything removed first, paint stripped, scrubbed, cleaned, masked, painted, baked then reassembled with new bearings, seals, gaskets and plated bolts. Then the cylinders got the same treatment, I was stuck using a gloss black due to the paint available but I'm not worried about it, it still looks 100% better than before. Then I could get the engine closed up
