i have decided that this is going to be a budget build. no need for fancy suspension or new swing arms and stuff like that which is way beyond my level. this is going to be a build of backyard ingenuity and what i already have around the home and garage.
alright, so a bit of progress for sure. the tank was very rusty on the inside. i cleaned it out months ago and found someone had already lined it in the past but must have done a poor job of it. old liner was pealing out and falling everywhere. i had a can of por15 laying around so i lined the tank with it. what a difference! it came out fantastic, and now if you tap the tank, it sounds like its wrapped in dynamat or something. feels crazy solid. who knew just a coat of por15 could do such a thing..
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
so then i started thinking more about what i wanted to do for an oil reservoir. most people with kawi builds with similar years of mine just delete the whole oil system and switch over to pre-mix in the tank (as seen spoilered below) but i did not want to go this route for two good reasons. 1) i trust japanese engineers of the 70's, and 2) when the throttle is closed, no oil is delivered to the engine in a pre-mix set up. if you sustain long downhill speeds while engine braking, you will not be lubricating your engine. where as the oil feed style will lube the engine relative to rpm, not throttle position.
i did however want to fab up my own container for the oil instead of the well engineered, but ugly oem unit. was going to go stainless but decided to go for a dark nalgene bottle. its clear so oil level is easily spotted, and due to size restriction it fit much better than other stainless bottles i found. tap in a drain at the bottom and a vent tube at the top and voila! easy peasy lemon squeezy
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
i also found these two LED license plate bolts. this will help clean up the rear a lot! the stock rear lights and stuff were bulky and ugly as hell. now i just have to find a rear brake like to match. i am happy with some of the random LED lights even somewhere like canadian tire sells, but the wiring suggestions on the back frustrate me. they are marketed as a "parking/brake/turn signal" light, but only have three wires connected to it. brake, turn and ground. no staff members could tell me if the running light is a different brightness than the brake light etc. but i digress.
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
i also found that even though the spark plug lead looked brand new, the previous owner must have only changed the wire and not the actual coil. upon further inspection i saw it showing some age. this may be contributing to my non-start issue.
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
stripped the bike down today as well. it was dripping a bit of oil, realized it was coming from inside the exhaust. sigh guess i gotta seperate it and hose it out or something.
oh, also this is now tonight ended.
image by
320iCar, on Flickr
image by
320iCar, on Flickr