New to forum, my project...

1974jh5

1974jh5

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I have lurked here for a while, lots of good tech info! My project is finally at a point where it doesn't look like boxes full of junk. :)

I followed King Kenny when I was a kid, I remember his flattrack and road race championships like it was yesterday. For years I have wanted to build an XS650 based street tracker and finally got my chance. This is a 1980 Special which was given to me as a basketcase. I've been working on it for 3 years (I work slow). The seat and fenders are Hotwing Glass parts, the exhaust is a Mike's XS. The motor is bone stock except for the '78 CV carbs. It's finally ready for paint; I plan to go with white with a red stripe to match the Mazda rotary powered Jensen Healey visible in one of the pics.

The engine cases and fork legs will be gunmetal gray, the frame will be 'warm' silver. It will have brushed aluminum rectangular number plates. I'm still looking for a headlight; if anyone has a 1970's era DT1 or similar pice I'd be interested.

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Looks good so far. Are you going to get it running and sorted out before you paint it etc.?

What kind of tires are those? They make the 16" rear look taller.

Good first post, for sure. :)

John
 
Thanks! The tires are Shinko 712's, basically a Chinese knockoff of an older Metzeler design. The front is a 100/90-19, the rear a 120/sumthin'-18. The rear wheel is from an SR500. I had to machine .400 off of the original chain side spacer and then turn another spacer forthe brake side to shift the rear wheel over in the swingarm. Once the rear wheel was centered, the sprockets lined up perfectly. :thumbsup:

The fenders and seat are Hotwing Glass pieces. I'm wanting to stay with a 5 3/4 or 6 1/8 headlight with a 'bucket' that I can paint semi flat black, the DT1 piece would be perfect!

The car in the shop in the background is a 1974 Jensen Healey. It's an SCCA E Modified Solo car which I run in autocrosses and hillclimbs. It has a full cage, 13B Mazda rotary, RX2 rear axle with RX7 disc brakes, Miata front uprights, QA1 adjustable coilovers and a whole bunch of other crap I forget at the moment.

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Got the frame and engine painted, rebuilt the forks and started putting it all back together. I hung a homemade gas tank made from a oil bottle from the bars, kicked it twice and it fired right up. :) I rode it around the block today 2/27/11. :bike: It's been far too long since I heard it run!

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If the weather holds out, I'll shoot the tank, seat and fender next weekend. :thumbsup:
 
Wow, coming together very well! Great colors, can't wait to see the tins done.
 
Painted at last! It would have been done last weekend but for whatever reason, I have a helluva time with clearcoat.

Took it out for a snort today, it runs great. Still need to make and install the number plates. Brakes need a little more bedding in, the hydraulic brake light switch on the rear master cylinder sticks in the on position, and the engine appeared to spring an oil leak at the front center of the head gasket. Dammit. But man it's getting close to done!

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I finally had a chance to fix the odds and ends left over. When I pulled the top end to fix the head gasket oil leak (retorquing didn't help), it turned out that the left cylinder had water damage and scoring on the piston/cylinder. So I used a Mikes XS 'big fin' stock bore kit, lapped the valves, replaced all the top end gaskets etc. I plan to source another 'core' motor to build a 750 rephase later, that motor will be built from the ground up and could possibly include a stroker crank.

The front fork springs are at best soggy, stiffer springs and a fork brace are on the short list. Otherwise, I'm very happy with it.

I made a set of side number plates from aluminum sheet (cut from the side of a boat auxilary fuel tank), I made patterns from poster paper, taped them in place and kept swapping them till I got the size I wanted. After I cut the plates out, I wet sanded the crap out of them with 220 grit and shot them with some leftover clearcoat.

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It's ready for prime time. :bike:
 
The blue car is a 1986 Honda Civic Si. Some friends of mine and I have run that car in the 24 Hours of LeMons for the last 2 years. http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/ We came in 14th out of 68 entries, not bad if I do say so myself. :cheers:

Water damage: I got the bike as a basketcase. At some point, the engine was probably stored outside with the carbs and exhaust off. That means at least one valve was open to the elements and water got into the left cylinder. The liners are cast iron, which is porous. That's a good thing for oil (holds small pockets of oil) but not for water. The liners will rust, the rust works its way into the liner and creates a pocket under the surface. So what happens is that you look into the cylinder, see some small pits and think 'ok, a +.040 overbore will clean that right up'. Unfortunately, as the liner is bored you discover the small pit is now a much deeper and larger diameter pit. I first ran across this phenomenon on an XR200 Honda cylinder, for various reasons we were using a 185 cylinder and reboring it for a overbored 200 piston. After removing .130 or so from the cylinder the pits were still there and had gotten larger. I ran a flex hone through this cylinder and found that the pits were, as I suspected, deeper and larger than they appeared at first inspection.

The bad spot is the 'ring' at the center of this picture. It's hard to tell from the angle but the visible damage is at least .020 deep, with deeper pockets. No way to tell if boring the cylinder would remove all of it, probably not.

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