Biker culture, politics and general issues.
It's got an 18 x 3.0 inch on the rear of this bike. They're supposed to have a 17 incher. Must have a gixxer slabside rear wheel on it. So I will need to find a 100/90-16 front and a 130/80-18 rear. What bloody tyres are available in this combo? Did I get ripped off with the bike? LOL. For a dollar, you can't expect perfection...
My spark plug sockets won't fit. Must be some weird size. Oh well, I'll just leave them alone. There's plenty of other things to do at the moment.
The rust on the frame doesn't seem to be too bad - it's mainly surface rust. I guess I could get the frame sandblasted but I'm starting to wonder if I couldn't get a small sandblasting kit from SuperCheap and attach it to my air compressor. I'll look into that. Still wanting to get the motor sodablasted though. And I'll need to get a new left hand side cover - this one has been welded up and looks pretty poo. A bit of a worry about the shock too. It's pretty ...
Okay, continuing with pulling this bike apart to see what needs to be done. I removed the airbox cover and there's a cylindrical foam air filter in there. Well at least it looked like one. Until I touched it. And it tured into sand. Pretty horrid. Check the pic. Imagine if I had have tried to start the bike with that in the airbox. It would have gone all through the engine. yuck. Pulled the exhaust off the bike too. A whole pile of rust came out of the muffler. I'm hoping ...
I've been thinking about how to clean up some of these parts and the whole sandblasting thing seems to be a bit rough for a few of the bits. Which lead me to searching for alternatives - whereupon I discovered NZ Soda Blasting Ltd. They're local (in Montgomery Crescent natch) and I've left them a message to see how suitable their work is for my bike parts. Here's a video which shows what they do:
I reckon some scrubbing and cleaning will work wonders on this bike. After all the main problem is it's sat in a shed for the better part of 12 1/2 years... Kerosine and a rag for an hour produces the following result... it's not perfect but when I spend some more time on it it will look just great.
Decided to pull off the rear caliper and torque arm to see what I could do about it. The rear caliper was really oxidised and the torque arm very rusty. Damn I should have taken some photos before I started. Anyway, the pistons came out of the calipers easily enough with the air compressor - after the RF900 with 4 piston calipers it's a joy to work on a caliper with 2 pistons. One of the pistons was a bit pitted but the other one was perfect. To be honest, I reckon if I ...
with a man called Gerry Foon at VTNZ Adelaide Road. As I have the previous rego number, and the frame number and engine numbers all check out nicely, and we can establish that the bike was deregistered February 1997, it's going to be a piece of piss to get it reregistered. I need to do four things: 1. Restore the bike to wof standard (d'oh!); 2. Get a receipt of sale from the previous owner who deregistered it, or failing that, confirmation from the police ...
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