Sugilite's Winter Project - 1989 ZXR750H1 face lift

[sugilite:Me]

They also came in handy to hide your stash from mr plod.... ahem..

I'm not sure Kawasaki engineers envisioned them being used as a ram aired bong, hardcore dude!

[chanceyy]

Yay congrats on the ride .. bet the smile says it all ..

great pics after hearing about the resto project for a while now

next set of pics plz .. yeah I am impatient

[Madness]

I'm just in awe of the fact that you managed to strip that bike down to the frame with just (metric) hammers and not a single 12" crescent Could this bike be the next Cliffhanger champion?

I need a bigger gargre, or a ramp up to the spare bedroom.

[sugilite:Me]

great pics after hearing about the resto project for a while now

next set of pics plz .. yeah I am impatient

Hence me not starting this thread till it was done
Yes, I will post more pics shortly, afterall, this is the instant gratification king of project threads

I'm just in awe of the fact that you managed to strip that bike down to the frame with just (metric) hammers and not a single 12" crescent Could this bike be the next Cliffhanger champion?

I need a bigger gargre, or a ramp up to the spare bedroom.

I lost my crescent Do you have ranch sliders on your lounge? Job done!

OK, more pics very soon....

[sugilite:Me]

Prepping fairings for paint. The paint process turned into a real nightmare for me. I'd heard of paint shops that won't touch bike fairings and I'd always wondered why as I'd done several before with no problems, that is until this project! I won't cover all the disasters as it would take pages and pages. Basically I worked out, if it is the 1st time race fairings have been painted, or indeed original ones, you are unlikely to strike problems. Where a fairing has been painted before, and in this case it had been painted twice before, you need to remove ALL paint back to gel coat if fiberglass, or plastic if original. As soon as you spray, the old paint on it melts (for lack of a better word) and pulls the paint up underneath into UGLY ridges. In some cases even if the undercoat was successful, the top coat will still do it, and I waited days between coats to let them dry. Lots of other shit happened too, but I'm just so over it I cannot be bothered writing about it. If you want to do paint yourself, my recommendation is wait until compressors and spray guns are on sale, like at repco now, both can be had for under $150, then go and use two pack paint for a hardier and more professional finish, it will work out only about 30% more than using spray bombs like I did. If you are a glutton for punishment and want to use spray bombs, stay away from dulux, and go for the cheaper Warehouse Autohaus paint, it goes on better and is better for exterior applications. The Dulux help desk basically told me not to use their product as it is more interior, even though the label mentions it being exterior. They also said their own clear coat could very likely cause he melting issues on their own product!!! I give them a "A" for honesty and very much appreciated their advice. Also, FORGET the chrome paints, both Autohaus and plasticote brands. They mark insanely easily and lose their luster if you dare to use even a clean dry flannelet cloth on them. I got all keen when I saw the plasticote bumper paint. I thought, yeah, thats got to be tougher, how wrong I was, after letting it dry and stand for 6 weeks, the 1st time I lightly brushed a dry soft cloth on it...well refer to the above, they must assume you are never going to touch or clean your bumper, In my opinion this CRAP should not even be on the market! Anyways, enough about paint...more pics!

Items prepped for paint - read torture! The metal things gave me no issues, Thank goodness!

Prepping the swing arm, I'll be doing a paint n polish combo. ZXR's of this model have a habit of snapping the battery housing bracket, where upon the whole lot falls onto the swingarm and dents the center part, both bikes had done this. I had a HEAVY DUTY bracket made up for mine, so used that. I filled the dents with bog

OK, time to start putting things back together again. Behold the sugilite engine mounting device Mark 1! As I'm also building a race bike in project two, I figured I'd be naive to think that I won't be hauling the motor in and out a few times and wanted to make sure I could do the job by myself, so I came up with this, I took the sump of the 3rd motor (sad gear box one) drilled holes through an oven tray and fitted it to the jack, which in turn I attached to slab of wood. I then filled the tray with concrete, covered it with a rubbish bag and pressed the sump into the concrete to make a mold.

And it worked! I had the motor into the frame and the rear engine mount bolts through in just a few short minutes. The Mark 2 version will have a shorter, deeper tray to solve a small frame clearance issue, and a metal plate between the tray and jack for better stability I had no problems placing the motor into the tray either so all good.

More to come...

[HenryDorsetCase]

that oven tray filled with concrete idea is genius. I spent basically a whole day pissing about trying to get the VFR motor back into the frame by myself with bits of string and mirrors and zip ties and duct tape..... sore back and skinned knuckles were the result.

genius.

[sugilite:Me]

And on we go. As mentioned earlier, the motor from this bike was destined to become the race motor as it had only done 1/2 the km's my old one had. 65K vs waaay over 100k. Turns out though, the motor with the snapped cam chain had absolutely no damage to the valves n pistons, (A miracle!!!) and further more, the pistons still had the machining marks from the factory, so it was even newer than this one!!! So this motor came back to do road bike duties
OK, The swingarm just needs a bit more polishing and it's done. (used the 110 grit, then 400 grit then autosol again).

I also took the opportunity to pull apart the suspension linkages and grease the bushes, they can be poked out with a finger, so it was a pretty easy job.

I was so over joyed to be past the paint job and back into reassembly! I was very nervous about routing the wiring loom though, I've always had a healthy distrust of my ability when it comes to motorcycle electrics!!!

[sugilite:Me]

that oven tray filled with concrete idea is genius. I spent basically a whole day pissing about trying to get the VFR motor back into the frame by myself with bits of string and mirrors and zip ties and duct tape..... sore back and skinned knuckles were the result.

genius.

Cheers, I used to spent literally hours just sitting there gormlessly looking at the bike while listening to music while visualizing what I'd do next, and it came to me in one of those sessions

[ducatilover]

That swinger looks nice, hit it with some 1200 then autosol it. I went mental with my frame/swinger and went 220-400-600-1200-2000-autosol

[bogan]

Interesting stuff! Loving the innovation, and use of a bedroom. However it begs the question, what are the tie-downs tied up to?

[HenryDorsetCase]

Cheers, I used to spent literally hours just sitting there gormlessly looking at the bike while listening to music while visualizing what I'd do next, and it came to me in one of those sessions

I wound up getting a bit of 18mm plywood and some offcuts and screwing the offcuts in a sort of box shape to hold up under the sump, and underneath a bit of offcut six by two with a big hole drilled in it to take the jack.

that worked ok, but not as elegant as your solution.

then I watched the "how to build an RC30" video and they assemble the engine then drop the frame on top of that.

[sugilite:Me]

This believe it or not is a 22 year old standard pipe that came in the "box of bits" so I decided to use that and put my muzzy pipe on the project two race bike. I picked up a cheap wire brush thingamie bob set for a electric drill, sprayed the pipe with CRC and got to work on removing the surface rust. Always wear eye protection as the brass wire=s fly off at times.

She is coming together nicely now

Assembling the front end, all went sweet.

I polished da forks, removed the clear coat with sandpaper, then got to work with the good ole autosol, amazingly I only used one and a bit tubes for the entire project! At $17 a tube, thats a bargain!

I wire brushed and painted the brackets and other associated crap.

OK, the front end is coming together nicely now, ignore my grubby finger prints all over the bike, it looks better than that once I cleaned them off In the box of bits was a ZZR600 front guard, and it fitted, how handy! One of the very few non standard parts used on the bike, the only other I can think off, is the end can. I think that is a home made one. I'm OK with it, looks and sounds good to me.

OK, time for me to resize the final photos, then upload them and add them in here, back soonish for the grand finale

[sugilite:Me]

Interesting stuff! Loving the innovation, and use of a bedroom. However it begs the question, what are the tie-downs tied up to?

Kawasakis are so light, just a few tacks into plaster ceiling and all good! OK, that "may" be bullshit. Big fuck off hooks screwed into the main joists may be closer to the truth, been using them for about 11 years now, so all good.

[sugilite:Me]

OOOOOOK, the bike originally looked like this....

Now it looks like this.....

The other side....

I wanted to keep to the H1 pattern, but the inspiration for the colours came from 2 sources, the foremost was when I was a kid, my mum set up a roster for me, with a rewards system. If I did well, I would get enough points for a match box car. I went all out and got a deluxe one, about 3 times the size of a normal match box car, it was a John Player special F1 car, how I loved that car with the black and gold scheme!!! The other source was black and silver for NZ colors. The H1 having a tri color scheme, I just merged them and wallah. I'm pretty happy with it. The most expensive single thing was the decals at a whopping $49 NZD delivered from Malta of all places. The paint cans added up all together though came to about $100. The sandpaper cost $10 (warehouse packs of multi grits) The whole project cost less than $350. We won't talk about the hours though

[chanceyy]

OK, that "may" be bullshit. Big fuck off hooks screwed into the main joists may be closer to the truth, been using them for about 11 years now, so all good.

ohhhhhhh yeah real big fuck off hooks .. have not been brave enough to ask, her indoors what else those hooks are used for

BTW the bike looks freaken awesome love the color scheme congrats again aye, hard work pays off, and looking forward to seeing you out on the road again