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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Its a Gas!!!

Getting new parts that is. I know Ive said it before that I love getting new parts, well I got some more. This time I am going to share the gas tank that I got. I did get some other parts too but the assembly is not complete so I will wait till everything show up. When I found this tank on ebay about a month ago I didn't think it would be the one that I got. I found some that actually looked better in the photos but when I would get in touch with the seller there was always some kind of problem with the tank, Most usually with the inserts that allow you to bolt the shroud onto the tank. They had a tendency to get spun in the plastic. Usually this happens when the owner puts too long of a bolt into the insert and it bottoms out making it stuck and then the insert just spins in the plastic and you cant get the bolt out, rendering the tank useless if you need to change the shroud.  So this tank turned out to not have that problem, I actually contacted the seller twice on accident to ask about it and finally went for it.  To back up a little bit, I was going to bite the big dollar bullet and purchase a new tank at about $260, I found many web sites that had it for sale only to find out that they really didn't have it and could not get it from Kawasaki. Also couldn't find an aftermarket company that makes them..this tank is different then the one that came with my bike. Only difference that I have found is that it seems a little wider in the middle underneath and the tread count and pitch on the cap is different.  Now I don't know if this one is a different year or if the one that was on my bike is not an 86. I could probably figure it out with the codes on the bottom of the tank but I don't know if it makes any difference to me. It fits so that is what counts.
As you can see in the photo it cleaned up really well. I did some practicing on the old one so that I would keep from messing up the one I planned on using.  It seems to have paid off as I got a pretty good sheen on the old plastic and the amount of scratches visible is pretty minimal. There were some deep gashes on one edge of the tank and they almost disappeared.  I wish I could figure out how to get rid of the sticker shadows left over from years in the sun.  Other then that the color looks really good.

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