GREEN!!

Really it should be made of Gold, Green is appropriate only because money is the same color and it takes a lot of it to get these parts.  I found these at a somewhat reasonable cost however I have not found the rest of the plastics to be the same.  So I will continue to hunt for them at a more reasonable price until I decide to bite it and pay the really high price for the ones I can find. Gas Tank is becoming an issue, as in I cant find a good one. When I finally decide to pay the unreasonable price for that I hope that they actually have it. Same with the side panels. Front Fender I figure I should be okay on since they didn't change that till 1992.  Still New parts are cool to see come in the door, even if I can't put them on yet.

Ive Lost My Bearings.....

And then they showed up in the mail... OH found em....  ok im a little loopy its late, waiting up for the kid to get home so thought I would put this post up.

Ordered these bearings and bushings from the Lytle Racing Group, thanks guys, fast shipping. Nothing like new shiny stuff to work with.

So I went at it right away with my home made bearing squeezer iner thing, and squeezed them right into the swingarm just like they were supposed to be there.

Then in no time at all I had them all greased up and was able to hang the swingarm on the frame and motor mounts. I am still missing the linkage mount bolt that goes to the frame but I do have a line on one at a local shop and I'm gonna try to pick it up on Monday, yep they are open on Monday.  I know it seems like its just a bolt right. well its an $18 bolt. Special size, special collar, special shaft length, cant get one at the hardware store.  If it works out Monday I will get it for $5 and a new $12 motor mount bolt for $3. Shop the bargains where you can. Oh and they are New Old Stock, meaning they have never been used.  Pretty cool, wish I could find more of that stuff.

New Parts AIR BOX.

Waaa Hooo! yes I get excited about getting new parts, every time. This time I got an Air Box in the mail. Wasn't even expecting to see it until next week so lucky me. Even better is that its in really good condition. Doesn't help that this is what the old one looked like.  This one has a hole in it there to the left of the box, could have been a foot peg at some point but when I got it the mounting tab on the sub frame was poked through the hole. The whole thing is really beat up.

 

Lucky for me there is Ebay. I found this next one for super cheap, so cheap in fact that I probably shouldn't even put it in here.  I was not expecting to get one in as good of condition as what showed up so sometimes you get lucky I guess.

This photo is of the same side as the one above that has a hole in it.  You can see that the general condition of this unit is all around much better even before getting cleaned up.

Here it is all cleaned up. Looks so good. It shined up pretty nice, I think this unit will look pretty good in that sub frame.

So along with having two air boxes to work with I ended up with two air filters and cages. That's a pretty nice bonus especially considering how cheap the second one was.  Turns out the filter in the original box is a much better filter and in better condition than the second one. I cleaned both of them just in case. The Uni had what looks like a burn spot or a melted spot and it fell apart. I have never really liked those type of two stage filters anyway, so no big loss to me.  The filter in front that is light colored is in great shape and cleaned up very nicely. Its a keeper.

Sub Frame

Yep I did it again. I don't know why I can not remember to take a before picture. This one will have to do, just reference the sub frame here, its blue.  Pretty much that's all we can see from this photo.  There is a tab missing that the air box bolts to on the back side, cant see it here.

 Here you can see the new tab that I welded on. Not my best welding work, I was having trouble with the wire wadding up in the feeder. This weld cost me 40 feet of wire. Next time I will use a thicker gauge wire to prevent the waste.  Oh well its stuck on there now and will serve its purpose just fine.

 Here I have put the sub frame on for a dry fit before taking it to paint. You can still make out some of the old blue paint that I couldn't get off in the cracks and where the welds are.  I wanted to be able to run it bare aluminium but couldn't get it clean enough, so ill paint it.

Here it is hanging on the paint wire with a fresh coat of metal finish. It looks close to polished aluminium finish so it wont be too bad even if it wears off in places.

Typical Dirt and Grime

This photo is so typical of everything I have found on this project, these are chain adjuster blocks that fit inside the swingarm and pull the axle back to make the chain tighter.  Why are they so dirty if they go inside the swingarm?  I don't know, 25 years of neglect I guess.

Here they are ready to be installed back into the swingarm, with a little anti seize on the threads to keep them moving easy.

Carb and Bars

I found a set of bars in the free parts trailer parked in my back yard. (Thanks Jeff) They are steel but that is what the bike came with originally. I don't know if I will stay with these on the bike but for now they are gonna work.  the clutch cable is just sitting there for now, its in good shape but the clutch perch was not and went in the trash so I need to find a new one of those before making the final attachments. Also in this photo you can see the Rad louvers are on the radiator they cleaned up great and is the only piece of plastic that is going to be reused from when I got the bike.

In this shot you can see that I got the Carburetor cleaned up and gone through again no before pics. It is mounted on the intake boot and has new hoses however the throttle cable had a couple of pinched spots in it so I took it off for now and will order a new one.

Radiator

Its a little hard to see but I found this crack on one of the tabs that bolt the radiator up to the frame when I was cleaning it and getting it ready for paint.  I have been so bad at taking pictures of the process that after I fixed it I forgot to take another photo. I did get the final product after paint. I used JB Weld and clamped the piece back together and let it set up. It may hold or may not I have had some pretty good luck with JB on radiators in the past so I hope it works.

 There is the radiator bolted up, this model year bike only had one radiator on the left side unlike most other bikes and bikes now that have one on each side of the frame.

It almost looks unbalanced but from what I remember it was not noticeable having the rad on just one side.

On The Pipe!!!!

I know its a little early for putting the pipe on the Motor and bolting it up to the frame but I found this DG Pipe and silencer on ebay about three weeks ago and it is in perfect condition.  I needed a new silencer anyway and the pipe was a bonus, $30 bucks was too good to pass up. DG was performance 25 years ago, kind of like PC but they didn't last as long.  Like a dummy again I didn't take a photo of the silencer before I cleaned all the black paint off it, but I did get a shot of the Pipe before de-rusting it.

Swingarm.

Ok, the Forks are still sitting in garage without having gotten taken apart any farther. I still don't have a service book.  I decided to pick up the other end of the bike and see what kind of trouble I could find there. Again I forgot to take any before pictures, Stooopid!  Well you will have to take my word for it, the thing wasn't pretty.  Lots of caked on grease and dirt, stickers that needed to be peeled off and bearings that needed worked over or removed. If you look at this photo you can see some of the mess.

Most of it is hidden underneath and at the front where the swingarm attaches to the motor and frame.  I got lucky that I was able to save a couple of the bearings, one in the bottom linkage of the swingarm and another two in the linkage itself.  I originally wanted to just replace them all so it was all new and fresh but had to make a change of plan since our financial situation has changed.  Maybe someday if I think it needs it I will change them then, but for now I think the ones I am keeping will be okay.

 Here you can see the two front pivot bearing have been removed with the help of a home made bearing press. It worked really well, if you need to know how it works email me and ill explain.  This is the top view after it has been all cleaned up and de-stickered. There was also a screw that held on the chain slider that had been worn off when the slider wore out.  I ended up cutting a groove in the top of the leftover head of the screw and used a impact driver to remove it. Thankful it came out pretty easy.

This is the bottom of the arm and the lower bearing is the one that I decided to keep.  The whole unit looks pretty good for 25 years old, just a couple of dings and scratches here and there.  I am also in the middle of a few other things but its late so Ill post that stuff up later.

Disassembling Forks

 I dove into the Forks today to see how much I could clean up and what I would need to fix or replace.

as you can see in the photos they were pretty neglected by the PO. Not surprising as was everything else.  Its a must to put in new seals the biggest problem will be getting the old ones out.  After removing the sludge that was supposed to be oil in each fork via a convenient drain plug in the bottom (something the new bikes don't have) I was able to remove the top caps and take out the springs, damping rods and bottoming springs. That's where it all STOPS. There is an inner cartridge (hence the name Cartridge forks, KYB) that I will have to build a special tool for to remove. Now building the tool or tools is not that big of a deal, I have had to build many in the past and have already figured out what I need. The problem I have with the situation is I want to know what part should be removed first so that I don't mess something up in the process.  I don't have a service book and can't find a free download online anywhere.  Yea, I can find one on ebay but I'm on a really tight budget right now and besides then I would have to wait for shipping.  It looks as if not only am I going to have to wait for shipping but I'm gonna have to wait for the finances to get a book too.  We will see if I have the patience to wait for it or if I just build the tools and try not to break it.

 

I suppose I will have more willpower to wait since I can't buy the seals right now anyway and I don't think I have enough fork oil in stock to finish either.

Here they are cleaned up and waiting the next move. The lower fork legs are pretty rough, very serviceable but not pretty, I'm not sure how to go about making them look better. I have seen painted fork legs and they look okay for a while. We will see what happens in the future for the forks, Stay Tuned.

Motor Meets Frame.

I can't do a whole lot with this bike project right now due to financial concerns but I am going to do as much as I can. the Engine is in good shape, after the tare down I am feeling good about that. It does need a few small items like a new ignition cover and a new power valve cover. Both are made of plastic and the PO over tightened both items and smashed the mounting holes. For now both parts bolt back up just fine but are not in perfect condition as I would like them. So those parts will get changed out at a later date.

In this photo you can see the engine with fresh paint mounted into the freshly painted frame. Looking very nice you can also just make out the shiny triple clamps hanging from the stem.

The Build Up Starts

The Frame transformation.

The Blue was not the original color for the 1986 frame so went ahead and stripped it down 

 I was glad that I did, I found a crack in the frame where the back comes down into the engine cradle. I had read that the mid 80s KX frames were prone to breaking, I never broke the one that I had that I am aware of anyway. I only raced it for a season, I did however break the rims in the first few months of racing it.

So I was not able to find the original Kawasaki color. Apparently PJ1 does not make frame paint anymore only the fast black for the engine.  So I went with the durabond auto enamel. Honda Silver as it turns out looks a lot like the original silver frame color. I hope that it is a fairly tough paint, even though this bike wont get a ton of ride time when its done it will get at least the occasional spin around the track and I am sure all my friends and the kids are gonna want to take turns as well.

Often when I am working in the garage I get a little ahead of myself and forget to take the before pictures. Here are the triple clamps in the process of the degreaser bath.  The photo doesn't really show how dirty the bearings are as well as the bottom clamp.  Yes I have seen worse but hey this is my project.

The upper frame picture has the Triple clamp mounted up with fresh grease nice and clean. the lower photo also shows the clamps mounted I think both are a little hard to see with too much distraction in the backround. Maybe I should set up a photo studio just for these pictures. Maybe thats a little too OCD.

Side Tracked

This past weekend with three days off was a perfect opportunity to work on the KX125 project but as it turned out I only got the frame stripped down to bare and ready for paint,also welded up the cracked frame spar.
  My son was riding a crf150 and has outgrown it, this weekend we traded it (we got the loosing end of the trade) for a 2006 RMZ250F. I know this is the last year of the Kawazuki combined effort and even Kawasaki decided to end it early. The RM is going to be a good bike but it took all weekend to tare it down and check everything out and put it back together so nothing else on the KX got done. I would love to go into it about the RM but that could have been its own blog story. Suffice it to say that its gonna cost another $300 to get it up to my standards of ride-ability. Ill post a pic of the KX frame before I paint it up.

Engine Looks Good...

Finally got the engine and all mounts removed from the frame so now I can proceed to clean up everything and look for parts.  We ran into some trouble at home with our Heat pump, burned up and has to be replaced in full, that is going to soak up all our extra cash for a while so it doesn't look like I will be ordering to many parts until that is taken care of. 
Anyway I will continue with the project and do what I can, cleaning and fixing and putting back together the parts that I have that will still work.

Tore the engine apart to see what was happening inside. It all looks really good, Surprised me... The bearings inside are in great shape as well as the gears. The clutch basket has some pretty good grooves worn into it but for now it will work and I can replace that at a later time.  I did find that the case had been repaired at some point from a crack or breakage next to the water pump, it was done quite nicely though and again if I decide to at a later time I could replace that side case. The gray area in the photo below is the repair.
Also the oil drain plug had been messed up and repaired with a heila coil, surprising again it is working just fine but I don't want to mess with it too much.

Satisfied with it, I put it back together and gave it a fresh coat of engine black high temp satin, its gonna look pretty sweet in the fresh frame when that's done.