Must admit I don't go that far. I wash the bike with car shampoo and a low pressure hose pipe. Spray some WD40 here and there and grease a few bits and under the cover she goes. Stored outside in salty air.
It stays in good nick, but it gets done regularly and and polish it every 3 rides or so.
“So I went to the Doctor's yesterday. He said, "What appears to be the problem?" I said, "I keep having this dream, night after night, beautiful girls rushing towards me and I keep pushing them away... Pushing them away and they keep comin towards me so I keep pushing them away, pushing them away..." He said, "How can I help?" I said: "break my arms."”
It may have just been re powder coated or painted? The numbers might still be there but under a heavy coat of paint. Might be all very inocent and could still be legit so I wouldn't panick yet, if it's been painted over you could file the paint off to reveal the code. See if the engine number matches the reg documents as well.
Where's my medal.... ????
Happy for you that everything is ok chap, that could have turned out to be a right nightmare!
Mine slipped like nobodys business regardless of what oil i put in it. I only fitted it as a matter of course as i had just rebuilt my motor so I went back to my old set of clutch plates and refitted my old one - it's ok now and the plates are thinner! That was with a direct swap with no changes (from new clutch to old clutch).
I'm need to source another clutch, perhaps from the likes of Barnett etc..
Mine slipped like nobodys business regardless of what oil i put in it. i fitted it as a matter of course as i had just rebuilt my motor so I refitted my old one - it's
Get him a 1300 Suzuki hayabussa. That way he won't show you up in comps!
Bloody nippers are so good at it nowadays, give them a trial bike for a month and before you know it they're hopping on the back wheel, doing floater turns onto 6ft walls and balancing with no hands or feet!
It's an old engineering tip, works wonders for reading old chassis plates that have corroded and generally gunked up over time.
Another one that works well on stamped codes is to go over it with a black marker pen then lightly sand it with some 120 grit paper. It brings up the faintest of markings.
Squish is the distance between the ***top of the piston*** at top dead center and the ***combustion chamber top cap***.
You can use soft solder but I prefer to use blue tack or even better a piece of clay as it has very little elasticity (done it this way for years on engines at the engineering company I work for).
Put a small sausage of blue tack or clay about 3mm diameter by 10mm length approx 5mm from the edge of the piston.
Attach the cylinder head and top cap to the crank case and set the piston to an inch below TDC (dont torque the nuts and bolts up just nip them up hand tight) put everything together except for the base gasket. Use your old orings in the top cap for now, fit the new ones after you have the correct squish height.
Now rotate the crank so the piston goes past TDC squashing the blue tack / clay (I like to rick it back and fourth a couple of times to remove any elasticity in the measuring media).
Disassemble and carefully measure the thickness of the blue tack / clay - digital verniers are great for this.
Ok, if for example your blue tack measures 0.3mm thick then you need a 0.7mm gasket (0.7 +0.3 = 1.0mm) - however gaskets also squash approximately 1/6th of their own thickness when you tighten things fiwn so bearing this in mind the most appropriate sized gasket would be one that is 0.8mm thick.
Gaskets come in a range of thicknesses to allow for correct squish. Sometimes one gasket will do, sometimes you might need to use 2 or even 3 to get the correct thickness. This is no problem, just layer them up with the ***thinnest one closest to the cylinder head***.
You do not and should not need to apply any sealant to the gasket. Fit them dry unless you have pitting on the mating surfaces that you think may cause you problems in future. Pitting will mainly be around the cooling water jacket ports.
As a side note seeing as the head is off you may as well check the piston rings and if you access to a bore gauge check the cylinder for wear and keeping it as a reference for future use. Check the piston ring end clearance which should be 1 thou of an inch per inch of piston diameter as a general rule of thumb IIRC.
Once all the work is completed and the engine is running retorque the cylinder head nuts after it has had a full heat cycle.
By the way why do you want to replace the base gasket? You don't need to remove the cylinder head to change orings on the combustion chamber top cap...
Why would you want to flush the gearbox with premix? Do you mean flush the crank and bearings etc? If so you don't really need to unless you have a serious build up of carbon in there. It will most likely be staind black inside the crank case but stains can be left alone as there really is nothing to gain.
As for base gaskets don't just replace the one you have, and don't go by trying to match gasket colours, the one fitted now may not be the correct one to begin with. Best to take a squish measurement and see what base gasket you actually require.
It may have just been re powder coated or painted? The numbers might still be there but under a heavy coat of paint. Might be all very inocent and could still be legit so I wouldn't panick yet, if it's been painted over you could file the paint off to reveal the code. See if the engine number matches the reg documents as well.
It's fairly easy to do, just a couple of things to remember:
on assembly you only get one attempt at fitting the fan blade, it's a press fit and once it's on to get it off you have to destroy the motor - so make sure it's fitted properly and that you have INSTALLED the oring which is fitted between the motor and the motor casing. This oring stop water entering the front of the motor.
Every so often I give the motor a squirt of wd, this helps to remove any moisture that accumulates in the windings.
Questions 1 & 2: not always, sometimes in fact most of the time seals look visually ok but pass fluids.
Question 3: you must get the bolts out to change the seal. Have you tried an impact driver on the bolts after soaking them in loads of wd? Even the most stubborn of bolts will come out this way if there is a bit of head gripping ability left.
Don't forget to let us know how you get on after your many hours of trial and error.
Try and find a ball park setup and maximise what you have first. If you don't you'll be spending money unneccesarily. You'll be surprised what you can do on a stock machine when set up and ridden correctly.
Cleaning
in Gas Gas
Posted
Dam that's a thorough clean!
Must admit I don't go that far. I wash the bike with car shampoo and a low pressure hose pipe. Spray some WD40 here and there and grease a few bits and under the cover she goes. Stored outside in salty air.
It stays in good nick, but it gets done regularly and and polish it every 3 rides or so.