reepicheep

Member
Apr 3, 2009
670
2
If the case comes off the bike, I will definately split them and renew every seal and bearing I can get.

The only reason to wait would be to just get the bike running and resolve some unknowns. First I would like to just get it running and make sure there isn't some latent tragic flaw I am missing that makes a non starter (like a trashed transmission). I bought it locked up, and it looks in good shape, but who knows? Next I would like to ride the thing and see if its cool, or if I would just hate it for riding on the street as a fun little playbike dual sport commuter (second bike). Next I have to work my way through the title office and get the thing titled and plated for the street.

I think all that will work out, but there are a few places things could go terribly wrong and I may yet end up just parting out the bike...
 

reepicheep

Member
Apr 3, 2009
670
2
:) Got four pistons last night, new old stock Wisecos. Looks like I have two easy keepers out of the bunch, an 060 over, and an 080 over, which is perfect. And I bet I could use the 060 over rings on the 040 over piston as well and get away with it if I had to.

So things are looking up for the little guy. And the more I think about having a 250cc two stroke street bike for casual playing, the more I like the idea.

Still hunting a carb though. Got a VM30 on ebay from an 80's snowmobile, but it doesn't look like the right one for the bike (I still have the old slide, and it is much bigger).
 

reepicheep

Member
Apr 3, 2009
670
2
Update...

Cylinder is rebored .060 over and looks GREAT. I have a complete Wiseco .060 piston to go in it, and an .080 on the shelf complete as well. That leaves me with a .040 Wiseco without rings and a .060 without rings.

I'll keep these for now, but if anyone has rings for these things, they should either buy my pistons or sell me their rings just to get them complete again, so we can sell them to somebody else who needs them. Shoot me a note if you want to do either (I don't care which, I just want them complete and available for the next person... email Bill at Kilgallon Family dot com. I'm thinking $25 for either the piston or the ring set with the promise not to gouge the next person who needs them...

So after many hours of scraping 1971 gasket material, it is slowly going back together. The first carb I got for it was wrong, apparently a Mikuni VM30 round slide for a two stroke snowmobile is completely different than a Mikuni VM30 round slide carb for a motorcycle. Go figure. But I now think I got the right one for $90 or so... almost what I paid for the bike, but it's a new carb. Hopefully the "slide and up" from mine fits in there (the only parts of the carb I had, and the fussy bits, as the carb on this bike is under an engine cover and the idle adjustment has to be done by a screw sticking straight up). If it doesn't fit, I'll have to get creative and do some fabrication... or just deal with having to pull the engine cover to tweak the idle adjust.

This bike also has a "swapable" shifter / brake setup. And oddly, mine was set up for right foot shifting. I thought about leaving it that way just to be contrary, but I think I will swap it back. I found the brake parts for a reasonable price, they are on the way. For the shifter, it looks like I can make one cut and one weld, so I will probably just do that instead of paying $30 for something shipped.

If I have some sort of rare and desirable setup, somebody post quickly before I start cutting and welding that shifter :). But I doubt that is the case, and I'll still have the harder part intact (the brake). If anyone wants it, drop me a note.

The rubber bits that looked remarkably good for 1971 parts turned out to look good, but be pretty hard and shrunken. So I had to do some cutting to get the carb / choke / and some other mystery cable out of there. The cables are (obviously) in pretty bad shape as well. I have them soaking in ATF type F right now, I will have to see if any are usable after they have been cleaned and drained. I can get some cables new old stock, and found this site:

http://www.flanderscables.com/FlanCableSearch.html

That looks like I could make anything I need. Do hydraulic shops also generally have equipment and fittings for making cables?

I got the front fender, and am thinking about paint. It'll be a rattle can job if I do it. But I have a buddy that could do a REALLY good job. I'll have to get the bike running and see if I hate it or not before I decide how serious to be about it. I don't like the original orange of the bike, I'm thinking some kind of vintage kawasaki green.

Anyway, it's been fun. The crank bearings sound fine now that I have gotten a number of flushes and stuff out of the crankcase. So I will probably not split the cases yet... again, if I put a season of light riding on the bike and decide I love it, then I can think about splitting the cases. One of the blessings of a two stroke, motor teardowns are SO easy that I don't mind putting it back together to see how it sounds and runs and tearing it down again if need be.

I also need a small end bearing and wrist pin if I can find one. I am hoping they are standard sizes... and it looks like they are also fairly readily available as new old stock. The Wisecos look like they use the factory wrist pin. I'll have to do some trolling through Kawasaki part numbers and ebay.

The bike has a nice spark, so the points system and coil looks to be perfect. This is my first points system vehicle, I was surprised how good the spark was. New points are also fairly easy to source.
 

reepicheep

Member
Apr 3, 2009
670
2
I'm making smoke! :)

See if this works:
<object width="400" height="300" ><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/1471651198791" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/1471651198791" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="300"></embed></object>

If not, try clicking this
http://www.facebook.com/v/1471651198791

The exhaust (single unit header, midpipe, and exhaust can) looked in good shape, but has a crack running most of the length of the top of the can... thus the smoke coming out the top. The crankcase is still full of various degreasers, diesel, and oil residue from flushing the gunk out of it, so that is where the smoke started coming from. The exhuast probably has all sorts of interesting things in it as well (up to and including small mammals)... Hopefully the smoke abates as it burns off, if not then some seal somewhere must be shot. That video was literally the first 3 minutes of the thing running after sitting in a barn since probably the 70's.

The thing starts on the first or second kick... pretty remarkable for an old points system that has been sitting forever and has a grafted on carb from another bike with jets that don't quite match pulled from a third party kit...

Now off to scare up a throttle cable... Found and ordered a petcock this morning.
 

reepicheep

Member
Apr 3, 2009
670
2
Oh, and while I am asking... I noticed when cleaning that a parts of this exhaust was brazed, not welded. It all looks original, and it doesn't look like stainless, as it is painted and already had a fair degree of rusting that had to be cleaned up.

Anybody know why it was brazed, and if I should braze or weld when repairing it? I can do either no problem... I would personally opt for the weld as it would be stronger and about the same amount of work, but if there is a good reason to braze it, I will do that.

I tried to repair a buddies throw away CRF-450X header pipe (badly dented) just to see if I could, and welding that was a mess because it was such thin stainless... so that would definitely be wiser to try and braze.
 

_JOE_

~SPONSOR~
May 10, 2007
4,697
3
Brazing old, rusty metal is not easy.

And the video doesn't work, probably you privacy settings........
 
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