Cato
Forum Supporter
- Messages
- 2,011
- Location
- Birmingham, UK
The black ET is finally getting some attention.
It had a running issue on idle and low revs for some time. Nothing too obvious, rode fine, but you could feel it stumbling a bit but pulling well. A lot of 'check this, check that' melarky ensued (electrics, ignition, carbs stripped) with the only thing I could find being one cyl lower compression than the others. It's only done 25K so I thought it couldn't be much.
Anyway, once I'd got the top end stripped, barrels off and the infernal combustion gods had stopped ******* themselves laughing, it turned out that there was some quite noticeable water damage to one bore along with the compression ring being broken. No doubt due to the crater in the bore wall.
Seeing as a rebore was going to be needed to sort it my choices were:-
1) Use one of the other barrels.
2) Have it bored and a new set of pistons & rings.
3) Might as well sit an 1168 kit in it.
Option 3 was a no brainer in the end as it's a really tidy bike so worth spending the money on.
So that decided it sat for a while as a non-urgent. Then I thought while it's in dock I'd finally get the paintwork sorted as it's just been in plain black with no graphics as I couldn't make my mind up between Orange/Red or the shades of Blue. Went with Blue in the end and got them air brushed in rather than use vinyl, which I have to say looks fantastic. They did a superb job.
Then I bought all the bits to do a complete refresh of the forks (seals, bushes etc) .
Then it sat for a bit more time mainly due to being busy with a load of other 'stuff'.
Finally got some time to make some progress, so the head and barrels will be off up to Leeds for Mr Upperton do weave his magic over them.
The before shot.
Digging in.
Water damaged liner.
Nice shiny painted things.
It had a running issue on idle and low revs for some time. Nothing too obvious, rode fine, but you could feel it stumbling a bit but pulling well. A lot of 'check this, check that' melarky ensued (electrics, ignition, carbs stripped) with the only thing I could find being one cyl lower compression than the others. It's only done 25K so I thought it couldn't be much.
Anyway, once I'd got the top end stripped, barrels off and the infernal combustion gods had stopped ******* themselves laughing, it turned out that there was some quite noticeable water damage to one bore along with the compression ring being broken. No doubt due to the crater in the bore wall.
Seeing as a rebore was going to be needed to sort it my choices were:-
1) Use one of the other barrels.
2) Have it bored and a new set of pistons & rings.
3) Might as well sit an 1168 kit in it.
Option 3 was a no brainer in the end as it's a really tidy bike so worth spending the money on.
So that decided it sat for a while as a non-urgent. Then I thought while it's in dock I'd finally get the paintwork sorted as it's just been in plain black with no graphics as I couldn't make my mind up between Orange/Red or the shades of Blue. Went with Blue in the end and got them air brushed in rather than use vinyl, which I have to say looks fantastic. They did a superb job.
Then I bought all the bits to do a complete refresh of the forks (seals, bushes etc) .
Then it sat for a bit more time mainly due to being busy with a load of other 'stuff'.
Finally got some time to make some progress, so the head and barrels will be off up to Leeds for Mr Upperton do weave his magic over them.
The before shot.
Digging in.
Water damaged liner.
Nice shiny painted things.