Seat and Wheels

Well the original seat is akin to some sort of medieval torture device if you ask me. You could floss your arse with it, its that skinny.
Even the five hour journey home on the beast highlighted that shortcomming so it was high on my list to sort.
Afterall i cant journey across the barren plain of Dakar with a numb bum now can i?

I ended up using P and P Seating in the UK. Very unpatriotic of me to farm it out across the water but there were two reason why.
1. They were at the rds bike show so i could discuss face to face the ins and outs (bad adjectives/verbs re a seat) of what i wanted and could see colour charts first hands which is a bonus.
2. I wanted to reshape the foam somehat and a gel insert was a must too.
Whilst a good looking job could be made of it here in Eire i was just not terribly sure of getting the reprofiling and gel insert done right. P and P are round ages and yawn at my requests with a yeah no worries we can do that whilst i was getting chin stroking over here so...

Here it is

All vinyl

Blue on the sides and black basket weave on top.
Font and sizing is a bit off but hey that was something i couldnt even seem to track down over here.
I hope my arse like it.

A seat is well and good but it wont get me to Dakar, il need wheels for that!
The original wheels were somewhat furry and corroded but not bad at all. Despite this i wanted to start a fresh so ordered stainless spokes from Hagon in the UK. Wernt cheap! But i suppose its done and done right with them.

Wheels were stripped by Leo O'Reillys in Dublin.
I gave the rims a clean and filled down any burrs or nicks and had them dipped, blasted and coated by Barelle.

They do a lovely satin black thats almost got a silvery basecoat appearance to it.

Meanwhile i hung onto the hubs and had them soda blasted as i wanted to paint them due to spoke hole sizes being made narrower due to the thicker coating of powder.

Ready for matt black aerosol after being sanded and etch primed.

And the finished product

I think the look ace, kinda meaner than the old chrome look.
I chose anakee 2's as they perform well on road.
To be honest this whole deal with the wheels was expensive and at times messy.
I had to bring the wheels to Dublin to have the offset measured and be stripped by the builder.
Then off with the rims to the powder coater with the rims and go home.
Back up to Dublin the next week to collect the coated rims, whilst having sorted the blasting and painting of the hubs during the week myself.
Then back to the builder to have them, well...built. And then battle across Dublin friday avo traffic to the shop to have my tyres fitted where upon they didnt have my correct sized rear lol.
Bike refurbishment, it tests your commitment to sparkle motion thats for sure! But im delighted with the results in the end.

Shock

Managed to scrimp and save and sell a kidney for a wilbers shock.
Paul in vmtek.ie was the agent i used and he took all my details. You have to wonder does all the detail simply amount to a spring roughly equivalent to your weight or perhaps something more??
By all accounts something more, the valving is set up for a lean towards on road and its delivered with preload set to what they reckon should be the correct sag and likewise the damping set to optimum.

Have high hopes for this as it wasnt cheap and they have a great rep it seems. Paid the extra for the ride height adjuster at the bottom of the shock.
If the damping is as tasty as the milling il be a very happy lad.
Have a gawk

Added some extra height to sharpen things up a tad.
Makes no bones about it, this bike will be higher than Charlie Sheen. The wilbers fork springs and and the reprofiled seat will make her a daunting prospect.

Bought one of these cool thrust washers off simplybearings.co.uk

I really like that site, makes for easy ordering of an at times confusing product.
The idea with this is it rides above the spring and below the preload collars. No more skinned knuckles, simply un nip the rings and turn by hand!

So there she is all buttonbed up, mostly

Forks

Cast another eye over my forks after the revelation of the ovalish head bearing seat..
Like I guessed

And if that didnt convince me

And if THAT didnt convince me...

Luckily I had bought a donor bike with a wrecked engine but luckily it was straight as Clint Eastwood!
So i set about stripping them.

Had to have a look in the bent set too, just incase there were any aftermarket goodies, but no, all stock.
The devils jizz once more, note to self; minimum two sets of nitrile gloves and take off the ring! Chem burns hurt!

And then etch

And the same silver as the linkage with halfords petrol resistant lacquer which is tough stuff!
Resealed them and used my ebay purchased oil seal driver

Meanwhile Id ordered Wilbers progressive fork springs

Problem with them though, they are the total lenth of the old springs plus spacer



Normally you would just leave out the spacer but i wanted to fit these gizmos and they would add more than the requisite preload that wilbers decided on for me

Have them on another bike and they are great. The basic idea is a similar set up to emulators but with the added benefit of the ability to supposedly be able to distinguish between chassis and road imputs and damp accordingly. Tall claims but they work on the other bike and thats a traillie too....
It sits under the spring, hence my preload concerns.
Needed to reshim after talking to Ricor.

Have to use 5wt oil (yes 5) to cancel the standard orifice damping of the fork and allow the ricor intiminators do the damping.

Used my home brew oil/air gap measuring tool

And the correct air gap

All the drama over and there they are

Carbs

Being an FI guy I found the carbs quaint and pequliar, until I opened them up and read the manual (or the 'vagunal' as i re-christened it) and read up on all things carby.

Here they are in all their mechanical glory after I cleaned the outside (the easy part)

So, the engine shoed evidence of a leak and after reading up it seemed the likely culprit was the needle valve seat o rings. 1.5 x 7mm viton seals are the job to fix this I believe.

When i pulled the bowls off and removed the floats and needle valve and seat the cause of the leak was obvious.

The flaots, needle valve and diaphragm/slide were good. Gave them a clean and coating of silicone to the diaphragm.

Needle valve was on standard setting, minimal wear thanfully.

My little ultra sonic cleaner that I bought ages ago in advance of such a job came in handy

New float gaskets and a buckets of carb cleaner later they were all buttoned up with new stainless allen bolts replacing the horrible philips jobbies.

Chassis Bearings

Head bearings were off wemoto were not a fit for two reasons one, the early 750's take a 1mm oversize seat and two, my bearing seat was slightly oval. Cause for obvious concern that, lots of chin stroking and eyeing up the frame was to follow.
She ran straight on the test ride (with hands off the bars), looked straight and the oval was minor so i fitted the seat after a spell in the freezer and used some loctite bearing and stud fit just to be sure. simplybearings.co.uk were used to get this taper bearing.

and

Swinger bearings next

Stripping/Blasting

The engine was first for the devils jizz (nitromors) and I had relatively good results. The problem was the barrel had its paint baked on and no amount of the above horrendous toxin would shift it.

That represented a problem, as to get the finish I wanted blasting was the only other option and I didnt want to split the engine as she ran well. Media blasting a complete engine (undismatled) is a bad idea due to the ingress of media so i did a little digging and came up with soda blasting.
sodablast.ie did the work and I blocked off the inlets.
As they use culinary grade bicaronate of soda (which is soluble in... well liquid) its not harmful to the parent metal and is way less of a concern than conventional media to the oily bits, if they get in.
Heres the results, I had them do the tanks too..

I used the ever ready Venture Tape to seal the inlets. Stuff sticks for Ireland and is tough!

And the tanks

Not the best key for paint as its so smooth but nothing an rub down and etch prime wont solve. Also soda blasting is good as it does not flash rust!

The rest was done in the conventional manner and baptised in the devils jizz.
The linkage in the process...

Bearings were all ok thankfully.
I also had at a few other bits.

Etch prime and paint..

Let the games begin

Looks can be deceiving. Despite the test ride being all ok she hid some woes, all will be revealed. Well the woes Ive found thus far...

So like I was saying it was stripped hastily in a flurry of 'losing my rebuild cherry-dom' and then sat for three years like so...

The beginning..

Three years ago I purchased a fairly worn Suzuki DR 750. It had roughly 25k miles and rode well on the test ride so I did the deal. After riding it home I stripped it immediately, powder coated the frame, swinger and bracketry and left it all sit for three years, as you do.
In January of this year the guilt of having left what could possibly be a great project won out against my laziness and Ive been at it since.
This blog charts the build so far.