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.