Kawi2strokes.com Forum

Thats easy for you to say, we havent begun to tile yet

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Vaughn

Did I make those chamber too? How many sets did you get from me?

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

I'd catagorize the tile as the "down-hill" type of work. Not necessarily easy, but one of the final things before you can actually enjoy the space.

Once a job is in drywall, "Its all down hill from here"..........

the "Gravy" work is hanging doors, setting fixtures and screwing the toilet paper holder to the wall

yeah Jim.. you made the chambers on the Red '70. In all, I bought three sets from you.

The hybrid is getting a set of proto-pipes from a guy that had them built for a roadrace bike back in the day but never used them. Ive had them hanging in the garage for close to 10 years waiting for the right project. The measurements are pretty close to H1 Dencos, but with tapered headpipes and removable/clamp-on baffles.

Just poking some fun Cody Lets knock the tile out so you can get back to something fun like finishing the hybrid!!!

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Vaughn

OK, I was just confused about which pipes were where.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

Alright!! Got a bunch done the last couple of days!

Cases are clean as a whistle, Volker's rubbermounts arrived and before assembling the lower end got the cases set up in the frame. Had to trim a little here and there from the spacer tubes, but they sit square and are ready to rock.

While I was at it, I figured I would weld the short spacer tubes for the upper front plates that came in Walms' kit to the frame instead of leaving them as individual pieces. 4 less pieces to lose...
Also, installed some inner sleeves between the upper front mounts ala' H2 to give the frame a bit more rigidity up front.





Next was the front brake. Im using a KZ650 front end, and originally planned on using an EX500 caliper as I still have a few laying around. The thing is, I would have to re-invent the adapter bracket as nobody as far as I know has adapted the EX caliper to the KH500/KZ650 forks as the spacing is quite a bit wider than on regular H-Series fork lowers. After some more thought, I said "screw it".... Im trying something different.

So I spent some time searching for a caliper that was a bit more "modern", and would have enough back spacing for the spokes and the correct offset (or close to it).
After looking at brembo, aprilia calipers and one off a triumph st1100, I amazingly ended up with a caliper from a 2010 Ninja 250.... Gotta love Kawasaki as this thing is as close to "bolt-on" as possible.

When bolting directly to the upper fork lug, it has PERFECT disc-to-center of pad spacing.



the pads contact the outer perimeter PERFECTLY, so doing Aylors "cut out" mod will work perfectly, and all it required were making a simple spacer and 1.10" long adapter plate. This is all I had to make.



The caliper is about 30% lighter and quite a bit physically "smaller" than the EX500 caliper. Reviews of the little Ninja's brakes are good. Better than the old style Ninja 250, which....you guessed it, uses the EX500 caliper!

oh, and if your wondering why the bleeder is at the bottom, this one is actually a rear caliper...which aside from the bleeder is exactly the same as the front on the new 250.

Side-by-side


A little paint on the adapter bracket and spacer tube and it should virtually disappear.





stay tuned!

Had a PRODUCTIVE weekend.....

Started out BAD as I received a phone call from the machinist saying that one of the cutterhead screws backed out of his boring bit while doing one of my cylinders and put a nice little scratch in the liner...

The cylinder will be fine for the next overbore, but it left me breaking up a complete set to get a replacement.
So Early Saturday AM I drove up to Mike Duttons, which is about an hours drive due-north.. to use his glassbead cabinet to see if I could get the replacment cylinder to match the rest of the cylinders, heads, cases.. Turns out the glass beads were a bit too aggressive and the finish looked nothing like the others.. We then tried some walnut shells, but they didn't do jack squat.

Soooooooo Off to the local grocery store, where I literally BOUGHT OUT their supply of Baking Soda!!! At least what they had on the shelves.
35 pounds of it, most of it in one pound boxes. The lady behind the counter looked at me goofy, but whatever.....

So back to Mikes, load the cabinet and see what happens?

SUCCESS!!!

Thanks Mike!

Next it was head back south to the machinist (who works saturdays), where he bored, chamfered and resurfaced the basegasket area to match the others.
I am FINALLY ready to assemble this engine.




and speaking of which, we had a bit of an "assembling party" here yesterday putting Jakes H1 engine together for his custom. Had a couple of "minor" brain farts along the way , but nothing major (had to re-split the cases due to finding a couple of the oil passages hadn't quite been cleaned out all the way ) But after that, everything went smooth and he's hoping to fire the bike up next weekend...

I also got an email from Central Wheel in England this morning stating my rims/spokes are on their way!

plenty of work ahead of me now.

Bottom end together........



Ready for the top




Also spent some time figuring out something "difern't" for fork ears.. On Version 4.0 right now, but getting closer

I like the rubberband idea.