Leaderboard

I picked this up back in August, literally @ 9PM the night before leaving on a month-long road trip, because why not... Was looking for something smaller, a project (but not too complicated) and on a reasonable budget as a complement to my Venture for easy daily riding and this sweet girl came along. She has only 7700 miles on her and lot's of garage sit time (hadn't run in over 10 years) - which of course meant gunked up carbs, dried out rubber bits and rusty tank. Thanks to all you awesome folks here and the ton I've learned from you over the last year I, perhaps foolishly, had all the confidence to take this one on. After returning from my trip, I pulled the plugs and soaked the cylinders in Seafoam deep creep for 48 hours, changed the oil, new battery and lit her up with some starter fluid. She's alive! Next step, pulled the carbs. They weren't in as bad of shape as I expected, but bad enough. Ordered a K&L rebuild kit, along with new boots on both sides. The petcock is vacuum operated and all the bits inside were dried out as well, so those have been replaced with new. I did the drywall screws in the tank thing and let the rust rain out, then did a degrease, followed by the POR acid treatment, then POR-15 coating. Carbs are clean with new float valves, pilot screws and rubber bits. She runs, she purrs like a kitten! Actually, the carbs need a little fine tuning on the pilot screws and sync, but other than that, I was able to ride it around the neighborhood this evening. OMG, what a hoot! This thing has some punch. Oh, while I was waiting for all the bits & pieces to arrive, I painted the engine black. The engine was painted gold from the factory but it was badly faded and splotchy and I just had to knock a little bit of that '80's look off of it. Overall, the bike is very clean but the paint is not as good as it looks in this photo, it is a bit worn and beat, but still acceptable. I'm debating whether to keep it looking as it sits now or make it a longer term project to move it towards something more sporty looking. In the mean time, I will be overhauling the brakes and other various little things to make her truly road ready, but dang, this is fun!

Episode 5 of our renovation video-series: https://youtu.be/BMC0wVqWmFQ We got some quotes about re-chroming the parts of the Yamaha. Prices varies between $1500 and $2500. That's a lot of money..... We're looking at some other options. Have a safe weekend! Peter

We want to keep the bike. We got it for free so investing some money is fine. Thanks for the tip about the rear brakes.

I would try them out. Yokohama motorcycle tires are now made in Korea.... Shinko bought the technology. Those of us who use Shinko tires really like them! That's enough for me to look these guys up and see what they have!

You might want to reconsider using Sintered brake pads for the rear. The RSV rear brakes tend to be on the too powerful side stock. Increasing the rear braking could be making the bike more dangerous to ride.

After all the work you put into it, would you want to look back and say: we should have!! Don't cheap out now, go the distance!! Of course it depends on whether you plan to keep it or sell it. Sometimes heritage gets in the way.

The hose goes on cyl #1 but you often see it on #2 because #2 is often mistaken as #1 simply because it is the left front cyl. when in fact the left rear is #1 while the left front is actually #2. Re: the boots there are only 2 part numbers 26H-13586-00-00 and 26H-13596-00-00. The bike uses two of each. A1-2, A2-1, and A3-1 are more than likely mold or batch numbers and meaningless to us unless there was a recall on a certain batch related to some sort of defect in that particular batch

Come on joe biden! 🙂He was asking about Korean made K&L parts. I haven't seen any yet, only Japanese. I would trust either.

Plastex also sold under the name of plastifix Sand all the pieces and bevel all the edges of all the loose pieces on a 45. If you don't want to repaint bevel one side only stopping at the edge of the paint. Use a tear drop carbide cutter on a dremel to gouge out the remaining cracks stop when you just start to see the inside edge of the primer or paint. Use aluminum duct tape on the out side to hold all the pieces together and seal the cracks. Clear packing tape works well to but the aluminum tape wont stretch. Aluminum tape comes in a variety of thickness's try for 3.5 to 4 thou if you can. Now start filling the v-grooves with the plastex/plastifix . Start by wetting the groove first with the liquid and then use one of the methods desribed to fill the groove (that is you can use the stitch method using the dropper needle or alternately wetting then sprinkling the powder into the groove. Don't worry about proportions just don't go too dry or too wet to were you are washing away the powder. Once the groove is filled higher than flush sand the entire surrounding area. Cut a piece of fiberglass cloth, fiberglass drywall tape or aluminum house screen to cover the repair area. wet down the area with the solvent and build up a thin bed Lay in the patch material and embed it into the still soft bed of filler. Immediately start building up another bed on top of the reinforcing material. If you wish to repaint the area: After the inside has cured lightly groove out the cracks from the out side and sand away some of the paint along side the cracks fill the cracks and when cured enough, sand to a smooth finish. continue filling and sanding until you have a flawless surface (this stuff will sand baby butt smooth so no need to use spot putty just add and sand until perfect) Spray with and adhesion promoter for plastic than prime and paint.

Running only on choke usually means carb cleaning or rebuild. Dying in gear, was your sidestand down? Check sidestand switch. If it tries to Lurch forward when put in gear check clutch fluid level/bleed clutch.

Video #4 is available..... https://youtu.be/O37q6Xn5lws

Video #3 is available....... https://youtu.be/EYJKjuxwYwQ

Video #2

First video from the renovation https://youtu.be/d0G7lsaUjBY

The opening sentence of every motorcycle story I’ve ever heard.

That was a very interesting and well made video. it really demonstrates the mechanic's behind how a motorcycle transmission works in a simple understandable format. Over my years as a mechanic I have seen some training videos that do more to confuse a new apprentice than educate them.

Great video, dumbed down to my level. Makes sense now, thanks for sharing.