Busy weekend

My back has been hurting so I have spent a lot of time messing in the garage this weekend.

Todays jobs included:
- Fitting the carbs to the RG500
- Oil change and filter for the Duke, you have to take the rear exhaust off and you can see (Chris) the difference lowering the needle 1 position has made, they are now nice and dark as opposed to the whitey/grey they were before!
- Re- jetted the FZR now it's running 110's (was 105's standard are 107.5's). Plus raised the needle from the second position downto the middle clip position. This is in the hope to improve carburation.

They were the major jobs, plus some fiddling with the exhaust support on the FZR, nice and clean now and finding some appropriate bolts for various bits and pieces.

Major Led Zep on the music front all weekend - you can't beat a good bit of music in the garage as you work!

Rg 500 update

The new piston went on after milling the insides for the thrust washers. The barrels went on and then the heads all torqued up and nothing pulled through so happy with that. I did use some Permatex (gasket silicon) on the head gaskets as I am still using the old ones.

Getting nearer....

FZR 600 - OK the tyres are on - some nice Pirelli Supercorsas, I was limited to the SC2's due to the size of the tyres - 110 on the front and 160 on the rear. I have taken off the belly pan, tank cover and seat unit for painting - going for white again - it just makes it easier to manage! The only bits left to do on the FZR are setting up the carbs (richer) and I anticipate some messing with the cockpit fairing as I have dropped the clipons to below the top fork yoke so I am sure they will touch somewhere.

RD350 - Found that the clutch cover was leaking gearbox oil, so have replaced it with another one I had on standby. The cracked one has now been "cold welded" up and I have replaced the water pump oil seal on it so it should be a good spare. There also seems to be a leak from somewhere higher on the bike, I think one of the petrol pipes is maybe leaking every so slightly - need to find that.

RG500 - I finally received my cylinder back from PJ Motorcycle Engineers, they did a great job of replacing the sleeve, but forgot to mill out the piston for the thrust washers!  So I did it on my milling machine which was freshly repaired (had a small problem of bearings...). Went well so I am ready to start rebuilding the engine. I had to renew the thread insert on one of the cylinder studs, and I am worried that the aluminium of the cylinder is getting really "brittle" and I am not sure it will hold....

I also noticed that the new pistons have a cutout on the input side of the piston which I am trying to think how this would affect the transfer port performance....I will ask on the Gamma list....

Update

Lot's of stuff going on in parallel in the garage :-

Fitted a brand new shock to the Daytona (only 150 quid - I couldn't resist it!), plus added some old inner tube to avoid the linkages and shock getting dirty!

I bought a new lithion Ion battery for the FZR's, works great but they sent me the wrong size, so I hacked the battery box (on the track bike) in order to get it in - cranks really well, enough to start it, and get the carbs synched - sound pretty good now and no leaks, although the carburation is off, probably due to the pods. I will richen up the needles and see if that helps, anyway I test rode it on Saturday (before the snow) and the gearbox and ride are fine, so I can invest in new tyres - some nice Pirelli Supercorsa's on order!

The clutch cover was causing the leak on the 350, so I changed it for another one, and the leak has reduced although not fixed completely - looks like I'll need a new gasket or some silicone gasket maker.