Assembly continues. Bit by bit...

It is always a great inspiration when the assembly of a bike has actually started. I´m lucky enough to have the bike and parts in my own home, just a staircase down, in the basement. That makes it so much easier to ramble down after dinner or just before bedtime and think about something or have a look at something bothering you or to just have a cold beer and enjoying the fact taht it is actually there in your own garage. Last time I got the lower triple tree and the swing arm in place and now it s time to continue with the top triple tree and a few other frame parts. Here we go!

The top yoke, or top triple tree, had to be cleaned and polished in some way. I decided to use my small buffing machine with a rather coarse grit to buff it up. This is really dirty work! You need to be prepared to vacuum your entire garage after each session at the wheel. The buffing spreads lint and dust all over the place.

Here it is, half finished. I probably went too far in shining up the surface, but that can be changed later on and it will change by itself unless I clear coat it. And that´s not going to happen here. A good, thick, layer of car wax protects the surface enough. Not too nice, remember?
The grit, or polishing compound, I use is something I bought at a swap meet years ago. Nothing fancy at all, but it works! I bought two different types, one coarse and one very fine. This is the coarse one...

I located the top bolt and the other bolts and put it all in place on top of the lower triple tree and here it is! Let´s move on to the rear fender.

This part has been clear coated, without a doubt. I thought about it for a while but decided against it for my part. The clear coats I´ve been able to acquire have never been good enough, so I usually leave the surface untouched when restored, but protected with car wax. Most often I use the old, very well known, Turtle green. Correct in time as well!

Anyway, the fender had to be cleaned and sanded. I planned to use some chemical stripper but was out of it at the time so there I was....

Elbow grease, sanding block and a little water now and then. Smaller and smaller grit on the paper/block until you´re happy with the surface. This one I won´t polish on the buffing wheel. I think it looks good in a little more satin finish.

Remember I discussed the originality of this fender in the beginning of the blog? Later bikes have a plastic fender and I thought mine might have been made by "Esso" or someone else during the time. Now, I´m quite convinced, it IS the original fender. Look at these edges. If someone would have made it during racing in the seventies I doubt they would have made it this good! The shape fits perfectly to the frame and also to the chain later on. I´m pretty sure this is the correct one. Not that it matters... It´s going back on anyway!

Here´s a little trick I thought of while sanding the fender. To get a bit more "factory made" appearance of the metal surface I sanded the edges of the fender in parallel strokes with the edges. This will make an impression of someone standing on a grinding/sanding machine polishing the surface at great pace and speed. I´ve seen these variations in grinding direction on NOS clutch covers etc on my older renovations. Just a gimmick, but let us see how it turned out!

Here´s the Turtle wax I was talking about earlier. The fender is sanded and polished to the shine I like it to have. Not too shiny and not too dull. Something in between. A thick layer of wax protects it...

And here is the finished result. Not restored to new condition, not too shiny... But nice enough to not look totally beaten up. I´ll also leave the marks after screws hitting the fender close to the edge on the right. They are part of it´s history. It might be the seat fasteners that have done those marks. We´ll see later when I put it on the frame. My gimmick with different directions of sanding is also clearly visible. I think I like it....

The same principle here. Dual nuts to lock the fender in place. I can understand why. The fender is mounted with rubber washers between the fender and the frame and also on the underside of the frame. There are no collars, though. Steel collars are used on street bikes in rubber mountings in order to be able to torque the nuts harder and still keep everything rubber mounted. This is another story. If I were to tighten these nuts hard, the rubber washers would be deformed and do no good at all. The trick here is to tighten the first nut just right for the rubber washer to keep its shape and then lock it all in place with the second nut. A modern way would be a nyloc nut, but we don´t want anything like that here, do we?!

I believe I got it about right... 6 nuts, 6 rubber washers and 3 rather large steel washers on the inside. Rear fender done!

Once again I couldn´t resist... Tank, seat and cover on the frame just to have a look... I like it!

The fender got the exact right "shine" and I feel no need to clear coat it at all.

Time to move on to the front fork stanchions. I did manage to reproduce the inner tubes via purchasing a set of tubes for an old Yamaha RD250 1973-75 and having them modified to fit the H1R. That being done I´m still going to use my old, original, stanchions on the build. I do want to keep it as much the original bike as possible so they are going back on! Slightly pitted but straight and re chromed to specifications by a couple of great companies here in Stockholm. Look at the page from the parts manual! The dust boots are there as part numbers, but NOT the oil seals. Isn´t that odd? Were you supposed to replace the complete outer fork leg when the oil seal gave up? Well, it sure beats me...  The dimensions are known and printed on the seals, so it wasn´t that hard to figure out the same oil seals used on the early H1:s would fit.

Being a hoarder of old Kawasaki parts I had a number of these in stock, NOS. As you can see I treated the outer front fork tubes in the same manner as the top triple tree. Polished on the buffing wheel. The same reflection caught me here. A bit too shiny, but I´ll leave it as it is, for now.

Getting old oil seals out of fork tubes is generally a major pain in the... I have had to destroy many seals to get them out at all, often damaging the surface of the tube where the seal enters and sits. In this case it was a blast! It worked with my Oil seal removal tool from Craftsman! The steel bracket is there to avoid damage to the rim of the fork leg. Here you can also see the, slightly, too shiny surface of the outer leg.

The next step is cleaning and cleaning again of all parts going into the fork leg. These are all hydraulic parts that require extreme cleanliness to function the way we want them to. I tried to capture the inner surface of the outer front fork leg here to show how well polished it is. This is where the outer and inner front fork tubes meet and slide inside each other. Any dirt or foreign matter will make gouges and scratches on these parts. The hard chrome is hard, but not that hard... And this, inner surface of the outer tube, is all aluminium and very soft and vulnerable.

Next up is the mounting of the NOS oil seals. Here I prefer using a large socket that fits as close to the edge of the seal as possible without being caught inside the tube. Gently tapping all around it makes it enter and  then be driven all the way down until it "bottoms out". Checking with the inspection mirror is an option also here.

The large washer and the circlip completes the oil seal mounting. A light coat of rubber grease on the lips of the oil seal makes it a lot easier to slide the outer tube on to the inner.

OK, time for the inner, hydraulic, parts. Same here. Clean, clean and clean again! These parts slide inside the inner tube and are held in place by a large circlip at the very end of the tube. Be very careful with the order of the parts. Follow the manual precisely to get it right. These principles are very valid when you´re working on you street bikes as well.

Here´s everyhting installed in the tube and ready to be secured by the circlip. Note how well they performed the hard chrome at "Fintlings" and also how nice the ground surface of the chrome is from B.L Slipteknik. Great job!!

The last step of the process before installing the spring, tube and washer is mating the inner and outer front fork tubes together. This is preferably done by an impact driver at a low torque setting and with a good fitting allen tool. I believe it is a 6mm allen screw and that can´t take too much pounding by the impact driver. There is a special tool from Kawasaki you can use to hold the hydraulic parts while securing the allen bolt, but this works as good!

In order to have the parts centered properly inside it is smart to have the tubes completely pushed together, "Bottomed out", so to speak when you use the impact driver. That way the hydraulic parts are centered and the outer and inner tubes can move freely. A splash of front fork oil on the parts during this process is a good idea to keep the polished surfaces intact.

So, here it is. One down, one to go!
Sliding on the dust boot and installing the spring, washer and tension tube is a no-brainer! Next time
 I´ll be working on the front end some more and maybe installing two completely restored front fork legs to my slowly growing chassis. Tomorrow it´s off to work again.
 C U in New York!

Over and out for now.....!!

/Per

The turning point is here!

A month passes quickly by during summer time. Vacation is, since long, over and I´m back to work. I have managed to do 6 return trips to the US and 1 simulator flight test since my last update here. It´s not that I´m complaining, but I need more time at home!

Anyway, the turning point is finally reached! I´ve started assembling the bike. Finally....

I usually start my bike assemblies with the swing arm and the swing arm bushings. It is always a good idea to locate everything you need before starting assembly work. Remember I bought those NOS swing arm sleeves from the UK? Well, here they are! Together with the slightly battered brass bushings. I´ll have to look closer on those....

You might be able to spot the damage I made when removing them from the swing arm during disassembly. That will have to be adressed.
It´s always a true pleasure unpacking these small bags of NOS candy parts. Especially when it says "H1R" on the bags!

And here they are on the rezinked swing arm pivot shaft. Ready to go into the bushings.... Took me about 3 hours of grinding, straightening, polishing and wet sanding to get the bushings to accept the sleeves AND  to enter into the swing arm. These parts need to fit tight and snug but must not lock up too tight. The swing must be able to move freely but with no play at all. Time spent here is well worth the effort later, when you don´t have to take everything apart again. Better do it right the first time!

Test fitting of the parts into the swing arm. A light coating of oil and in they go.... And hopefully out as well! Easy does it. You don´t want to get the parts stuck in there and have to beat them out, damaging them again. The NOS sleeves were probably a tad bigger in diameter so it took a while to get it right. There´s no tube inside the swing arm as on the street bikes and no grease nipple either. The two sleeves meet in the middle and the shaft goes through both sleeves. Everything has to line up 100% to be correct. If not, the shaft will not go through with ease and the swing arm will not move freely.

After a long (nice...) evening in the garage I got it right and could finally grease the parts up and mount them inside the swing arm!

Here´s the final result. The steel sleeve protruding a little bit outside the brass bushing, ready to take the shaft and bolt to the frame where the sleeves will be in contact with each other and the frame on each side. The swing arm will move freely on the bushings between the sides of the frame. At least in theory!

And here´s the shaft with its two nuts. They used two nuts to lock each other instead of one locking nut. Don´t ask me why... The parts list also calls for 2 washers on the same side as the nuts. That seems wrong to me so I´ll use one on each side instead. I thought the nuts were supposed to be the same, but it became obvious later on, that they are two different part numbers and the outer is much thinner.... I´ll show pictures later!

I have managed to convert all my scanned pages of the service manual/parts manual to one PDF, copied to iBooks on my iPad. Nice feature in the garage! Makes my decisions so much easier when I know right away when and how I divert from the manuals....

When I assemble a swing arm I always turn the frame upside down for convenience and ease. The wooden extra spare part box came in handy as a base for the frame to rest on.

Here we go! It is a real tight fit. The many coats of paint made the swing arm larger and the frame a little more narrow so the mating surfaces had to be sanded to bare metal (almost...) in order to fit the swing arm. A rubber mallet is a very useful tool when assembling stuff like this. You can strike as hard as you like and still not damage painted surface too bad... As you remember I don´t mind small marks of life on this bike. I want it to look genuine.

When the swing arm was in place, moving freely without any play, I couldn´t resist a quick mounting of the new KONI shocks from Robert Haag in the US. Boy, do they look the part! Absolutely fabulous! As I said before, we´ll see if these will be on there for good. I might have to go back to a used pair looking more like the Girling shocks "Esso" used. For now it looks and feels great!

Up next is the steering triple trees. Upper and lower, with the steering bearings. The steering bearing races all looked OK but I had one NOS and changed the one looking most worn. Probably totally unnecessary, but why not? Believe it or not, I had all of the 38 steering bearing steel balls left in the bag with the other parts! 19 in each bearing, top and bottom. You can also see the lower race already mounted to the lower triple tree in this picture. Easy tapping with a small hammer and a mandrel all the way around and around slowly drives the race down to the bottom of the tree.

The same goes for the races in the frame tube. Gently enter the race with the small hammer and then use the mandrel to slowly drive it down until it bottoms out against its seat in the tube. Tap only on the outer edge of the race and only very small and light blows. You can also use a socket that fits perfectly to drive down the race. The surface of the race is hardened and brittle and can easily be damaged! If it´s a too tight fit it helps to heat the frame tube with a torch or a heat gun. That will expand the tube and thus letting the race in easier.

OK, how do you know the bearing race is all the way down?
You can feel it when tapping on it. It sort of "bottoms out" and starts to feel more "solid" when tapping. To be sure I use an inspection mirror and turn it all the way around to check the race is in contact with the frame seat. This looks good!

Time to put the balls in place... This is one of the most tricky operations on assembly. I use lots of grease to hold them in place and carefully put all 19 of them into the race. Don´t loose them! They tend to vanish into thin air when dropped on the floor...
A good, thick, layer of grease on top of them secures them until the upper bearing race is mounted later.

This principle is also valid for the lower triple tree. Lots of grease to "glue" the balls to the lower race during mounting in to the frame tube. A coat of grease on the race in the lower part of the frame tube makes the greasing of the lower steering bearing complete as they come together.

There is no cover, no washer, no nothing between the steering stem lock nut and the top steering bearing race... Feels odd to me, but that´s the way it s supposed to be! I tightened the lock nut enough to take out any play but still loose enough to allow for free movement. The lock nut will later be locked in place by the top triple tree so no worries it will vibrate open....

Here we are! Swing arm in place, shocks in place, lower triple tree and steering bearing in place. Finally I have started the assembly of the racer... At last!





















That is all for now... Next trip to the US is up tomorrow. C U in Chicago!

Nest time I´ll be working on the top triple tree, rear fender etc. Lots and lots of work to do but boy, isn´t that just wonderful.

Stay tuned for more!

/Per