Some Progress!

At last some progress. I have had a few hours in the garage and have started to make some progress. It has been disturbed by the need to do a lot of work on my enduro bike for a 2 day rally in a couple of weeks time, but it has been good experience for me, including fitting new wheel bearings in the front wheel. I know to most it is very easy, but I have never done it before and am having to learn stuff from scratch, generally with help of a couple of excellent forums;

http://www.trailbikemag.com/forum

http://www.classicbikeforum.co.uk/

How did we cope before the Internet arrived?

Anyway I have been busy with the angle grinder and my wife's jewelry polishing machine, very handy!

I have taken off the rear foot rest mountings. More tricky than I expected. Angle grinders are very vicious so you have to be really careful not to cut into anything that needs to stay intact, like a load bearing piece of frame for example. I think I made fairly decent job of it, not too much extra damage!

Next were the front forks. I am not doing a great deal to them other than give them a decent clean out and refresh the oil, and give them a damn good clean and polish. Elbow grease to the for.... I would like to run them with the upper springs exposed, or visible under clear fork gaitors. So perhaps some nice new shiny springs would look good?

I have discovered the best way to prepare for polishing seems to be by hand, especially where there are fiddly places to get to. Elbow grease and constant supply of fresh wet and dry. Start off with the gritty stuff, and work down to the fine stuff. I have just spent about £9 on polish and polishing mops from http://www.thepolishingshop.co.uk/, as my wife went mental when she saw what I had done to her jewelry stuff!

I still need to order the seat and a new front mudguard from the US. I was quoted about £40 for postage, but a seat and a mudguard for about £150 doesn't seem to bad. I will still have to wait for pay day though. Actually it is quite a lot of cash when you consider I only paid £155 for the whole bike...

I have salvaged the brackets from the old front mudguard, and will need to tidy those up a bit, but at least that will save some time and money, and at least they will fit. I might even get them chromed?

I need to get hold of some half decent new shocks for the bike too. The original ones are rubbish. I am struggling to find something that will fit, the 'leg length' seems to be the problem. There needs to be enough of a gap between the swing arm mounting point and where the spring starts so that the shock clears the chain. I was disappointed that Hagon were unable or unwilling to help. There are some Betor ones that will fit, but I have read somewhere that there quality is questionable. The hunt continues...