Eddie Lawson Resto Mod

[chrisNI]

I just got my seat (PMC cover) done by the local Polish car set are-upholstery outfit. It wasn’t cheap ( these guys generally aren’t but they’re extremely good) it’s a great job and I got it back in a couple of days. Looks factory. I used the original foam they bluffed out the raggedy bits at the front the rest of it was ok.

[kawasaki_man]

Decided it was time to work on the brake calipers I had bought a few months ago. The rear looked poor but came with the mounting bracket at a sensible price. The plus point was that the brake pads were as close to new as possible, however the internals were not so inviting. The caliper was sold as taken off the sellers Hayabusa and working! Well the caliper did come apart eventually, but considerable force being required to remove the bolts holding the 2 halves together. It was amazing and shocking to find no dust seals fitted and the brake pistons damaged by previous heavy handed hammer action. A new set of seals and pistons have now been purchased.

EBAY AD!

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Shabby Internals

Working on the rear caliper and wheel spacings. Caliper spacing sorted, wheel centralisation still a few mm out, looks like I'll need to do some work on the sprocket carrier to get things lined up.

[kawasaki_man]

The front calipers were a joy to work on, no corrosion to pistons, brake pads like new, just a full set of seals purchased for the refurb.

The front wheel & brake alignment has been completed also.

A new set of discs has been purchased also.

[chrisNI]

Making good progress

[kawasaki_man]

Time to get the hacksaw out and remove the left shock mount on the swingarm. A bit to care and effort and it came off almost unscathed. The rewelding of the bracket in a centralised position was undertaken by a very competent local bike builder.

Photos show the progress.

The rear brake caliper is finally refurbished and ready to be fitted.

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[kawasaki_man]

A bit more progress over the past few weeks.
1. Sorting out / repairing the butchered frame.
2. Fitting an appropriate steering stop that will work with the ZRX steering stem.
3. Repairing the areas of fin damage to the barrel fins.

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[r3sc]

Nice work. It’s looking good!

[chrisNI]

Good work

[kawasaki_man]

A few more things completed over the past week or so.

1. Both front brake calipers have been cleaned, painted and new seals fitted.
2. The swing arm modification needed finishing. I've been pondering a while on options and went for the easiest option for me. I decided to purchase a new inner bearing shaft(TourMax) and that would only require one simple cut to get it to fit. (Well I took it to the bike friendly machine shop and it was done on his lathe.) The needle bearings I chose were full complement, slightly shorter than original and that meant I could get a small flexible seal into the swing arm. I also needed an inner sleeve to take up the gap because I'm still using the Kawasaki 1000J swing arm shaft and not the XJR1300 one. I've just done a trial fit and it all seems very nice when bolted up tight.

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[kawasaki_man]

It feels like i'm turning a corner finally.

I took the frame to the paint strippers and was more than happy with their work. I've previously used blasting for the frame, but the chemical bath method seems to do a pretty good job, especially in the difficult to get to areas of the frame. I picked the frame up on Friday and with the weather looking set warm for Sunday & Monday decided this was the window of opportunity to get the painting done. Before starting I removed the old steering bearing outer races and installed new ones. I also cut back as much as possible of the inside of the footpeg mounting so that I increased the clearance between the wider swing arm & frame.

First painted with zinc primer, them acrylic black gloss and top coat clear gloss. The results are OK and I concentrated on getting the seen parts of the frame as good as possible since most of the frame is never seen.

Photos of the progress on the frame.
Before

After Stripping

After Zinc primer

Done!

[kawasaki_man]

Finally the weather has been warm and dry for the past week or so. I've put in some effort to get all the main items of a black colour painted with a range of different products.

1. Wheels painted with Techniq speed gloss black and clear lacquer.
2. Swing arm, steering stem and forks painted with Hammerite satin black.
3. Outer engine cases painted with Simoniz tough gloss black.
4. Crankcase halves painted with Simoniz tough satin black.

The only problem paint was PJ1 fast black gloss, meant to be used for outer engine cases, however the paint only came out in large gooey lumps, so had to purchase the Simoniz tough gloss black and bin two new cans of PJ1.

[kawasaki_man]

With the painting season over I decided I needed to make a move on the engine. All threads had been checked and cleaned, however one on the engine casing that fixes the sprocket cover/clutch release had a problem. The thread was OK, however it had been "fixed" previously but not square to the cases. This was a problem for the replacement clutch release cover.
Access to the damaged zone was restricted due to engine case. Third party help was required to sort this out, a time-sert fitted by Johno at Bilsthorpe.

[kawasaki_man]

Replaced the cam chain, old one was quite stretched. Played around with gearbox selection, putting it in second then worked it up to 5th and then back down to 1st and ending in neutral. All seemed to be working as expected. After the gearbox check sealed the crankcases up and fitted the bottom end into the frame after fitting new engine rubber mounts.

[kawasaki_man]

Another update. Well the weather was above my 10 degree cut-off so I planned for a day of garage work and probably the last for a while.

The task today was to get the new Viton valve stem seals in, valves back in head, replace cam bearing shells and then bolt in replacement camshafts and check valve clearances using the old cam chain to rotate the camshafts. Doing one camshaft at a time makes it quite manageable to rotate the cams by pulling on the chain, making sure there is enough clearance under the head for valves to open.

I've read so much on this forum about J engines and cam chain tensioners and jumping cam chains that I took the plunge and made my own cut out cover that should prevent these problems when checking valve clearances in the future. I'm sure some people will be unhappy that I have sacrificed a cam cover to do this, however it was from a US model with the air suction system so probably not really any value over here.