Rings and Carburetors: Swimming Upstream on this Vintage Motorcycle Restoration Project

The never ending winter drones on up here, so I'm putting my back into getting the '71 Triumph Bonneville project closer to a state of mobility.

I have a new 750cc head and pistons on hand, so I gave the piston rings a go. Installing them is pretty straightforward and the first set went in no problem, but as I was compressing the second set into the cylinder sleeve it didn't feel right, so I backed everything out and the bottom ring came out in pieces. I can only think it was already compromised in the package.

I sent Britcycle an email and they looked through the warehouse to see if they had any extras laying around, but I was out of luck, so it's a $100 failure (new rings, taxes, shipping). Ouch. This got me looking at costs for this vintage project. The last one I did was the Fireblade. Those are my favourite kinds of restorations. Parts are easy to find and relatively inexpensive, the bike is rideable fairly quickly and, after riding it for a season, I can turn it over for at least what I put into it (or with a small profit as was the case with the Fireblade).

New cylinder heads and cylinders... and broken ring.

 

I think I'm still right way up on the Bonneville simply because these older bikes seem to work under their own economy. I was looking up prices of what I've got on eBay this evening and the frickin owners manual that Bryan threw in at the last minute is $50US! A used top end is $500US (and Bryan gave me 2 of the things!). I imagine I could double my money just parting it all out, though dealing with people doing that would be a giant pain in the ass - at least it has been with the newer bike crowd, maybe the vintage types are less adversarial.

I had a couple of choices when I was considering going old school, and I think I picked the hardest possible one to bring back to life. The technical side of it doesn't bother me, but with costs increasing all around I'm bothered more about the high prices and difficulty finding and shipping parts than I am with what I've got to do to bring it back. That old BSA would have probably been a better choice for my first vintage resto, but it (and alas, Bryan) are long gone.

I've got what I've got, and I've got a lot of it, and I'm crafty. I'll see what I can do about replacing fasteners and the other bits and pieces I'm missing without it breaking the bank, those these strange old British pre-metric fasteners are a story unto themselves. The goal right now is to rebuild the bike to an operational state and then maybe ride it for a bit before putting it up for sale. I still need a seat and exhausts and I'll need other odds and ends like control cables. If I can get it back to a state of play, I think I can cover costs and move it along, then I'm thinking I'll go back to my favourite hunting grounds: forgotten bikes from the 80s, 90s and 00s that I can turn over for next to nothing while giving me a chance to ride something different for a little while.

When the ring crumbled on me I changed gears and rebuilt the Amal carbs. That went well, but I'm missing two of the bolts to put the second carb back together - they weren't on it when I wiped the mud and rust away. It's these little setbacks that stall things, and it's not like I can grab a couple of replacements out of my big tray of bolts (most of which are metric).

 

How simple can you make a carburettor? These old Amals are pretty close to first principles. The combination of archaeology and simple mechanics is very appealing when everything else I ride carries a computer and my day job is all about them - it's nice to be fully analog!

I'd broken down the carbs in the fall and left them packaged in a segmented toolbox. Putting them back together was problem free and the kits I got from Britcycle replaced all the gaskets and rubber grommets in them. The old rubber bits were really showing their age.

Guess which one is the 50 year old ring (I;m assuming they're original)?

Just need some bolts (at $3.50US a pop)

If money and time were no object I'd dig deeper into this vintage resto thing - I dig the mechanical simplicity and I enjoy seeing how mechanical evolution happens over time. As a hobby in retirement, it has great appeal, but I'm some years away from that much free time on my hands.

I'll see this one through and then refocus on the SPQR-WRO (small profit, quick return - with riding opportunities) side of it where the costs and time commitments aren't quite so demanding.

 

 

 

Victory!

After a long wait the o-rings finally came in to the dealer.  I then ended up getting the wrong o-rings (it turns out Kawasaki has like half a dozen different o-rings in this carburetor).  Don't expect to show detailed pictures and get any help from the parts experts either.





With the o-rings and t-fittings in I was able to put the carb back together again (again).  But before doing that I checked the floats one more time (they were all good), and reset the pilot screws to factory specs.  As I was doing that I noticed that the needles were moving when I flipped the carbs.  A quick check of the diagram showed that the spring seat goes above the pin, not below it, which I'd done (quite embarrassing really - I was tempted not to mention it, but my mistake might prevent someone else's in the future, so humility - and humiliation - first).

With the pins and seats the right way around I put the carbs back together yet again.  Installing it is as big a pain in the ass as it ever was, with the fitting of airbox boots being a dark art.

With everything reconnected and double checked, the carburetors were ready to go.  I set the petcock to prime to put a lot of fuel in the empty bowls, hit the choke and turned it over.... and it started and idled properly!

As I used to do, I eased off the idle as the bike ran higher and higher as it warmed up.  After a minute I turned the choke off and it was idling at about 1800rpm.  I dialed back the idle speed to 1000rpm and it was running steady.

So far so good, but the issue was applying throttle - the carbs kept flooding, backfiring rich and then killing the motor, would that happen this time?  No!  It's alive, ALIVE!!!

This video below may be the most satisfying thing I've ever filmed.

I now have two working bikes in the garage.  This has been a long and frustrating process, but I've gotten the rust off some long unused skills.  I'm taking better organization, attention to detail and theoretical understanding with me as I move onto other mechanical projects.

http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/search?q=concours+carburetor

If it hasn't been replaced, it's been thoroughly gone over.  One carb is complicated,
four carbs is a universe of complications!

Concours Carburetors: Prepping for rebuild

There are three rails holding the four carbs together on a Kawasaki ZG1000 Concours.  Two of them are structural and the other one holds the choke mechanism in place.  Taking them off a twenty two year old carburetor can be trying.  I ended up having to cut a line in one of the retaining bolts and put some heat on it to get it to let go, but all three pieces are out now.

With the four carbs separated I'm now waiting on the rebuild kits.  When they arrive I'll rebuild each carb one at a time (so I don't mix up parts).  All four carbs are cleaned up (a touch of carb cleaner and a toothbrush got 22 years of grime off) and awaiting some new gaskets, float adjusting and rebuilding.  While in there I'll make sure the needles are in good shape and everything has the right geometry.

The first one will be exploratory and slow, by the fourth one I'll be able to rebuild these things in my sleep!

The four carbs separated and cleaned.   Taking a twenty two year old carb apart takes some patience, and some heat.

Cleaned up and ready for a rebuild.

No lost parts this time - everything labelled and organized.

The choke rod (up and down to the right) partially removed - each carb
links to this plate which moves them all when the choke is pulled.

It only takes a bit of carb cleaner and a tooth brush to get the crud off. I blew it dry with the air line afterwards.
Caustic carb cleaner (it melted two pairs of latex gloves - for goodness sake, wear gloves!) isn't recommended on the insides
- I'll use a bit of gas and a clean toothbrush to make sure the innards are perfect when I get in there.

Some Kawasaki Concours ZG1000 carburetor links:

https://snapguide.com/guides/rebuild-kawasaki-concourse-carbs/
https://sites.google.com/site/shoodabenengineering/intake-and-exhaust
http://www.murphskits.com/product_info.php?products_id=130
http://www.randols.net/Connie/#_Toc276312906

Zero Sum Game: motorcycle restoration as a hobby

The Fireblade project motorcycle has moved on to its next owner.  It had been sitting in a garage for the better part of a decade before I got my hands on it; the result of a bitter divorce.  The fuel system was shot and had dumped gas into the engine.  It had just over twenty-five thousand kilometres on it, but hadn't been used in a long time.

Over the winter of 2019/20 I rebuilt the carburetors, resealed and sorted the fuel tank and got a new petcock, all of which conspired to put the otherwise eager Honda back on the road again.  When I checked the valves they were exactly in the middle of spec and some of the cleanest internal parts I've ever seen (thanks to the gasoline in the engine?).

Once the fuel system was sorted and the bike had a few sympathetic oil changes and other maintenance addressed (like new tires and a K&N air filter), it was licensed and put on the road where it performed flawlessly for a year.  When I sold it the odometer read just over twenty-seven thousand kilometres, so two thousand of them were mine.

The 'Blade was a lovely device.  If I didn't live in such a tedious place and ride-on track days were a possibility (they aren't anywhere in Ontario - the rare track-days that do exist are for rich people who trailer in race prepped bikes), I'd have hung on to this remarkable thing and let it do what it does best: explore the more extreme limits of motorcycling dynamics.

Trying to do that on the road makes no sense.  Ontario's roads are in atrocious shape thanks to our brutal seasons and lack of sane governance.  If you can find a piece that isn't falling to pieces, it's arrow straight because Southwestern Ontario is also geologically tedious.  We had a Californian trip a few years ago and drove up to Palomar Observatory outside of San Diego in the mountains.  Those are twelve miles of the most technically demanding roads I've ever seen.  That I had to drive them in a rented Toyota RAV4 is a crying shame.  If I lived anywhere near roads like that, owning the Fireblade would make some kind of sense, but I don't.

In our tedious, conservative province, this Honda Fireblade makes as much sense as owning a lion.  In three seconds it can take you from a standstill to jail time.  I only just discovered what happens to it at 8000RPM the week before I sold it.  Up until then I was astonished at how quickly it accelerated, but if you keep it cracked the madness becomes otherworldly.  The Honda Fireblade's athletic abilities make it a perilously expensive proposition in our police state and there is nowhere you can let it off leash to do what it was designed for (without buying a truck and trailer and stripping it back to being a race bike).

I was hoping to put racing stripes on it and really do it up, but then you have trouble selling it around
here where individualism is frowned upon.  Am I sad to see it go?  I honestly wrestled with the idea of waving off the buyer and keeping it, but instead decided to aim my limited space  toward another bike that would not only be more generally useful in the bland vastness of southwestern Ontario, but would also make me a better dad; the Fireblade is an inherently selfish thing.

If Practical Sportsbikes thinks it's the number one 90s
sportsbike, then it is! They helped me sort out the fuel system!

I bought the sidelined 'Blade for $1000 and then paid an extra hundred to get it delivered to me.  The new tires ($400) and a set of replacement carbs ($250) that I mainly needed to replace hard parts, along with the carb kit and other rubber replacement parts as well as multiple oil changes and filters, and some replacement LED lights for the broken stock ones, pushed my cost for the bike up to about $2000.

It cost me $500 for insurance for the year - mainly because I don't think my company (who doesn't usually do bikes but do mine because I've been with them for over 30 years) didn't realize what it was.  I sold the bike for $2500 as is, though it's currently fully operational and road legal, which means I got to ride the best bike of its generation and something I wished I'd owned in university when I was younger, fitter and more flexible for no cost.

That (of course) doesn't consider my time, but this is a hobby and if I can make it a zero sum hobby then I'm much less likely to feel guilty about it.  I'm going to miss the Fireblade, it was a lovely thing that spoke to me.  Having a 23 year old Japanese super-model whispering in your ear as you ride along was thrilling and I'm going to miss it.  Should I eventually find myself living somewhere where a sportsbike makes some kind of sense and where I can exercise it as intended on a track, I'll be quick to rejoin the tribe.

***********************************

In the meantime I contacted a fellow in Toronto who has a latest-generation Kawasaki Concours 14 that he couldn't sell in the fall (I was in-line but the 'Blade failed to sell so I didn't go for it).  He still has the Concours and we're lining up a cash sale for next weekend.  My first three bikes were Kawasakis and this would be my second Concours.  I've owned a first gen C-10 and my son and I rode a first gen C-14 through the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, but this one's a gen-2 C-14 Concours, which makes it one of the only bikes out there that can comfortably carry my now-adult-sized son and I two up.

I've always been drawn to Kawasaki engineering and I like their style.  This one is very low mileage (only about 30k) and needs some TLC (the owner is older and dropped it while stationary which is why he's moving it on).  Once sorted this Connie will have a lot of life left in it.

What makes it particularly useful to me is that it's a capable sport-touring machine that's built like a brick shit house, can cover the endless miles we face in Canada and can still entertain in the corners.  It also happens to be powered by the same motor that drives the ZX-14R hyperbike.  It may sound juvenile but I grew up in the 1980s and they had me at Testarossa strakes!

One of the side benefits of Concours ownership is that they have one of the most active and engaging clubs around: the mighty COG (Concours Owners Group).  I got stickered and t-shirted up with them as a full member when I got my first Connie, but have since been exploring other bikes.  I'm looking forward to re-engaging with them when I'm a Concours owner again.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries has weight in Japan!

The Ride to Indy: The Gear

After putting well over a thousand miles on in five days I've been able to focus on what works and what doesn't.  Here's a quick rundown of the gear used and how well it worked.

I used the Alpinestar S-MX 1 boots there and back again.  Vented and able to catch air on even the hottest day, I've had them for a couple of years now.  They aren't as clean as the stock-pic, but I like the lived-in look.

Boots were one place where I had no issues - these things are excellent and worth every penny I paid.  They are big rain catchers, but we never saw any rain so it wasn't an issue.

The Teknics Motorsports jacket I picked up at the motorcycle show last January was my jacket of choice.  In cooler temperatures and up to the mid-twenties it works a charm.  It has vents in the arms, chest and back, but the air flow isn't strong.  On the return trip in 30°C+ temperatures it was sweaty hot though.

Once south of the border helmets and gear became very optional, but I never felt comfortable riding around without kit on.

No jacket seems able to do the full range of temperatures, and other than the sweaty, hot day coming back, the TK jacket did the business.

As for warm weather protection I'm still considering my options.  We stopped at Cycle Gear in Indianapolis on the way back and they had Bilt mesh jackets on sale for sixty bucks, but we were running low on space so I didn't partake.  I'd still like to know what kind of gear works best in the heat.

Henry Cole has some kind of fully vented under-armour when he rides in the desert.  Considering the miles he's done he must know something.  His kit is Knox Cross Body Armour (I just looked it up).  It's about three hundred bucks from Motorcycle-superstore in Canada.  It's a made in the UK ventilated, armoured jacket, but it ain't cheap.

I picked up these Speed & Strength leather gloves this year and they've quickly become my go-to glove.  They feel solid with leather palms and full finger padding, but they're also very ventilated with those knuckle vents moving a lot of air over your hand.  Any glove that is this solid, cool and conforms to your hand this well is a good glove.  At no point did my hands get sweaty or uncomfortable, even after eight hours on the road.  Epic gloves.


My Macna riding pants work well in many conditions.  They ventilate efficiently but still feel comfortably warm when the temperature dips.  I'd never ridden them into this kind of heat before and I quickly found their limit.  The ride down in mid-twenties was great, no problems at all.  The ride back in the thirties is where I found the pants couldn't get the heat out fast enough.  The heat from the bike didn't help.  Behind the padding and solid bits you start to drip and it's downhill from there.

I ended up with heat rash on my butt in no small part due to the pants.  Wearing jeans on the last day was the only way out.  Great pants up to 30°C, after that you begin to look at all the Americans riding around in shorts and wish you could too.

I thought these were the super-ventilated riding pants, so I'm not sure where to go from here.

Bell's Revolver Evo helmet did lid duty on this trip.  Since removing the snaps at the temples it has become all-day comfortable as opposed to agonizingly painful.  The flip up visor works like a charm.  I even left it up on short rides for an open view and some wind in the face.

My only issue is with the flip down sun-visor.  In bright sunlight it isn't tinted enough.  Other than that this helmet breathes well, looks great and is very quiet for a flip up helmet.  It's still not cool that I had to cut out snaps to make it work, but hey, you do what'cha gotta do.

Last but not least was the mighty Concours.  The $800 Kawasaki did the business beautifully.  Averaging in the high 40s MPG, it started on the first touch every time, thundered along never-ending interstates and rolled slowly through a hot night in Motorcycles on Meridian without using so much as a drop of oil (that pic in the link is the oil level when I returned - it had barely moved).

I discovered that with a 250lb rider, 120lb passenger, loaded panniers and top-box the bike could do the ton with ease.  Even when making time on the interstates it still returned better gas mileage than a Prius and never dropped below the high 40s MPG... and all this through four carburetors!

Fully loaded with 350lbs of people
on it, it'll still hit a ton easily.

The heat that comes off the engine is an issue, especially on hot days, but the temperature gauge was rock-steady in the lower half of the range.  The radiated heat from the engine makes for hot legs on an already hot day, which isn't much fun.  I discovered that if I ride with my feet on the outside of the pegs I'd get fresh air and all was good.

The other issue was the seat.  Eight hour days in the saddle gives you real insight into whether or not a seat works, and the Concours seat was agony after about half an hour.  At 45 minutes my ass hurt so much my shoulder started aching, but by an hour fifteen I had become numb.  On the way back Cycle Gear had a gel seat pad for forty bucks, so I gave it a whirl.  The above mentioned heat rash was the result.  The gel seat didn't have me squirming around so much, but the heat buildup was so intense it wounded me.  I'm left wondering just how magical an Air Hawk is (I couldn't find one while in Indianapolis).

Back in the garage with almost
29k miles on it - the Concours is a
super star.

The Concours is such a capable bike over long distances that I want to conquer the seat problem.  While I was away the astonishingly cheap seat cover from ebay arrived.  It has ribbing and additional padding so I hope it solves the problem.  If it doesn't, I may have to start working toward that disco Corbin seat.

BTW: that's 93.6¢ a
litre in Canada for
super unleaded...not
the buck twenty
you're paying here

If I found myself heading down to next year's Indianapolis MotoGP (assuming they don't cancel it and there are rumours of just that), I hope to do it in Knox Cross Body armour, some kind of air pants that don't exist and all while sitting on a Corbin seat.  Other than trying to duct the Concours' heat away from my legs and addressing the seat there is little else I'd do with this wonderful machine.

As I continue to try new gear bits and pieces stick and become indispensable.  Those Alpinestars boots, S&S gloves and Bell helmet have covered the extremities, and the vast majority of the Concours is brilliant, it's just the booty and the bod that I need to work on for a cooler and more enduring ride south next time (and I'm hoping there is a next time!).

Chasing down a clutch slave cylinder leak in a 2010 Kawasaki Concours C14

Motorbikes are like sharks, they die if they aren't in motion.  There is a funny moment in the Bakuon!! motorcycle anime where the old motorcycle store owner talks about how lazy motorcycles are since they just lay down if no one is holding them up.  So bikes are sharks that need people to keep them in motion.

The latest project bike is a fantastically complicated machine.  I've rebuilt fabulously complex sets-of-four-carburetors and chased down other complex repairs in motorcycles, but I suspect this 2010 Kawasaki Concours C14/GTR1400 has single systems, like its motorized windshield, that are more complicated than whole previous bikes I've worked on; this bike a complex mix of mechanical and digital engineering, and it's been sitting for several years when its previous owner could no longer give it the urge to stay in motion.

On the Concours the clutch slave cylinder uses brake fluid to hydraulically assist the clutch, giving you an even, assisted clutch action.  I went for a long ride on the Tiger yesterday and I'm not ride-fit yet as it's still early in the season.  The grip muscles in my left hand were singing by the end of the ride and I was getting lazy with gear changes as a result.  A hydraulically assisted clutch would make long rides more comfortable, so there are benefits to this complexity.

This is the first bike I've owned that isn't a simple mechanical clutch that uses a cable tied to the transmission.  On the C14 the clutch is on the lower right of the motor and the clutch and the slave cylinder it feeds is on the left.  When you apply the clutch the brake fluid in the hydraulic system pushes a (very) long rod that runs right through the bottom of the motor over to the clutch.  That long rod is coated in molybdenum disulfide grease and connects the hydraulic clutch slave system to the clutch itself over on the other side of the motor.

One of the parts diagram blowouts I was looking at called the 92026a a gasket, so I purchased that thinking that's where the leak was, but this isn't a gasket, it's a hard spacer.  When you attach the clutch slave cylinder housing to the bottom left side (left and right is with the rider on the bike), this spacer isn't a seal and the bolts holding it on need locktite to keep them in place because they're only held on with 97 inch-pounds of torgue (which is little more than my hand tight).  You don't want to crank on the bolts, you want to sympathetically install the housing to spec so the spacer isn't squashed and can do its job.

When I got into the clutch housing it was pretty grotty.  This stationary shark has lots of little rubber bits in it that don't sit well, and the 92049 rubber piston seal has perished in the years the bike sat.  The brake fluid that the clutch hydraulic system uses was leaking past the seal into the chamber with the rod in it, which is usually dry, and then leaking around the spacer.

In retrospect I should have looked over the shop manual more closely and wrapped my head around how the system works before I rushed in to buy a spacer I didn't need.  I've contacted Two-Wheel Motorsport to get the seal.  They were very quick with a 2-day turnaround (impressive during Ontario's third-wave of Covid) and offer curb-side pickup, so I'm hoping by mid-week I'll have what I need to rebuild the clutch slave cylinder and get the clutch back to spec.

I'm now wondering if this leaking seal was the reason why it was such a pain in the ass to bleed last time - that certainly makes sense.

That clutch cylinder (gold) slides out and the seal and spring are easily accessed.  You need to replace the seal if you remove the cylinder so make sure you've got one on hand if you're going to pop the cylinder out.

It's also recommended that you apply some rubber grease to the seal as you're installing it.  This stuff looks like it'll do the trick and is formulated specifically for a tough life immersed in brake fluid.

Interestingly, replacing this seal isn't in the clutch section of the shop manual but rather in the maintenance section, which suggests that these seals have a limited life-span and are a regular maintenance item.  If you own a C14 you're probably going to be doing these at some point, especially if the bike sits for any time or you're not a regularly clutch fluid maintainer.

NOTES

Upper bleeder is 8mm, lower is 10mm.

SPEED BLEEDER parts listed from Murphs:

part:  SB8125# thread: M8 X 1.25 length: 1.10, (27.99)

part:  SB8125L # thread: M8 X 1.25 length: 1.28, (32.54)

Online resources for Concours Speed Bleeders

Murph's Kits - but they are very US focused  *5 each PN SB8125L, and 2 each PN SB8125*

Dennis Kirk:  gives lots of technical details

FOLLOWUP

The installation of the seal is very straightforward.  You can slide the cylinder out by hand and then remove the seal, which sits in a depression, very easily.  The new one was a snugger fit when sliding it back in, which is probably why the old one was leaking.  I coated the seal in this brake lubricant, which helped it slide in.  Pushing evenly with the heel of my hand helped seat it straight.  I also lubed up the rod that runs through the motor to the clutch with this moly grease.

The whole process took about 10 minutes and no more leaks.  The clutch bled much more quickly and easily without the leak and the clutch feel is excellent now.

Getting the fairing back on required some fiddling as the previous owner's drop had bent the metal piece it attaches to and I'd fixed the cracks in the fairing so they all lined up true now.  I ended up heating it up and bending it back to its usual position and it all went together.  The bike's now ready for a safety but I'm having trouble getting a response from Lloyd, my usual go-to local mechanic.  Hopefully I can get the paperwork in order and get it on the road next week.