With most of the mechanical issues all sorted out, it was time to look at the cosmetic aspect of things.
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Part 5 – Out of the frying pan and into the fire!
I parked the motorcycle in the garage and took a full assessment of the frame, the fairings and all the peripheral parts. There was an extra fairing that had been fabricated to cover a portion of the headlamps and make the face more aggressive. That however made the motorcycle look a tad bit smaller and hence it was to be deleted from the final look.
Most, if not all the fairings were scuffed here and there, with some deep gouges on some of the parts. The paint was fairly intact but because of the scratched and damaged areas, the paint had to be taken off fully. Further, a lot of the parts were grey in colour, including the fuel tank. This did not sit well with me since the RTO documents were specifying white. Hence, I decided that the entire motorcycle would be painted in pure white and then stickered red.
It was thus clear that the motorcycle needed full repainting. But before that could be done, there were a lot of other parts which needed attention.
First things first, with the condition the motorcycle engine was in it was only logical to look at the fuel system. I disassembled the fuel tank and my doubts were well placed. The filter on the fuel pump which was inside the fuel tank was completely blocked up and was supposed to be white but was dark brown in colour. Well, that was something to clean for another day.
Moving on, I remembered that the radiator had quite a lot of stones and other damage on the metal surface. This meant that there was a high possibility of those same stones attacking the front suspension, frame etc. So to clear my doubts, I started stripping down the entire frame. The handlebars and the switchgear came off after which I set about disassembling the triple clamp.
Removal of the triple clamp meant that I had to take the wheels off first. The front wheel put up quite a bit of a fight before the bolt came loose. It had to do with the fact that the bike was constantly ridden in less-than-ideal conditions for prolonged periods of time. Once the front wheel was off, the shock absorbers were taken out, finally giving access to the triple clamp which was promptly disassembled.
The shock absorber housings were fine however, the rods inside had a lot of deep scoring marks and deep wear marks at specific regions. It was a sign of bent rods that had to be replaced. The replacements were very expensive so we got a set of forks from a second-hand market in manageable quality to run by until budget permitted for a fresh set of forks. The housings were not compatible however and hence, we swapped the rods alone for which we had an insanely hard time getting them fixed because no shop had the tools for the R15 fork rods. Many garages and mechanics later, the rods were fixed, fresh oil was filled and the housings were cleaned up.
The housings had a black coating which was flaking off in most places so I used a strong paint remover to strip off all the paint and grime off the housings and scrubbed them well with steel wool. They were then wiped off dry before being cleaned again thoroughly with paint thinner. After that, I masked the seal and rod areas with tape and spray coated the fork housings with metallic gold paint. I changed the colour to make it complement the new paint scheme I had in mind.
Upon removal of the triple clamp, it was clear that the vehicle had been in at least one crash. The cone set was completely damaged, the bearing race was cracked and all the bearing balls were crushed and were mangled out of shape. It might not be possible to see the damage through the image here but some of the hardened steel balls were even showing signs of stress fractures!
The front end of the motorcycle was either dropped into potholes left and right without a care in the world or the bike had met with an accident. Either way, there was no option other than replacing the entire set.
I took a note of this catastrophe and then proceeded to gut the motorcycle down further. I removed the head lamp assembly and then proceeded to take out the wiring harness.
Since the wire ties were quite old, it was easy to take of the harness. As scary as removing the wires was, I knew that it had to be done because I could not afford to keep all the expensive electronics in the frame while working on cleaning the frame, taking care of the rusted areas etc.
To save myself the trouble of looking up complicated wiring diagrams during reassembly, I took pictures of confusing wire connections.
This is what the guts of a motorcycle looks when it’s all laid out on the floor.
Mr P joined me at this point and we set out to work on removing the accessory holders and the key electrical component holder.
Then we went to head to remove the foot rests, rear mudguard and finally the entire swingarm.
Once the disassembly was done, I quickly set about cleaning the cone set bearing. The balls were damaged and the bearing races had severe dent marks. The bottom bearing race could not be saved but that was not a cause for concern because the entire thing had to be replaced anyway. I simply cleaned the ball cages since the cages were not part of a cone set even if I were to purchase a new one.
The triple clamp stem was then cleaned with diesel to remove all the old grease which had solidified into a thick mess. The parts were then wiped and set aside.
Meanwhile, I realised that the crank access cap was too damaged to be used again and this particular part proved extremely difficult to source because not one shop had it available. We ended up getting it from an old parts dealer but regardless, it was a huge in convenience.
Then we turned our attention to the front brake caliper. The pistons were seized and were locked in too tight to be pulled out by caliper pliers. I followed a trick from a YouTube video, putting in small wrench sockets into the piston and using the Allen key to turn the piston and take it out. Even with such high leverage with the Allen key, it was extremely difficult to take the piston out because the seals were completely damaged.
The dust seals in the caliper were eroded by salt water which was to be expected considering that the bike was written in Chennai there by increasing the possibility of exposure to seaside air.
Even after removing the seals, the insides of the caliper were full of oil mixed with dirt and pieces of rubber.
The rear caliper was in exactly the same state so after taking that piston out as well, I replaced the piston seals. The rear caliper dust seal on the other hand were equal if not worse in terms of availability to the crank access cover. However, since the old one was not actually damaged or eroded, I just made do with the old seal.
With the calipers set, I took apart the rear master cylinder bit by bit. I did not bother with servicing the front because it was in good condition and there were no leaks either.
Every part was rusted, everything was seized and the smaller parts simply disintegrated during disassembly.
The split pins on the smaller studs became powder when pulling out and had to be poked out. I made a split pin out of high temper steel wire to replace it.
The parts were all cleaned with diesel, sanded and dried.
It’s quite amazing to see how many parts actually go into a motorcycle. Here, what we have laid out is just the rear master cylinder assembly and yet, so many parts come together to make it work.
And all those parts assembled back up, give us a clean, serviced rear master cylinder.
With most of the mechanical issues all sorted out, it was time to look at the cosmetic aspect of things. Like I mentioned above, the entire motorcycle was in need of a paintjob and I had already come too far into the build to just skip on aesthetics so I thought I might as well go all in. I arranged all the fairings and other parts to be painted in a line to get a sense of the volume I would be needing and did the calculations AKA eyeballing. With a rough estimate in mind, I went ahead and placed an order for the spray paints online. Meanwhile I also bought scrubbers and paint stripping liquid to remove the old paint
Until the paint arrived it was just waiting and prepping time. All that and the painting process will be up in the next part. Stay tuned, everyone! Until next time.
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