Spotty and I had a great day in his garage today. Somehow Spring has reverted to winter this weekend, with the temps in the low 50's, and pissing down rain that was getting blown into his garage's main door, just where we like to stop and have a cigarette during a hard day's tinkering. Anyway, we finally opened my new Yamiya exhaust system for my K0, after it's sat in my garage for most of this year. It was a bit like a scene from "Raiders of the lost Ark" as we both caught our breath when we saw how well it was packed, and how shiny the pipes were!
K0 Saturday 14 September 2024 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
Installation was straight forward, but would probably have been easier if I had the correct bolts for the footpegs. The bolts are 14mm OD, and the OEM bolts are "Necked down" to 12mm threaded section that protrudes through the mount on each side of the frame, but all I had were 14mm bolts. As an experiment I'd actually used my super dooper magnetic heating coil to soften the threaded portion on one of the 5 bolts I bought from an Ebay seller, then used my lathe to cut the old thread off the bolt, then used a 12mm threading die to cut a new thread a few months ago and it worked fine, but when I tried it on another, either I hadn't heated it enough, or the die was fcuked, because the second one didn't work as well and was a biach to thread, so I gave up and just used two 14mm bolts, after Don told me the overall length of the OEM bolts.(thanks mate!)
I was absolutely stoked, after some of the guys here told me that the insides of their Yamiya pipes weren't coated, but mine were, so hopefully they won't rot out like the originals did. On top of that, I happily discovered that the box contained new K0 style heat shields, and all the fitting hardware that apparently usually aren't included, even the joiners and clamps at the rear of the mufflers. The only things it didn't have were the two rubber bump stops for the stands, but Spotty ratted through a box of various rubbers, and we found two that will do the job, so fitted them.
K0 Saturday 14 September 2024 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
We'd installed the ignition (Dyna S ripoff from China) and I'd thought that the white wire connected to the yellow wire, and the black wire connected to the blue wire, so had reconnected them a couple of weeks ago. When we went to start it, it was sparking with a beautiful fat blue spark (with my little jumper attached to the battery) but wouldn't start, so I swapped the above mentioned wires around, and it fired right up, at around 5000 RPM! Fcuk!
I'm guessing that one of the slides is hanging up. Spotty and I had (we thought) routed the 1 into 4 throttle cables really well, so wondered if the tank was pushing down on the cables, so we released the rear of the tank and propped it up above the cables, but it made no difference, so next time we work on it we'll check the cable from the handlebars to the carbs, and if we can't find anything, we'll remove the airbox and see if I've somehow installed one of the slides backwards.
Regardless, it was running on all four cylinders, and has more compression than any CB750 I've owned, even those with high comp big bore kits, and I had to go find my jump pack so I could crank the engine over. Good thing was that there are no apparent oil leaks, and the pipes look lovely. I'm really looking forwards to a nice warm day so I can clock up some miles on the old beast.
K0 Saturday 14 September 2024 2 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
K0 Saturday 14 September 20243 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
K0 Saturday 14 September 2024 4 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
K0 Saturday 14 September 2024 5 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
