Topic: Terry's cheap-arse 1969 CB750K0 restification..............

[Terry in Australia]

Bigger garage too many bikes mate. Just thinking, I have a set of CycleX Ist over pistons and rings etc if you think you need em rather than reboring out to 65mil. They have about 2500Ks on em, would be perfect for you.

Ha ha, you're a legend Nic! I'll check mine first, I do have my own Repco boring bar in my garage but the bores looked really good and another member sold me some NOS K0 rings a year or two ago, so if mine are good, I won't bore them, I'll just re-ring it. Cheers, Terry.

[Nic]

Geez, a man with his own boring bar, gotta love that, that there borin' can get mighty expensive.

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah I "inherited" it from my cousin, he had it in his Suzuki dealership and kept it for his workshop but I think he got sick of me bringing my barrels down to his place to rebore, so he gave it to me. (he's a top bloke) Oversize rebores are fine as it'll only do a max of .020" cuts in each pass, and I prefer to do .010" max per pass so as not to overwork it, so a 4mm increase to 836cc is an all day job. It is a cool little machine though! Cheers, Terry.

[Nic]

You make me sick 

[Terry in Australia]

Do you like machinery Nic? I've got a very nice Aussie made drill press and a Brobo saw I need to get rid of to make some space? I can't help myself, I love machinery..........

[Nic]

Well mate, until the chiki chows started making everything I was lucky to afford an elect drill. I've got quite a few items now but it's never enough, I'm on my 2nd cheap arse $100 Supercheap drill press, it does most of what I need it for, a nice metal lathe is something I'd like but will probably never get.
As for the boring bar, well I have a "mate" who has a bike shop, he works alone and he has #$%*loads or machinery. When I got the kwaka bored, it needed resleaving, then boring and skimming, mate's rates for that came to $750, he did a nice job though, he also prefers to cut less as he get's a better cut. I've known him since the 70's when we both worked at different bike shops. I quit the mechanicing game and went a different direction while he has stayed the path to this day, good on him too, his shop has everything you need.

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah mate, I've got a lathe and Mill, TIG/MIG/ARC/Oxy welders, big compressor, blah blah blah, I just love machines, the trouble is they're encroaching on my bike space! Cheers, Terry.

[Nic]

I think you should move back to Canberra n bring all your stuff this time.

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, well I absolutely loved my 18 months in Canberra mate, or maybe I just loved the extra 1100 bucks per week my employer gave me in travel allowances? I could have really used a house with a garage rather than my tiny apartment atop a guys double garage, where I could either park two of my bikes or my car, but not both. Still, poverty aside, I'm enjoying being home with all my toys.

So today my world fell apart. My new manager rang and told me that even though I'm "off task" (sitting on the bench and getting paid for it) I have to now travel into the company HQ every day! Fark! Well that blew 5/7th of my spare time, so rather than keep mucking about cleaning the rust and paint off my K0 frame, I dropped it around to the abrasive blasters to get all that stuff ripped off, so I can just do the repairs and get on with the resto. (rusto?)

Also, my long suffering Seth Efrikan mate Thor has been waiting for me to pull out a set of K1 gauges and take some pics as his mate needs them, so when I was cleaning up (cleaning up consists of just moving my junk from one dark corner of the Tardis to another) I found a good working speedo and tach, and some repro faces for him. I need to start raising some cash for Nic's pipes, so if he doesn't want them, they'll be on Ebay soon! Cheers, Terry.




 

[PeWe]

You do the right thing Terry, original and close to it is better on a bike like yours. Patina will work fine and might increase the value . A not hp modified engine will be something new for you, right?   

[Nic]

If those gauges work properly, haha, what chance of that, I'd leave the old faces on them, I found out the hard way that the new repro faces are a bit funny at night, I don't remember exactly how or what is funny about them, oh yeah now I remember, the guts under them seems to shadow through the faces.
I've had a lot of dramas with my K2 gauges, at first the speedo wouldn't do more than 120kph and the tacho needle was all over the place, I bought some damping fluid and after I re damped them they worked like a charm, then after a while they started dancing again, I sent em off to a bloke in Qld who fleeced me for $750, I told him all I wanted was the speedo to tell the truth and the tacho needle to be steady, I got em back, the tacho was all over the place, I sent em both back, he sends em back saying he has a video of them working perfectly but I never see it, the tacho is still all over the place after a few Ks of warming up? and says 5 grand at 100kph which should be 4 grand, the speedo is back to not wanting to go over 120kph.
 I ended up buying speedhut gps speedo and elect tacho, they are superb.
As much as I do love the old gauges, it's infuriating to not have them work properly n I'm not risking sending them over to 750 faces to see if they can make em work right.
Will be putting these on the Z900 one day as well.

[Terry in Australia]

You do the right thing Terry, original and close to it is better on a bike like yours. Patina will work fine and might increase the value . A not hp modified engine will be something new for you, right?   

Ha ha, yeah, I enjoyed hotting up CB750's Pewe, but for the same amount of money that I spent on cams, carbs, headwork etc, I could have just bought a good used modern bike and ridden it when I wanted to go fast? Anyway, this one will be stock.

[Nic]

You do the right thing Terry, original and close to it is better on a bike like yours. Patina will work fine and might increase the value . A not hp modified engine will be something new for you, right?   

Ha ha, yeah, I enjoyed hotting up CB750's Pewe, but for the same amount of money that I spent on cams, carbs, headwork etc, I could have just bought a good used modern bike and ridden it when I wanted to go fast? Anyway, this one will be stock.

Ain't that the truth.

[Terry in Australia]

If those gauges work properly, haha, what chance of that, I'd leave the old faces on them, I found out the hard way that the new repro faces are a bit funny at night, I don't remember exactly how or what is funny about them, oh yeah now I remember, the guts under them seems to shadow through the faces.
I've had a lot of dramas with my K2 gauges, at first the speedo wouldn't do more than 120kph and the tacho needle was all over the place, I bought some damping fluid and after I re damped them they worked like a charm, then after a while they started dancing again, I sent em off to a bloke in Qld who fleeced me for $750, I told him all I wanted was the speedo to tell the truth and the tacho needle to be steady, I got em back, the tacho was all over the place, I sent em both back, he sends em back saying he has a video of them working perfectly but I never see it, the tacho is still all over the place after a few Ks of warming up? and says 5 grand at 100kph which should be 4 grand, the speedo is back to not wanting to go over 120kph.
 I ended up buying speedhut gps speedo and elect tacho, they are superb.
As much as I do love the old gauges, it's infuriating to not have them work properly n I'm not risking sending them over to 750 faces to see if they can make em work right.
Will be putting these on the Z900 one day as well.

They look good Nic, well done. Marcel (750 faces) does a brilliant job, he's a member here, he started his business after we all told him he had the wrong gauges on his 1970 K0. (had K1 gauges)

He was gutted, his bike was a 1 owner, he bought it from the first owner, blah blah blah, anyway, he bought some old K0 gauges and restored them, and they looked fantastic. We found out later that his bike was one of only 100 or so very rare "Transition" bikes that left the factory with K1 gauges, oops.................

Anyway, I tested these ones with a speedo cable connected to my drill and they work and the needles are steady, so that's about all you can hope for after 46 years? Cheers, Terry.

[Terry in Australia]

Well time waits for no man, so today I decided I'd have a crack at repairing some busted fins on the K0 cylinder block. Billy Bob, or Peggy Sue, or whatever the redneck arsehole's name was who last pulled apart/re-assembled this engine was not just incompetent, he was probably on crack. How many of you guys think it's fine to run an engine with no rings at all on one piston, and only 1 or 2 on the others? Fcuk............



He'd also used a hammer and chisel/screwdriver to separate the cylinder block from the head, and the again from the crankcase, as witnessed by the gouges in the gasket surfaces adjacent the busted fins. I'm guessing that he busted the fins when he missed his chisel and whaled into the fins with his hammer. both of the dowels were screwed as well, of course. Hopefully he's slowly roasting in the pits of hell for his crimes against CB750's...........





Anyhoo, I am the answer to my K0's prayers to be allowed to once again roam the highways and byways of Oz, it's new adopted home. Now I've never attempted to repair busted fins, well, except one time when I busted a small piece of one off my Suzy GS1000S and I repaired it with some epoxy. K0's deserve more than epoxy, so I came up with a plan.

I have several cylinder blocks in my garage, some with fin damage. I grabbed an F2 block that I'd previously chopped in half for a better fit in my boring bar. I was trying to work out the best way to remove a fin without making a hash of it, so I decided to drill multiple 2mm holes on the edge of the fin, then tapped through the holes with a thin piece of sharpened steel.



Then I just ground the piece of fin to fit the gap.



I then used my el-cheapo MIG with the spool gun I bought a few years ago to weld it in. I really need to get some laser eye surgery, I am so sick of trying to see thru my multi-focals while wearing an auto-darkening helmet, what a PITA! Anyway, I poured enough molten alloy in to do the job, then ground it nice and flat again.





A little final detailing and some paint, and it should be good. The cold weather looks like it's set in, which pisses me off, and by the time I get home from work it's already dark, so my next exciting episode probably won't be until next weekend, but rest assured, it's gonna happen. I should have the frame back from the blasters by then, so I might do some frame repairs. Cheers, Terry.


 

[Nic]

Good Jarb buddy.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks mate! For a first attempt I'm pretty happy.

[Nic]

I reckon so.

[Stev-o]

Yeah, good job.  Can I send you my K4 case, it's got a tiny little hole that could use a little welding.

[iFart]

Cold weather in Australia? Does that equate to something like 70 degrees Fahrenheit?

 

Looking good Terry; props on the fin repair, that looks great! Quite ingenious thinking. You've inspired me to learn how to weld. My buddy told me it'd be tough/near impossible to weld aluminum so I did an epoxy job on an old bike as well.

My current block has a broken fin in the exact same location. Now I need to find a fin donor.

Keep up the great work!

[Tintop]

subscribed

[martin99]

Hey Terry, I think the PO of your bike might be related to the PO of mine?

Great work mate, there's been a few times recently when I wished I could weld, I should really get the father in law to teach me before he karks it...

[BobbyR]

Excellent work on that fin!

[Terry in Australia]

Hey thanks guys, much appreciated! I'd hate to be put on a pedestal re: my welding skills, I am seriously sh1t at welding alloy, but that little Chinese MIG that I only paid a few hundred bucks for, that came with a spool gun (vital for MIG welding alloys) is bloody fantastic.

Seriously, it's just point and shoot, and you get really good penetration with zero burn through. A really good welder with a couple of thousand bucks worth of TIG equipment would have done a much neater job, but this will do me. Cheers, Terry.

[Terry in Australia]

Well I rang the blasters and my frame was done, so I drove over and picked it up. For 90 bucks, it'll save me a lot of work.



If anyone ever tells me that my welds are sh1t, I'll just show them how good "Professionals" did it "back in the day".





Still, it's an early one, so I suppose they got better as time went by.



Now I need to do some repairs before painting it, but I had one blasted a few years ago and left it too long, so had to get it blasted again. As the colder weather is now upon us, I took advantage of the weak sunshine today to hit it with some black etch primer to seal it, while not impacting the need to cut and weld on it.



My little engine crane is ideal for lifting it to do the underside.



Then I lifted it from the other end to make sure I coated all surfaces.



Then I decided that it was pub time, so put it away in the Tardis. Cheers, Terry.