Topic: Terry's new new redneck K0 "Special"..........

[RAFster122s]

Tank looks great Terry, she's coming back together nicely. I admire your persistence and ability to knock things out/get things done. Pet sitting and the dogs and chickens need let out early and dogs ate getting finnicky on food and had to switch to wet dog food for two of them... Owners don't return until 30th...

[PeWe]

Look great Terry!
The graphic is PITA to apply.
An experienced professional painter has written that the vinyl must be fresh and recommended an eBay seller in Spain. 1 year old vinyl is no go.

I had to cheat with a needle to make some holes to press out the air on my brown K2. Look good from 2 meter, a critical eye will see it from 1m.
That tank got plenty of rattlecan 2k clear and withstand overflow of fuel, tested.

[MauiK3]

Nice project, keep it coming

[RAFster122s]

Terry, what's the story on pizza boxes in the land down under...you guys are that conspiracy theory minded?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-whole-australian-state-shut-down-because-of-a-takeout-pizza-that-didnt-exist-11605873019

[Zunspec]

The gist of the story is a guy tested positive for Corvid and claimed he picked it up when he went to collect a Pizza.  In fact he was infected from a friend (who was a security guard at a quarantine hotel) and he actually worked at the Pizza place over several shifts.  A city that had virtually zero cases for over a month suddenly had a new outbreak and the result was they had to go back into lock-down.

If the guy had been honest I guess things would not have got out of hand.

Cheers  Geoff

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, it's moving along way quicker than I'd hoped when I started this project only last month. All going well, I'll be riding it in the next week or so.

Regarding the Covi-19 outbreak in Adelaide, I'm just happy it didn't happen here in Melbourne again, we still haven't had any new cases for over 2 weeks now, and I'm praying that the folks in Adelaide get it under control again soon. The common denominator in both states has been returning travellers from overseas in isolation at hotels (the one in Adelaide, "Peppers on Weymouth" is my favourite hotel in Adelaide and I try to stay there whenever I travel there on business) infecting someone who has outside access, who can spread the virus through the community. After the recent disaster in Victoria that infected 20,000 people and killed 800, I find it incredible that it could have been allowed to happen again in another  state, but there you go, stupid people are everywhere.

The lockdowns, while miserable, do work, and I'm astounded that other countries (well, yours specifically David) aren't trying harder to contain this terrible plague. I just saw that there were 190,000 new cases recorded in the US overnight, more than 1 in 30 Americans have the virus, and over 250,000 have died so far, but folks are still wandering around without taking any precautions, not even wearing masks? I know that the US has 15 times our population, but there seems to be a disproportionate percentage of idiots per square foot on your side of the pond? I hope you and all my SOHC4 friends stay safe, and treat everyone that you come into contact with like they have CV, and take the appropriate precautions.

OK, I need to build and install some forks on the K0, but I think I need to take the F2 for a ride first, I feel a need, a need for speed...........

[Terry in Australia]

Well I got sidetracked with some much needed maintenance on the mighty F2 today, so by the time I finished up it was starting to rain, so no ride, and I didn't get all that much done on the K0 either. I did give the tank another couple of coats of clear lacquer though, and am much happier with the result.

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 9f by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 9e by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

My tool tray that I bought from the US was more rust than metal, so I dropped it in my bucket of Phosphoric Acid and forgot about it until today.

K0 Monday 16 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I pulled it out, and was impressed that it was nice and clean again.

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 9c by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I gave it a coat of Rustoleum canyon satin black, my favourite rattle can paint, and it came up very well.

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 9d by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

By this stage I'd been working on bikes for over 4 hours, was hot and thirsty, so opened a delicious bottle of home made ginger beer. This helped me break thru "The Wall" and I decided to strip and clean the K0 forks. A week or so ago I tipped them upside down and sprayed some WD40 penetrant on the cap head bolts, so I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to pop them out with my little DeWalt rattle gun with a 6mm hex key bit.

Unlike the later forks, you need to remove the internal circlip above the fork seal, then use the fork stanchion like a slide hammer to pop the seal out, allowing the external bushes that are fixed to the stanchion with more circlips to come out, that's why you can't use later stanchions on older forks. If you've ever pulled a set of CB750 forks apart, you'll notice that these are quite different internally, especially the damper rods.

K0 F2 Saturday 21 Nov 2020 9g by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The sliders on the left are a set I bought from a seller in the US many years ago, and are in nicer condition than the ones that came with the frame I bought, so I think I'll clean them up and use them. They have some of the original finish on them, so I think I'll leave them as is, rather than polish them, I'm happy with a little patina.

Anyhoo, that was my day. Tomorrow I think I'll take the F2 for that ride that I didn't do today (well, I rode it around the block to check the brakes etc, but that was it) and when I get back I'll reassemble them and install them on the frame. More then.

[BPellerine]

you are lucky to have 2 sets of fork lowers among other things,I have to settle for k1 lowers right now,as the sandcasters think they are made of exotic metal ,haha,nive work terry

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

The tank looks great.

[RAFster122s]

You do nice paint work Terry. Too bad I am not in AU to learn from you how to do a paint job like that from spray cans...

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, I did say I was gonna build me some forks today, but after I came back from a wet 100 mile ride on the F2 I realised that I needed some triple trees to shove the forks into, so installed tapered roller bearings, and all new (or good used) hardware. The K0 rolling (less front wheel) chassis had a K0 speedo attached, as well as a K1 tach, but they were both in really poor condition.

I emailed Marcel (a member here) at CB750faces.com to see if he could restore some gauges for me, but I never received a reply, so I'm assuming he's closed up shop in Holland until CV-19 is over? Luckily I found a good matching used speedo here in Oz on Ebay from a guy I've dealt with before who assures me it's in good working condition, so I melted some more plastic and bought it.

K0 Ebay Speedo 22 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, I had a good original K0 tach that my mate Fred sold me years ago, so I dusted it off, and screwed it in place on the refurbished original K0's top triple, and tested it on the F2 to see if it actually worked.

The bottom triple was pretty bad, very rusty, and one of the steering lock lugs had been busted right off. I found a much nicer one in my garage of many treasures (thanks Eric) so using my Chinese bearing remover set, I pulled the old bottom tapered roller bearing (NSK, much nicer than that "All Balls" Chinese sh1t that you see everywhere now, and in perfect condition) and re-installed it on the much nicer bottom triple. I did forget to remove the steering lock, anyone here know how to remove it without the correct key? 

Anyway I'd degreased both bearings, cleaned them up, re-greased them with good Penrite Moly grease, and reassembled the top and bottom triples.

K0 F2 Sunday 22 Nov 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 F2 Sunday 22 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Tomorrow I need to either rebuild the forks, or bottle 28 litres of ginger beer. I'd rather rebuild the forks to be honest, a much more enjoyable task than doing the booze, but the truth is, I'm almost out of ginger beer, so I better do it. I did book a home delivery of a dozen bottles of Ginger Joe though, so if they turn up tomorrow, I won't need any booze for a few days so I can do the forks, install the (chrome, sadly) centre stand and the wheels, as I don't think that crappy Chinese trolley will take much more weight. That's OK, I'm looking forwards to it being a bike again, or maybe, in reality, for the first time.......... More tomorrow.  




 
 

[Terry in Australia]

Well it's Monday here in the land of Oz, and a miserable Monday it's been, with rain on and off for around 18 hours or so. Anyhoo, by around 3pm the sun came out briefly so I threw off the shackles of the working man, and sneaked out to the sheltered workshop to rebuild my forks. The new fork tubes looked very nice compared to the rusty 50 year old originals, so I was happy to have made the decision to buy new ones, rather than try to recycle the old.

K0 Monday 23 Nov 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Assembly is a lot trickier than on the later forks with 3 different bushes to install on the new tubes and 4 different types of circlips holding everything together. It didn't help that the tubes are ever so slightly different from the old ones, and I was scratching my head trying to understand how one particular circlip could possibly go on at all until I compared the forks to the old ones and realised that the old ones had some metal machined off the bottoms, but got around that issue by using some clips from my second set of K0 fork lowers, that conveniently came with all the spares. I had to make a special fork seal installer, because unlike late K2-F2 forks, you need to install the seals with the tubes in place. I'd chopped up a Kawasaki KZ1000 fork leg off the old drag bike as the PO had chopped all the brackets off, so I turned up a quick tool that I could evenly tap the seals back in with before reinstalling the circlips to hold everything in.

K0 Monday 23 Nov 2020 6 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, I finally got them together and assembled them without any oil in case I had some difficulty fitting them to the frame while it's sitting on the rickety chinese trolley, and I'm glad I did, as I had to remove the caps, pull the (dry) springs and compress the forks to install them into the triples/headlight ears. With a light spray of WD40 to get the tubes up through the rubbers and a bit of jiggling, I managed to get them assembled without doing any damage. I've just loosely assembled everything until I get the wheels on it so I can make sure they're not twisted between the triples, hopefully tomorrow.

K0 Monday 23 Nov 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

And I'll be happy to get it on it's wheels, my heart's been in my throat ever since I had the (less than brilliant) idea of using the trolley, so tonight the forks are taking some weight on the wooden block, and the trolley is supported at the rear with my big trolley jack. (not in the pic) It does look nice though........

K0 Monday 23 Nov 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

   

[grcamna2]

That looks good Terry:nothing like a new pair of tubes.
You've got another complete red CB750 parked behind the K0,which one is that ?

[RAFster122s]

Cannot even enjoy looking at them with the fork gaiters...
Looking really nice Terry.

[PeWe]

Cannot even enjoy looking at them with the fork gaiters...
Looking really nice Terry.

Like nice legs covered by too long skirt, right?

[BenelliSEI]

Terry..... looking good! The speed you move at makes the rest of us look lazy......

[RAFster122s]

Terry Marcel is still in business and doing things, send him another message and PM him on SOHC4. I had asking him about doing a custom face for a 550 speedo to match a 650 tach for the 650 cam going in cb550.
David

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, I’m really happy with the pace with which this build is moving along. Good to know Marcel is alive and well David, but I don’t need his services now that I have a good working speedo coming, and my tach works fine. I might get him to restore some spare K0 gauges down the track, but I’ve spent all my money and need to keep my few remaining bucks for Christmas, only a month away, incredibly, what a year it’s been!

Anyway I think I have pretty much everything I need now, and will have a heap of spares afterwards to sell and offset the cost somewhat. Really it hasn’t been that expensive, mainly because I was able to source a lot of the “unobtainium” parts from the seller in Queensland who let me have them so cheaply (by ridiculously expensive Aussie standards) or my owning a K0 would probably never happened.

I rang my insurance company to insure the K0 for $20K last week and it’s gonna cost me the princely sum of $8 per month, and if I crash it I get to keep the battered remains to rebuild. While I hope that never happens, I’m happy that I have the option.

[grcamna2]

Terry,did you say $8 a month ?!!  That seems very low 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Bill, because I have 14 vehicles insured with Shannons, I get the maximum discount, apparently? I forgot to answer your question, the red 750 in the background is my K2 bitsa with the blown gearbox.

 I must fix it before I start another project (my K1 build) so I can put some miles up on it. If I get a little time I might just drop the pan and see what falls out? Might make for some interesting discussion.....

[Terry in Australia]

Ooher, and speaking of guages, the speedo I bought on Sunday arrived today, woohoo! I know the seller, he's a good guy, and we're chatting on FB about doing some horse trading for parts we both need.

K0 Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

[grcamna2]

Terry,is that speedo in KPH ?

[Terry in Australia]

No Bill, in MPH. It could be from an American import, but I do remember Australian bikes with MPH speedo's back in the day. One of my early memories is sitting on a shiny new Kawasaki Z1 in the local Kawasaki dealer and staring, transfixed, at the 160 MPH speedo.

The Z1 was actually only good for maybe 135 MPH, but that number was startling to a 13 year old who's minibike (Yamaha GT50) was probably good for maybe 40 MPH? So anyway, KPH or MPH, it makes no bones to me, I can speak either language.........

[Terry in Australia]

Well it was a quiet day in the old salt mine today, so whenever I got a chance, I sneaked outside to do something K0-ish. I'd painted the side stand yesterday and today I could no longer bear the sight of the crusty, rusty chromed centre stand, so I gave it a really good clean with acetone, etch primed it, and hit it up with some rustoleum satin black.

The reason for concentrating on stands was that I feared that the chinese trolley was about to collapse under the weight of the K0. Anyhoo, I found some nice OEM Honda parts including the centre stand pivot and side stand bolt assembly, and some nice shiny springs etc.

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I installed the centre stand first, and was happy that whilst stretching the spring I didn't manage to pull the bike off the trolley. (just)

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The sidestand went on next, without issues.

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, I was able to somehow attach the front wheel without tipping the whole thing over, then lifted it up onto the centre stand. Now that it was relatively stable I shoved the rear wheel on. Yay!

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 6 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 e by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Yeah, I'll have to take both wheels off again to fit fenders and other gubbins, but at least I can sleep tonight with the knowledge that it won't go crashing over in the garage. I've tried to use as many OEM parts and original bits from the bike, but I had to manufacture a couple of stainless chain adjuster bolts, as the originals were pretty much buggared.

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I did have a surprising fail nonetheless. There were a pair of K0 tank badges that I found in a tub that someone had painted a pale yellow, so I stripped the old paint chemically, and took them back to anodised aluminium.

K0 Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I cleaned them up with acetone again, and sprayed them with black rustoleum.

K0 Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Once dry, I used some 320 grit dry paper on a block of aluminium, to remove the paint from the high spots, and it looked pretty good.

K0 Badge disaster Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I then had a wonderful idea to use some Rustoleum clear satin to keep the "polished" aluminium shiny through eternity. Disappointingly, the clear reacted to the black, and it immediately bubbled up. Spew.

K0 Badge disaster Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr 

OK, I can handle the occasional fail, so I hit it with some paint stripper, cleaned it all off again, and painted it before I retired for the evening.

K0 Badge disaster Tuesday 24 Nov 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Tomorrow (salt mine permitting) I'll rub off the high spots again, and leave as is, with no clear coat this time. As George W famously said, fool me once, shame on, er, fool me twice and well er, you shouldn't fool me, because that's not nice. Here's a pic of a cat.

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 a by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

This is Mister Puss. We don't know who owns him, but he's been living here for the last few weeks so we feed him, along with our other four cats. He's a friendly feller, and when I'm out working on the bike he wanders over and flops down beside me.

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 c by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyhoo, it's time for me to go take a shower, and hit the fart sack. More tomorrow.    

K0 Tuesday evening 24 Nov 2020 g by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

[Kelly E]

I had the same thing happen to me when doing my tank badges. If you barely dust them with the clear and let it dry and do it several times in a row you can get them clear coated to where you can lay on a final coat without the reaction. I think I did my badges three times before someone told me this trick.