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

[jaytee-nz]

Lookin good Terry.
Did you ever get a reply from Marcel re your gauges - I sent him an email 4 days ago and got nothing back ?

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks mate, nope, haven't received a reply, but David (RAF122S) says he's spoken to him recently, so not sure what's going on there? Anyway, don't need his services now, the K0 gauges I now have are good enough.

Well today was fine but not that warm for the 2nd day of summer, but that's OK, it's easier to work when you don't have sweat coming out of every pore. I decided to see if I could make up 4 half decent indicators from my pile of old parts. To continue with the "original" theme, I didn't use good new repro's, even though the Yamiya ones are as good as the originals, I reckon.

I had a pile of old Stanley indicators in various states of decomposition, but I managed to pull several apart to make 4 good ones, even with the original blue and orange bands on the wires to denote which sides they were to be mounted.

K0 Wednesday 2 Dec 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, after a couple of hours of mixing, matching and cleaning parts, I managed to put together 4 half decent blinkers and mounted them.

K0 Wednesday 2 Dec 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

For the front blinkers, I had to mount the headlight shell, and being concerned about marring the wonderful candy paint, I found some big rubber grommets and filleted them so that I had a rubber washer either side of the headlight bracket and between the bracket and headlight shell.

K0 Wednesday 2 Dec 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

And surprisingly, that was almost 5 hours worth of work. I started to mount the Dyna coils and decided to pack it in for the night, there's always tomorrow. Hopefully the last pieces of the puzzle will arrive tomorrow or Friday, so I can pretty much have it all together on the weekend. Fingers crossed.......

K0 Wednesday 2 Dec 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

[PeWe]

Is it really sweat leaking out thru every poor?
I would guess Ginger beer the fun ingredient used by you Terry.
Collect it, add some ethanol and call it Terry's Delight or similar!  
Expensive drops!!

[MauiK3]

Nice looking project
What tires did you mount.

[grcamna2]

Terry,is that a designated ground wire on your Right:rear turn signal? I'm glad you're not depending on 'Just' the frame contact. 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, the tyres are Stinko 712’s, they’re great, and like me, cheap. The rear indicators on the early 750’s all had a separate ground wire attached to each indicator body Bill, as the rear indicators are rubber mounted, and there are ground wires in the harness that run up to the headlight shell for the front indicators.

[BenelliSEI]

I used a set of he “Stinkos” on my last cb750F project. They certainly are cheap, but also worked well. The new owner has no complaints! Fantastic build, keep it up!

[RAFster122s]

Terry you should enjoy this article.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/food-drink/beer/probiotics-gut-benefits-belgian-beer

[grcamna2]

Terry you should enjoy this article.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/food-drink/beer/probiotics-gut-benefits-belgian-beer

Good little vid David,but I don't think Terry would benefit from it:my bet is, he will overindulge  I would like to do a few taste tests of some quality beer though 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, that's interesting, and I believe it to be true, because my bariatric surgeon and I did a deal, the only alcohol I'm allowed to drink is ginger beer, purely because ginger is so good for the gut. As gar as "Strong" beer goes, my home brewed ginger beer pisses all over normal beer, it's around 10-12% alcohol, as opposed to around 4-6% for a "strong" beer, so the litre or so I drink on a daily basis is not only very refreshing and a great sleeping aid, it's also medicine, woohoo!

Anyway, I was gonna post how I was pissed off with Oz Post today. Yesterday I messaged the seller of my much needed K0 parts if I could have them by the weekend, and he said he'd send them "Express Post", woohoo! This morning he messaged me to say Oz Post hadn't collected my stuff, so could I give him a call to sort something out?

I rang him straight away and I said, "how about I come pick it up at lunchtime?" and he said yep, come and get it. I've been buying lots of stuff off Eddie since I built the Bitsa K2 in 2017, and it was great to meet him, he's a top bloke. A rider like us, with some interesting bikes including an old Ducati 860, a turbo Suzy GS1000, a Harley, and some others.

We got talking about bikes and stuff, he had some used wheels to show me which I didn't take him up on, but then I saw a near complete engine, and we did a deal. Supposedly it has an 836 kit in it, I popped the cam cover off and all looks good, there are no busted fins, and tomorrow I'll drop the sump pan off and see if anything falls out. If it's all good I'll clean and prime the oil pump, throw an alternator and stator in it, and when I've finished the K0, I'll shove it into the K2 bitsa, to replace the engine with the blown gearbox.

So what started out as a piss off, ended up as a good day! Oh, and I dropped into the nut and bolt shop and picked up my Stanley Knife blades that I forgot to collect yesterday. Sweet.........

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 7 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr   

But that was just the start. I'd picked up some new parts as well, including a new grab handle:

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

And new rubber carb insulators:

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Only problem is, the K1-K6 insulators aren't a good fit on an early K0 head. Well, sort of. They fit, but they're thicker than K0 insulators, so the two outside insulators sit so hard up against the fins on the head that there's not room for the band clamp. Fcuk. Then I remembered that while those Chinese POS insulators weren't a good fit, the outside ones were OK, so I tried the two outside Chinese insulators and the two inside Honda OEM insulators, and it all worked. Thank God. I connected the aftermarket 1 into 4 cables and the OEM rubber boots that go over the cables, and ran it up to where I'll mount the other handlebars. (once I drill holes for the wires)

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I'd bought the drain hose kit from Yamiya and annoyingly, there wasn't enough hose, but I had enough (just) for 3 hoses, so ratted thru my tubs of used parts, and found another old hose that I was able to trim, clean up, and install. Fcuk you Yamiya, but anyway, it's all good now.

There was still a little daylight left around 7 pm, so I decided to hook up the Dyna coils. I cannibalised an old wiring loom for the correct colour wires, cleaned them up and crimped some connectors on them, installed new 8mm Bosch plug leads, and reinstalled the coils with new mounting hardware.

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

And that was about it, another 5 hours, and another step or two towards completion. I really do think I might make some noise (hopefully the right kind of noise) by Sunday, which would be good as I need to get a roadworthy inspection and get it registered before the DMV (VICROADS) closes down for Christmas. More tomorrow.

K0 Thursday 3 Dec 2020 6 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
     

[PeWe]

The earlier carb boots are shorter on the spigot.
I found out 2013 when using the new ones I bought 1989. They are shorter where fit the spigot on head.
So I had to order new.

[Terry in Australia]

That's correct Per, the spigots on the K0 heads are shorter than on K1-K6, I'm just hoping my airbox fits. I think it'll be fine, but fingers crossed....

[Terry in Australia]

OK, so yesterday I took the afternoon off to get a lot of the little things done, so I could make some noise today. I wired the new switches through the handlebars after drilling the bars and  grinding the holes nice and smooth so they don't cut any of the wires. It was a pain in the butt, but does look a lot neater than running them outside of the bars.

I installed the bars, hooked up the throttle and clutch cables, and connected the wiring. The K0 speedo and tacho didn't have usable idiot light wiring, so I ratted through my tub of gauges, and found a couple of nice-ish sets from some K1 gauges. I decided to use the old K0 tank off the bitsa, just in case the rebuilt MC dripped brake fluid on my shiny new tank, and i'll leave it on for the first couple of rides until I'm confidant I won't stuff it.

K0 Friday 4 Dec 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I also pinched the repro K0 seat off the bitsa, and installed a custom 70's "Drag Specialties" seat on the bitsa that I think I bought from someone here years ago. It actually felt pretty comfy, so now that I (hopefully) have another good engine to swap into the bitsa, it'll be a sweet ride.

K0 Bitsa Saturday 5 Dec 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K0 Bitsa Saturday 5 Dec 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr




I got most of the electrics working, after swapping out one starter solenoid and only have a problem with the left blinkers. I got sick of farting around with wiring, so decided to see if I could start it instead. It started on the second kick, and seems to be running well. The oil pressure lamp went off straight away, and I popped off one valve inspection covers and was happy to see oil spraying around inside.

I'm having an issue with the clutch not disengaging though. I pulled the clutch apart, replaced all the fibre plates with new ones, checked that none of the steels are warped, made sure that the back of the clutch hub's "splines" were engaged with the plates, that there were no notches worn in the slots of the hub where the plate "ears" slide back and forth, that the new springs were the correct length, as were the new bolts on the pressure plate, and that everything was properly assembled, but the baaastard still wouldn't disengage.

Then the weather turned to sh1t, so I'll take another look at it tomorrow, after I take one of the other bikes for a ride.

[BenelliSEI]

Wow....... not even two months from delivery date! Well done Terry!

[MauiK3]

Sounds great!

[PeWe]

You have some well sounding good looking old CB750's to ride, Terry !!
I hope your riding season will not be limited by a nasty virus.

[RAFster122s]

Very nice Terry! Hope you can sort out the clutch quickly. Cable is operating the clutch correctly?

I took a 140 mile ride yesterday...was pretty chilly at times, even with the warm gear I was wearing. Did a 25 mile ride the day before. Will take a ride tomorrow to church and back...that will be probably just under 80 miles. (I live 35 miles from the church I go to.  I should add some to the ride and make it a 100.

Time to get some chicken ready for dinner...
 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, I was pretty happy with how quickly it started (second kick!) and how well it idles considering I haven't done the ignition timing or even touched the carbs, so credit to the guy I bought them from in the US, he did a great job rebuilding them.

I might take a break from the K0 today and install that new (to me) engine in the Bitsa K2. I want to pull the clutch out of the bitsa engine for the K0 anyway, so instead of leaving it as an incomplete shell of a bike, I'll remove the clutch then pull the engine, swap the finned covers over (the new engine has the coolest finned clutch cover I've seen) and have 3 running, riding CB750's. Hopefully it won't rain on me..........    

[Terry in Australia]

Well it was miserable weather today, but I fixed the clutch, and it goes really well. It's very cold blooded so needs to warm up for a few minutes before I can take the choke right off, but once warmed up has heaps of grunt, feels "Peppier" than my F2, which I find very impressive. The clutch was fine, what the problem was, was that I left out a thick splined "washer" between the steel clutch basket and the alloy clutch hub.

As you know, I built this engine entirely from parts that I had lying around in my tubs of parts in my garage, and even though I've built several engines this way, I just missed the spacer. Once I installed it today and replaced the clutch, it was all good. I really enjoyed riding it for the first time up and down my driveway, and around the back yard.

The weather was sh1t, so as I couldn't do the K2 engine removal/install in the bitsa, I spent the miserable afternoon fixing the middle section of my airbox so I can install a filter and the sidecovers.  

[PeWe]

You do not have a 4-4 set in any of your boxes, shelves?
A special sound and look bringing memories back from the past!

[Terry in Australia]

No Per, genuine HM300's cost stupid money, and even Yamiya's repops are way too expensive. I was faced with the prospect of spending 600 bucks (AUD) on a quality stainless steel exhaust or close to 4000 bucks (with shipping and taxes) for a set of repro 4 into 4's that wouldn't be original anyway, so I was more than happy with the Delkevic.

I know that all the old farts like 4 into 4's, but when I was riding these bikes back in the day, we used to pull the OEM pipes off and throw them away, and install a 4 into 1, and back then, there wasn't a pipe available that was as nice as the Delkevic. For the price of a set of repop Yamiya 4 into 4's, I can buy a really nice bike. I know what I'd prefer.

[PeWe]

Yes, removing the stock HM341 was the first upgrade I did on my K6 a few months after purchase 1979.
The only 4-4 you had was mounted on the bike you sold not that long ago, Swamp rat bike, right?

It would be fine if Yamiya can reduce the price on their no numbers 4-4.

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah mate, the HM341’s were in pretty rough condition, but they did look nice. If I keep the K0 long enough I might buy a set of Yamiya’s “Lotus Root” pipes, but I might have another F2 arriving shortly, for half the price of a set of Yamiya’s 4 into 4’s.......

[PeWe]

I thought you might have a set somewhere.
I have a set of those Lotus Root pipes. They stand in a corner waiting to enter my K6 again one day
Not cheap.
They sit on my avatar bike. Nice deep sound but the Hindle 4-2-1 has a very nice sound too.

I have my K2 when I need the old fashioned 4-4 sound as HM300 copies Yamiya no numbers have with diffusers, no padding.

It's possible to get a really good newer bike for the money spent on a CB750 restomod.

[WhyNot2]

Dammit man.........nice work.....love reading your builds, and sagas.

When you come state side, look me up, I have a few issues I need your help with.......lol