Today I set about stripping it down. The first thing I noticed is that this bike is actually quite nice to work on, everything is easily accessible and has enough space around it to get your hands in.
After getting the rear fairings and the tank off the next thing I noticed was the black petrol that had obviously sat in there for quite a while. I think the tank might need a good clean and de-rust. After taking off the tank and the airbox I noticed the rather strange downward pointing carb arrangement and rather strange fuel line system.
After the carbs were off I put them to one side ready to be stripped down and cleaned out:
The previous owner said that the starter motor didn't work so I grabbed a spare car battery and bypassed the stator solenoid, sure enough the starter motor cranked the engine over. One less thing to buy!
The next step is to strip down the carbs and clean them out. I'll need to use an impact driver to remove the typical mikuni cheese head screw and then I can replace them with stainless steel screws.
So, so far there is a small list of things I'll need to buy to get the bike road legal:
* A front tyre
* A new front brake caliper
* A set of fork seals
* Some fork oil
* Maybe a stator solenoid
* Possibly a battery
* A speedo
* A full exhaust system (Since it doesn't have one at all. I might make one out of copper pipe for lulz)
Three days later
Today I started stripping the carbs down. All I can say is thank god for my impact driver and dremel! I don't know why Mikuni feel the need to use screws made of cheese but I've never come across a Mikuni carb with standard screws that have been easy to remove. All of the screws in these will be replaced with copper slipped stainless steel screws. I managed to remove 6 of the 16 screws without the need for the impact driver, of the remaining 10 I had to use the dremel to cut slots in two and then use the impact driver to remove them. Not my worst Mikuni experience but certainly not the best!
Once I got into the carbs I was surprised to find all but one jet blocked. Perhaps this is due to the douse of carb cleaner I gave them the other day but the jets seemed remarkably clean. The floats and float bowls on the other hand were a different story, they were all covered with what appeared to be limescale, suggesting that there has been waster sat in these float bowls for a while. After a bit of carb cleaner and a toothbrush I cleaned most of it off but I'll be putting the float bowls in an ultrasonic cleaner tomorrow. The carb bodies are incredibly dirty but I don't particularly want to split the bank to clean them unless I absolutely have to for some other reason.
Since the float bowls were in such a bad way it looks like I'll have to replace the float bowl gaskets, and whilst I'm there I may as well do the O-Rings. I've found one supplier of the gaskets in the USA but I can't seem to find any in the UK yet. I'm going to give yambits a ring tomorrow but if anybody knows of a supplier I'd appreciate their details.
Here are the carb photos, I only took photos after I'd done a bit of cleaning since I didn't want to get dirt on my phone
And finally my favorite carb cleaner:
I've also been trying to recover the battery that came on the bike, I don't hold out much hope but I had some spare acid lying around so I broke the seal, refilled it and stuck it on the optimate. It would be nice if it worked, would save me £20 on a new one!