The Phoenix Project - Stolen, Recovered, and Rebuilding

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fateddy
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Some of you know the story of my bike theft last spring. Here's the original thread: http://www.xjrider.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=883

In short, my bike was stolen, I moved from Arkansas to Colorado, the bike was recovered over the summer, and the impound/wrecker yard shafted me for a bunch of money. Since then, I've moved to a house with a shop in which I can wrench. Over Christmas, I went back to Arkansas and brought the bike home and have started working on it. I'll detail my progress in this thread.

I'll also be asking for help from those of you that have worked through a lot of the problems that I'm about to be dealing with.

For a reminder, here's the way things used to be:
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After it was recovered, it looked like this:
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Now, I've got it in the shop, partially torn down, and started damage assessment. It's not impossible, but these guys did some really irritating things. A lot of stuff was taken off the bike to paint it. Apparently, somewhere in the process of removing stuff, they lost ALL THE HARDWARE. Seriously, my plastics were reattached with wire and sheet metal screws. The positive terminal on the battery was held in to the lead with a lagged wood screw. This whole project looks like it was inspired entirely by meth.

I was pretty sure it had been dropped, either at low speed or tipped over in a garage or truck or something. Cracked fairing left side, bent clutch lever, and a bunch of oil in the airbox confirmed this.
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The carbs actually look pretty clean inside. I don't think there were a lot of miles put on it.
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I'll be tearing these down, cleaning, and replacing jets and needles and gaskets and such as one of my first projects. This may be a good time to do a rejet if it hasn't been done already.

They painted everything except the tires and seat.
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They painted the black engine with more black. They painted the chainguard. They painted the effing exhaust. They painted the instrument cluster.
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The ignition switch was all stripped and the wires had been cut and bypassed. You can see one end in my hand and the other hanging above and behind the horn.
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The plugs were a little oily, but really not that bad.
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The auxiliary electricals are a nightmare.
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Turn signals are gone, wires are cut and stripped all over, and all the loose ends were balled up, spraypainted, ziptied, wrapped in electrical AND duck tape, and shoved behind the fork. At least they didn't mess with the main harness as far as I can tell.
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Why the hell would you disable all your lights on a stolen vehicle? Leave them alone for the love of God.

So here's my first hangup so far. How do I get the ignition switch off the triple clamp? The manual shows two screws holding the switch on from the bottom. As you can see in the picture below, there are these two recessed domed bolts with no way to unscrew them. I don't think they're just covers, because I scratched at them with needle nosed pliers, a knife, anything I could think of to pry them off. I don't want to resort to a left-handed drill bit just yet in case somebody knows the trick.
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Don't do meth, folks. I'm reminded of a talk I heard from a guy from the state crime lab. He said that all meth dens have three things in common. One of them is piles and piles of stolen electronics and stuff that's been taken apart and never put back together or reassembled poorly, because frickin tweakers get started on them and then forget how they got things apart.

More updates to come. For anybody that lives in the Denver to Fort Collins area, you're welcome to get your hands dirty on this project whenever you want.
Go soothingly on the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon.

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