Putting Humpty together again

Though I’d take the opportunity (i.e. defrosting my toes on my heated blanket) to post a progress report on my KH125 rebuild project. I’m doing so from my phone, so please excuse me if the formatting turns out less than ideal.

Continuing my recent non-SQL-related post trend, here are some photos, and a bit of a brain dump (or running commentary), regarding a 1980 Kawasaki KH-125 A4 rebuild/refurb that I’m busy with.

At the beginning of the weekend I had the frame clean and ready for paint, so I coated it and a few other parts of the chassis with some high temperature epoxy based enamel. I didn’t particularly need the high temp properties of this paint, but have used it before and found it to be easy to use (i.e. gives a good finish) and very durable.

20120709-233910.jpg
20120709-233948.jpg

Fast forward through a bunch of waiting for paint to dry, then a second coat, then more waiting, then realizing that the outside temperature was too cold for the paint to cure properly and so putting the frame inside on the dining room table (yes, really). Earlier today that meant I had a nicely dried frame ready for some assembly.

20120709-234458.jpg

I had an old computer desk that I quickly converted into a make-shift bike stand, quite successfully actually. Once I’d set my work space up, things started coming together…

20120709-234655.jpg
20120709-234720.jpg
20120709-234737.jpg
20120709-234754.jpg

At around this time (11pm’ish), I realized that I couldn’t really feel my toes anymore, and a quick check of the thermometer confirmed a chilly 4 degrees inside my garage. So I called it quits in favour of a warm bed.

Overall I didn’t hit too many snags, although I do have a special hate reserved just for the o-rings on the swing arm bushings (they didn’t feel much like going back in), and I also wish I’d listened to my wife (don’t tell her I said that!) and more carefully labelled some of the nuts and screws I so hastily removed when stripping the bike down. Meh, I’m sure I’ll figure out where they all go eventually. And if any are left over, well we’ll just call it a weight saving exercise. 😉
The wife says that’s fine as long as I then ride the bike first. No faith…

So this is where I left her; pretty much all that’s left to do is mounting the rear wheel, brake, air box, and seat.

20120709-235844.jpg

All going well I’ll try firing her up tomorrow. I don’t hold out much hope though as I expect I’ll first be spending a fair amount of time swearing at fine tuning things like the carbs, oil pump, clutch setup, etc. Let’s hope nothing blows up, ‘ey?!

😉

1 thought on “Putting Humpty together again”

  1. Pingback: Combining different database technologies | David Curlewis

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Scroll to Top