Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I thought I would write occasionally about my old motorcycle restoration projects, mainly MZ, Jawa and CZ though there are others. I will also write about the places I go and visit while riding them and occasionally I may post stuff about industrial archeology too.

This blog is for my amusement and to record stuff I may otherwise forget in the future, but if anyone else likes it too, that would be a great bonus.

I frequently make mistakes in the workshop, and I will share them on here warts and all so I can learn from them and maybe you can too.

Sunday, 11 July 2010

It's not just old bikes which play up!

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. I had a short holiday (without motorcycles unfortunately) and then a great deal of other things to contend with.

My neighbour is also a bike fan, although his bikes are modern Kawasakis. He has been building up a four cylinder water cooled Z750 that he bought as a crashed write off with a view to touring Spain on it. All went well until he was getting it MOT tested and the engine dropped a valve wrecking the top end and bending a con rod.

Undeterred he then went and bought a Z1000, a right beast of a bike but then discovered top gear was whining. I would have left it until after the Spanish trip, but the engine was removed and sent off for repair. I got back off holiday mid evening on a Wednesday a couple of weeks back and discovered my neighbour very stressed indeed. The engine had been returned and refitted that day, but an exploratory run over the moors had produced a terrible oil leak. The trip to Spain started the following morning...

To cut a stressful tale down to a minimum, it turned out the engine rebuilder had not used a new oil seal for behind the final drive sprocket and it was a slack fit, oil pressure pushing it out of its housing. We ended up splitting the crankcases on the blown up 750 engine, carefully removing the oil seal off that and fitting it to the 1000 CC engine with some bearing fit to ensure it did not come out. By the time we had done and a test run had been successfully completed it was midnight. He set off the next day as planned and is due home tomorrow. I reckon it has been OK as he did not return home early!

All good character building stuff I guess.

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