Shiney Shiney’s
Well after the engine was completed, I ordered a few more bags of stainless bolts and an oil filter for it so we can get it back together fully, and looking pretty good.
New fuel hose ordered, however, this was the wrong diameter, so I had to reorder the correct size. A trip to John Oldfield Honda was also completed, not expecting him to everything I needed for the next part I was shocked to find he had it on the shelve. So I managed to pick up the Brake boots, Felt dust seal and rubber washer for the rear brake drum and also the metal rod bar I managed to lose somewhere and a new gear change rubber.
The engine was then mounted back into the frame (with a lot of swearing) and the oil cooler fitted back to the frame with new o-rings and bolts. The oil was topped up and the battery fitted to make sure we got oil pressure and it all sounded ok turning over. It was also to help the clutch, which being dry was sticking on making the bike hard to move.
Once this was all good it was time to move onto the next part.
Coming to a stop!
So I decided next to concentrate on the brakes, When my shed was broken into, it seems they stole the braided hose system I had on the bike previously. So I needed to order a completely new set of braided hoses. I did still have the original rubber hoses from the spares I had obtained, but I decided it would not fit into the ascetics of the bike.
This proved to be a lot more difficult than I first thought. With the hose from the master cylinder to the splitter being about 3 inches too short! It turns out the bars I had received with the spares were not the correct ones for the bike, so after all of the effort to clean them up and paint, I had to ditch them.
Lucky for me, when I had purchased the XJ600 they came with a set of Renthal MX bars. These didn’t suit the bike, so I removed and chucked behind the shed. After finding them hidden in the grass I cleaned, painted them black and fitted to the bike, and this time there were fine!
The fun started when we tried to bleed the brakes, You can see from the Pic to bleed I placed the lever to the bar and left it overnight.
They would just not bleed. I asked my mate to come over and have a look, after 2hrs or so we found that some of the seals were duff, and putting fairly liquid over the pistons showed we had a leak. We stripped them down, playing musical chairs with seals until we managed to bleed them ok and we had brakes! (For a night anyway)
The next day I came into the shed for some more work, and I tested the brakes again. This time the lever went straight to the bar for 2 pumps before firming up solid. I decided it must be the 34yr old master cylinder piston seals had seen better days. Heading over to wemoto I ordered one of their tourmax rebuild kits, a couple of rear light bulbs, some brake fluid and a sump plug drain plug, which I would later forget to fit!
This was fitted upon arrive after a little bit of swearing, and I left the lever tapped again to bleed. Finally, I had a brake that no longer had a lever to the bar! The rear brakes were a lot more of a simple affair, with just the rubber grommet, new rod barrel and felt dust washer to fit, then aligning the anti rotation bar and fixing a new split pin.