Post by Graham on Sept 7, 2010 23:17:06 GMT
I will keep this as short as possible as a lot of you will have already seen my progress or lack of it on the fz750.com forum over the last 12 months or more.
Bought on a whim back in the early part of 2009 for £380.00 I think looking a lot like this.
Having missed the opportunity to own an FZ back in the early 90's I was very pleased with myself for finally buying one. Bike was a runner & seemed fairly honest so I set about ruining it by fitting a TRX850 seat unit. This involved making a subframe inside the seat unit then welding it to the FZ frame but not before chopping the existing rear frame rails & bending everything up a bit.
Having already bought an FZR1000 Genesis rear arm & wheel I then looked at the front suspension & brakes & decided to fit my FZR600 forks which would mean i could use my R1 blue spot callipers too. Fitting the forks involved nothing more than changing the FZ steering stem/yokes for FZR1000 ones which are a direct fit so no messing about having stems pressed in/out. No pictures of this yet but i will takes some very soon.
Whilst pissing about with the front end I noticed that nearly all of my exhaust studs were missing & the holes for them had been drilled out very, very badly to the point where the head was pretty much scrap. One replacement engine later (thanks again Glenn) relieved of its cylinder head & I was back in business.
Or at least i thought I was back in business. Having cleaned all of the carbon deposits from the new head & all the valves I proceeded to lap them in. Having only worked with car engines & 2 stroke ones up to now I didn't realise how critical the valve clearances were on these bikes. Lapping the valves in meant that my clearances were now too small resulting in enough compression loss to stop my engine from firing up. New shims fitted & it fired straight up much to my delight. ;D
With much making of brackets I then got everything to fit on the new rear subframe that needed to be there.
This done I turned my attentions to the bodywork. White with blue being my favourite colour scheme for a bike I decided to try & stick to this. Seat unit was already white so I painted my tank to match & applied some hand cut vinyl stripes.
I have painted quite a lot of stuff over the years including one of my old vans but had never tried applying clear coat over vinyl. It was a moderate success but I couldn't get excited with the over all result somehow ? That said I carried on & painted my top fairing having repaired it with fibreglass filler & a lot of resin.
More vinly to compliment the tank stripes & I'm still not happy with it so I have decided to copy the original Yamaha colour scheme from an early FZ like this one.
I already have the tank which was an ebay bargain & the matching belly pan which was not.
Up until a few months ago i was at this stage with the bike.
Being a bit picky regards the paint job & the frame & having seen pictures of some of the stunning FZ's on this forum I decided to strip it back to bare frame & have it powder coated. This has took a week longer than it was supposed to but today I got the frame & engine rails back which have been done in what can only be described as a grey primer colour with metal flake in it ! In my defence I couldn't make up my mind on the frame colour & even went back to the coaters twice to change it ! On my last visit I was starting to get a bit embarrassed by it all so just chose a colour quickly. I'm sure it will grow on me & if it doesn't then.. . tough shit I suppose ! It's done now & I can afford to have it done again so metalic grey primer it is.
This one "should" show the flake in the grey ? & some of my dodgy welding !
Thank you for reading my "short" restoration thread so far ! ;D
Bought on a whim back in the early part of 2009 for £380.00 I think looking a lot like this.
Having missed the opportunity to own an FZ back in the early 90's I was very pleased with myself for finally buying one. Bike was a runner & seemed fairly honest so I set about ruining it by fitting a TRX850 seat unit. This involved making a subframe inside the seat unit then welding it to the FZ frame but not before chopping the existing rear frame rails & bending everything up a bit.
Having already bought an FZR1000 Genesis rear arm & wheel I then looked at the front suspension & brakes & decided to fit my FZR600 forks which would mean i could use my R1 blue spot callipers too. Fitting the forks involved nothing more than changing the FZ steering stem/yokes for FZR1000 ones which are a direct fit so no messing about having stems pressed in/out. No pictures of this yet but i will takes some very soon.
Whilst pissing about with the front end I noticed that nearly all of my exhaust studs were missing & the holes for them had been drilled out very, very badly to the point where the head was pretty much scrap. One replacement engine later (thanks again Glenn) relieved of its cylinder head & I was back in business.
Or at least i thought I was back in business. Having cleaned all of the carbon deposits from the new head & all the valves I proceeded to lap them in. Having only worked with car engines & 2 stroke ones up to now I didn't realise how critical the valve clearances were on these bikes. Lapping the valves in meant that my clearances were now too small resulting in enough compression loss to stop my engine from firing up. New shims fitted & it fired straight up much to my delight. ;D
With much making of brackets I then got everything to fit on the new rear subframe that needed to be there.
This done I turned my attentions to the bodywork. White with blue being my favourite colour scheme for a bike I decided to try & stick to this. Seat unit was already white so I painted my tank to match & applied some hand cut vinyl stripes.
I have painted quite a lot of stuff over the years including one of my old vans but had never tried applying clear coat over vinyl. It was a moderate success but I couldn't get excited with the over all result somehow ? That said I carried on & painted my top fairing having repaired it with fibreglass filler & a lot of resin.
More vinly to compliment the tank stripes & I'm still not happy with it so I have decided to copy the original Yamaha colour scheme from an early FZ like this one.
I already have the tank which was an ebay bargain & the matching belly pan which was not.
Up until a few months ago i was at this stage with the bike.
Being a bit picky regards the paint job & the frame & having seen pictures of some of the stunning FZ's on this forum I decided to strip it back to bare frame & have it powder coated. This has took a week longer than it was supposed to but today I got the frame & engine rails back which have been done in what can only be described as a grey primer colour with metal flake in it ! In my defence I couldn't make up my mind on the frame colour & even went back to the coaters twice to change it ! On my last visit I was starting to get a bit embarrassed by it all so just chose a colour quickly. I'm sure it will grow on me & if it doesn't then.. . tough shit I suppose ! It's done now & I can afford to have it done again so metalic grey primer it is.
This one "should" show the flake in the grey ? & some of my dodgy welding !
Thank you for reading my "short" restoration thread so far ! ;D