Pretty stoked the generator cover is only 10 bucks aud. Ordered one because mine was in a bad way.

Took it for a ride but fouled plug so couldn’t get it out of first gear. Oil pump over pumps synthetic.

Yamalube 2S. Just what the doctor ordered.

Well just messing around with cheap paint job options.

This is just cheap rattle cans.
1 coat rustoleum titanium silver
1 coat duplicolor metalcast
1 coat acrylic clear.

Some of the streaking is in the wood that I used to test the process. Will have a go on a piece of sanded primed metal now I think.

It’s not that far off what seems to be rusted faded original

the bike isn’t worth more than 50-80 bucks worth of paint I don’t think. In Australia it’ll cost a few hundred for me to spray them properly which I’m capable of doing but the cost is the issue

Just messing around think I’ll go with the burnt
Copper look though.

just rattling up a few parts, its not going to be perfect but im not doing the chrome etc so it will dress it up a notch to fit with the pre existing chrome and other trims that are original

I really should have guide coated the rear guard cos there are two dents right bang in the middle of the photo haha, I will probably just put a bit of filler on the few dents I missed and retop coat which easy enough with cans no cleaning spray guns haha

I ended up changing the color I will go with burnt copper from VHT i've seen it on another bike somewhere and it looked excellent

just smashing out a few jobs, sandblasted up the head and the barrel and sprayed the barrel. I will hone and re ring it as there is a fair bit of carbon on the piston skirt. certainly more than i've seen in a long while on any of my motorbikes so i'd say new rings is a good idea. I think I will end up doing all the crank seals and o rings to and repaint the crankcases

Just getting the rest of the bike primed. In the mean time I have got a bunch of parts in the vibratory tumbler just getting them cleaned up gonna get some ceramic media the walnut is good for cleaning and final polishing but not great at cutting. I also want to try a wet slurry so have ordered medium cut ceramic triangles and fine polish porcelain spheres with cutting compound powders from a lapidary

well the classic old kickstarter gear problem,

seems I can find kickstarts but not the kickstarter shafts... hmm kickstart not a big issue anyway cos its electric start but still I like to fix things..

I can see now what happened, when I got the bike it had no spark from the contact breaker points being replaced but installed wrong without the insulators so the breakers were permanently grounded out.
the person must have kicked the heck out of this thing, resulted in stripping the splines and also breaking the dog on the kickstarter gear. also broke the circlip on the kickstarter gear assembly but the other part of the circlip is nowhere to be found lol thats never good!

anyway so I'll source a new dog and maybe just have to use a woodruff or a thrubolt or something to lock the kickstarter to the shaft as it seems the shafts are nowhere to be found.

if anyone has any ideas let me know


tearing the motor down for new seals and O rings on the rotary valve plates/crank pin etc as i've always found theyre pretty bad, but given I found this I better split the cases clean out and inspect the gearbox properly for anymore suprises! the crank thankfully is in good nick, I have ordered new piston rings, should run nicely with a proper clean up, i'll repaint the cases and bake them while its stripped and then get the thing back together! the rotary valve mating faces are in perfect condition so it obviously stopped running before it was abused not the other way around!

Fired up my old nicke bath but a lot
Of copper contamination so the plate
Isn’t coming out great.

This was kinda a test so have ordered some
New nickel electrodes and will
Make a new solution. This part wasn’t perfectly polished either but nickel is good for how easy it is to get a really high quality plate.

Just dropped this part into electrolysis bath with sodium carbonate or washing soda for 5 mins to remove rust dirt and grime then pickled for 1 min in diluted hydrochloric acid then a quick dip in the nickel bath.

I had to rub off with steel wool the copper contamination then gave it a light buff.

It’s just good to have this cheap option cos platers these days have minimum charges for a run and they tend to be pretty pricey. Nickel also takes no time when compared with zinc so it’s tending to become my preferred treatment.

I use zinc on my historic bike restos and don’t chromate it so it tarnishes to a cadmium like appearance. Or a dull grey. You can do the same with nickel by running a higher current to give a rough plate but it’s just so good looking when it’s shiny ?

finished disassembling the L5T today
just checked the crank pins for runout 0.02mm radial and 0.01mm out of phase, conrod 1mm axial on the dial indicator, small end is good

heated the cases to 120c and dropped the bearings out, the crank bearings were fine but the gearbox were bad, may as well replace them all, it is a bit wasteful but I feell ike you always end up getting dirt in them when cleaning the cases you gotta replace them.

sprayed up the cases with some engine enamel and baked them, theres a few little areas where I didnt feather the old paint enough and got a little blister so I will wet sand with p600 and respray a final coat or two on them all to get them all really nice.

got my zinc plating bath set up and will redo my nickel bath so once this engine is back together I can start plating smalls and get the bike painting and start reassembling.

Nice work!!!