Untidy Wiring? Recovering Could Be The Answer.

You can put the insulation tape away too!
It maybe considered pedantic, considering the rest of the bike at the moment, but I didn't like the white, heat resistant (?) sheathing on the wiring from the signal generator. It was torn in places, fraying and looked scruffy - not really the look I was going for (for the wiring at least).
So, with a little bit of looking around on the dock of the eBay, I found some Techflex. A plastic braided sleeve which expands when you push it together so that you can get it over various looms, hoses or cables etc. When it goes back to its original length, it tightens back up and looks great. Worth a shot of anyone's money I thought.

Here's the old covering looking a bit dilapidated. I'd cleaned it up as best I could, but some things have their limits.

Refitting HT Leads Into Nippon Denso Coils.

Misfire in the Wet? Weak Spark?
Sat under the tank, they tend to get forgotten. But the leads that take the all important spark to the plugs need to be fully-insulated. If moisture gets in where the coil makes contact with the copper-cored plug lead, your 40,000 volts will probably make its way down the side to earth, rather than putting a spark across your plug electrodes. Why? Because it's lazy and wants the easy path. Wouldn't we all?
If you've ever touched a distributor cap, or lead, on an engine with a misfire, you might have felt the same sort of kick. It's easier to find a path to earth through you, than fire a spark across two metal points that are 0.75mm or more apart, especially in a cylinder containing high pressure air/fuel mixture.
The same can be said for the other end where your plug caps are. The rubber sealing boots are falling apart on the GSX's caps, so I'm putting new NGK's on it. For the price of them, it's not worth taking chances.

So what's that got to do with the price of fish?
Well, the original retaining clips for the plug leads had long since made for the hills. When the bike came to me the HT leads were hanging in by the fact that they were completely rigid and couldn't move, and a bit of good luck thrown in. Don't get me wrong, the bike ran fine, but it would have been different in rain.

Later coils did away with the clips altogether, and came factory sealed with a resin of some sort. As much as I would like them to go back together as Mr Denso wanted, without new clips, I'm going to have to seal them in semi-permanently too.

The Mighty GSX250... Runs!

Considering the state of it, that's pretty impressive. 
With water ingress obvious - the carb tops have almost rusted through, the exhaust pipes have rotted out, and the engine is severely corroded, I wasn't expecting too much from the little twin. The inlet rubbers had come away from the alloy plates that mount to the head, which made it a little hard to get it running.
But today I decided to check the compression to get some idea on the internals, it wasn't pretty. 50psi was about as good as it got. That's why, in my opinion, it's better to get an engine running before strip down, but each to their own.  Once it's running, it'll clear out a lot of the crap hanging round inside (and there was a lot of rubbish in the ports!). It puts pressure on the prison rings, which start to scrape the bores properly. Fuel/air mixture going through helps to clean valve stems and seats. All of this should help the low compression and, if it runs, gives you some idea on the bottom end. If you pull apart an engine without having heard it, you'll probably end up replacing every component inside for peace of mind.

New Bits, Missing Bits And Dodgy Bits!

New parts are rolling in fast.
But some of the old bits seem to have done a bunk! I cleaned, painted (then scratched) a LH handlebar switch last week. Convinced it wasn't the one off this bike, and that it came in a box of Katana bits, I did it anyway. Why didn't I think it was off this GSX? The choke lever is snapped off on the Katana one.
I just went through all the pics I took of the bike and, sure enough, the choke lever is intact on the original switch - but where the f#*k is it?

I had a massive clear-out and general tidy in the garage this weekend and went through all the boxes. The switch and clutch lever have definitely gone AWOL. Oh well, hopefully they'll turn up soon.

In the meantime, new acquisitions have been turning up while I had some spare cash. Needing new master cylinder reservoirs, I went looking on good old eBay. A nice, anodised black, aluminium cylindrical reservoir was found for the princely sum of $7.55 delivered. How could you possibly go wrong? 

Petrol Taps - Boring, But Somewhat Essential.

Just a tap, or is it?

The Beast of Turin.

Cars ain't my bag... but this thing is cool, old, and I love it! Just take a look at the restoration of this huge-engined Fiat S.76 racer. 

Massive 7.5" pistons equalling a twenty-eight litre displacement! I'll leave the rest of the story to the experts.

The Beast of Turin trailer from stefan marjoram on Vimeo.

You can read more about it, and see the engine rebuild pics, at The Old Motor or check out the guy who's been following it from the start, Stefan Marjoram.

Offroad Bike For Sale, Never Raced, Recently Rebuilt Engine, Blah 1981 Blah Honda Blah XR80A.

I can almost guarantee...
Every time you see a motocross, enduro, trail, or other off-road bike advertised for sale, it comes with those blanket statements. And what I've discovered over the years goes pretty much like this:

• It might not have been raced against other bikes, but it will have been thrashed mercilessly from day one by someone with no understanding of mechanical sympathy whatsoever.
• The "rebuilt engine" may indeed be completely accurate. It will have been stripped and inspected, parts priced up and found to be too expensive, engine subsequently rebuilt, with the old parts, and bike offered for sale as soon as an ad can be written. Now, if you're very lucky, but don't hold your breath, the "rebuilt engine" may come fitted with brand new gaskets. Ooh!
• The age of the bike, and monetary value to the owner, is uber important. It's the difference between regular oil changes and a clean, oiled air filter, and a black sludge, full of metallic particles, semi-circulating around the engine, with broken bits of dirty foam floating around the air box where an air filter used to live.

It is that simple, and brings me neatly into todays little job. The bike, an XR80A, isn't actually for sale; it was given to a mate to use but, before he does, wanted to get it looking good, and running properly. So, he says to me, "I'll clean and paint the rest, but the engine just needs a new head gasket, it's leaking oil". 

Yep, all that's wrong with it - so, whip the head off, replace the head gasket, check the bore while it's apart, just in case we want new rings etc. and slap it back together. It's a walk in the park!