Great holiday – not so great return – collected my “Gold” passivating, only to find they’d done it bright Zinc !!!
And not very good at that. Fortunately most of the bad parts are unseen, but I know they’re there ! OK – it was a freebie, but I’d rather have paid and had it Gold !
On the plus side I came to reassemble the fork legs and on removing the springs fully – found that the PO had replaced them and they are virtually new progressive units. On the minus side, the fork stanchion top nuts will need replacing. After slackening one off 1/2 a turn it just pinged off – virtually NO thread left on the alloy. That could have been fun riding along ! The fork leg stanchions are in good condition where they need to be – but are badly corroded on the upper part between the yokes. The PO had painted them Black [!]- my solution is to slip some bright polished alloy tube over them – simples ! There’s also a small amount of corrosion just below the bottom yoke, but that is covered by the fork gaitors and is not in any critical area.
Front wheel now assembled with disc and just awaiting final parts – speedo drive and covers.
I ordered a good s/h front caliper as mine is past saving – slightly different position of the bleed screw [ KZ650 /750 / 900 ], but as long as the rest matches up, I’m good to go.
Just given the engine a pre- jet wash soaking in Gunk – I’ve given up on all the promises of “Yea, I’ll do that for you” from the steam cleaners.Once it’s all cleaned up and painted, it can go down to my pal for the 40DCOE Weber manifold to be made up.
