Spent a few minutes in the shed this evening. Dismantled the exhaust,with the aid of a hacksaw to the clamp bolt. Not sure what to do with it, whether to clean it up and try to polish it or paint it. I lean towards the latter. I can hear rattly bits in the silencers, not… Read More »
Oscar and I began the tedious process of stripping paint, beginning with Nitromors. I realise that I’m probably wasting time and money on this, because I’m going to get it grit-blasted anyway, but it’s a good opportunity to do something together. Oscar was pretty careful, and I’d got him wearing safety glasses and gloves… Read More »
The frame is nearly ready to be stripped and coated. Just need to get the races out of the headstock and do some preliminary chemical stripping and rust removal/treating. Getting the races out could be a job. There’s a special tool from Kawasaki for doing it, but it’s silly money and in theory some kind… Read More »
With some advice from the folks on the LTD forum, I gave the top of the stem a sharp rap with a hammer and piece of wood and the stem dropped out, leaving the upper bearing behind, which then lifted out. Both races show some pitting, which looks bad but I can only just… Read More »
A bit more progress, removing various rubber bushes and mounts from the frame, the footpegs and beginning on the triple tree etc. Ran into some stuck fasteners on the helmet locks and the centre stand. Will have to try heat, having applied penetrating oil. Also made some progress on the steering head, but got stuck… Read More »
Spent half an hour down in the shed working on getting the loom off. In the process, finished removing last bits of the cooling system, remnants of the rear mudguard and the battery box. Bit concerned about how few of the connectors I’ve labelled, and really wishing I’d been more thorough. Was clearly a bit… Read More »
During my downtime, I’ve been obsessively reading the excellent forum dedicated to this bike at http://ltd454.proboards.com/ and found that the problems with the electrics I was having may have simply been a bad ignition switch. It’s also possible that the running issues were down to bad valve clearances, as this engine appears to like to… Read More »
A bit of a hiatus for the last few weeks as I have been in hospital and then laid up post-surgery after getting a nasty appendicitis. Took advantage of increased mobility and a bit of free time to do a little light wrenching (literally, most of the fasteners gave up without any real effort on… Read More »
After a hiatus, I took advantage of the dry weather and some time to crack on a bit further with tearing down the LTD. I’d got as far as removing the exhaust, but couldn’t actually release it from the bike due to a stuck fastener that I didn’t want to deal with in-situ, and the… Read More »
Oscar and I continued the process of dismantling the LTD this morning. First off, drained the cooling system and removed the radiator. Second, remove the exhaust. Overjoyed to find that the nuts on the stud came off easily (not snapping). Next was to begin the process of removing the engine. The Haynes manual has a… Read More »