Project NSR

 One really big giveaway that your bike is getting a bit old is when the forks start to get a bit flaky. You look at them thinking how naff they look but at the same time knowing how long and much of a pain in the ass it is going to be to restore them. After all its not going to cause a break down is it? Well I didn't buy the tarts handbag NSR for it to have furry forks so its time to get at them fork stanchions. This wasn't going to work well without being able to get the front end off of the ground and without any paddock stands to hand this wasn't going to be straight forward. I stuck some axle stands under the pegs, getting the back end up and leveling the bike off then  stuck a well padded hydraulic jack under the engine and lifted the front up. With her front wheel off the ground I removed the mudguard, brake calipers then the wheel to give me maximum access to the forks. Whilst I was there I checked the headrace bearing play and was pleased to find them notch fr...

The headstock was looking tatty and the mirror stems on my VFR were beginning to flake so seeing as the tape was still on the line from repainting the subframes I decided to do the same for black bits. I had already gone round the bike with a tin of Hammarite recoating some of the fairing brackets and the bar ends so there wasn't allot of bits that needed doing.  I removed the preload adjusters, headstock nut and head stock then looked around for more bits to paint. The bottom bracket of the headstock could have done with a paint but at the time I didn't have anything suitable to use as a stand so I could drop the front end off. This could wait for another day perhaps.   The brake reservoir cap is also metal so that came off and then my attention turned to the brake resevoir bracket. For some reason the previous owner had put a blue anodised after market bracket o this bike. These are far from expensive to replace but i knew the original was black so for the tim...

You know when you can't see something but you know it's there and you know its not quite right? Well that's how I felt about my NSR's subframes. They were far from ghastly but they were spotted with corrosion from where wiring looms had rubbed and heavy handed toolmanship had chipped away at the old paint. So having raided Halfords for some paints I took all of the subframes off of the bike. I have seen and liked the Tyga clock stay and front fairing subframe but I still decided to spray the originals. I have seen a forum post where someone managed to snap their Tyga clock stay during disassemble (sorry couldn't find a link), putting me off that a little and for the time being it was worth tidying up the original parts whilst I already had the paints out. The first job was to remove all of the corrosion and old paint. This I achieved with a couple of wire brush bits on the end of my drill and smoothed off with some wet and dry. With all of the parts off and ...

One of the nice bits of restoration is that not all of the jobs that need doing require you to spend hours scouring the internet for advice and parts. One of these jobs is surface finish restoration. The downside of surface finish restoration is it is time consuming, not very interesting and results in some serious "wankers cramp". It is however important and when finished quite rewarding. I elected to have a go at the left side rearset first, so went about removing, then disassembling it.  This rearset was not only corroded but had clearly been set up badly in the past, allowing the gear selector tie bar to rub against the hangar resulting in a deep gouge. So with needle files I smoothed this out then went through the grades of wet and dry from 100 to 8000 to make it look less ugly. There was no real need to go through all of the grades like that as I was going to have to do the whole hangar later but I wanted to see if this was worth keeping. New rear set...