Doing My Research - Finding Free Alternative Restoration Techniques

Researching free restoration tips

The theme of this blog is to do as much restoration and tuning as I can to the old Kawasaki Zephyr ZR750 as possible whilst spending as little money as I can get away with.

Obviously most of these ideas will transfer to most Japanese multis from Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda or Kawasaki, in fact virtually any motorcycle you can think of.

When restoring or tuning motorcycles in the past I would aim for perfection as much as possible, not so I could show the bikes ( I have never put my bikes in a show ) but for my own satisfaction and the knowledge that I have done things the best way I could possibly do.

That approach is ok if you are willing to buy new parts when needed or have a large workshop with all the tools and equipment and skill needed to do major engineering work such as skimming the head but that is not the plan, the plan is to do this restoration as cheaply as possible using tools and equipment that nearly everyone has at home.

This bike is also a challenge to myself to try some of the more "unusual" ideas to be found on the net. Some of these ideas are things that were in common use many years ago such as lapping and reaming components instead of CNC machining.

Some will be back yard ideas that I have never tried and would like to see what, if anything does work and what doesn't.

I will not be blindly just picking an idea and just doing it, I will check out all the different suggestions and using my own judgement I will choose a method I believe it will work and try it out for real.

So at the moment I am spending a bit of time checking out ideas and deciding which ones to try so click the FOLLOW MY BLOG button to be notified of my new posts and videos as they are posted.

Fuel Gone Bad - Why You Should Drain The Fuel From Your Gas Tank

Why you should drain the fuel from your gas tank

Many people will tell you that if you are going to store your bike for any length of time you must drain the fuel from the tank and carbs as it will go off.

What does go off mean and is it as serious as people say it is ?

It is as bad as people say it is !!!

As you know I am stripping my old Kawasaki Zephyr ZR750 with the intention of rebuilding it by saving as many parts as I can from the old bike using various weird and wonderful ideas I have seen on the net.

The idea is to spend as little as possible and use some unusual ideas to save and restore the original parts where possible.

One part I want to save is the fuel tank, once in very good condition and now very rusty inside.

The rust could have been prevented if the tank had been drained before storing and saved me a lot of work now but you live and learn so check out my video above to see what came out of the tank !

Removing the fuel tap / petcock, Fuel sender and Fuel cap from the tank ready for the respray

Dismanteling the tank components

A nice easy job this one so click on the link below to check out the full step by step guide

Link to fuel sender, fuel tap and fuel filler removal page

Or you can check out my youtube video here

Restoring Rubber Vehicle Parts Using Brake Fluid - Does It Work ?

During the stripdown of the Kawasaki I have noticed that most of the rubber parts on the bike have hardened and some have even started to crack.

Now normally I would just buy or make some new ones but the idea of this blog is to try and do as much as possible for free.

So with this in mind I have decided to try and restore the original parts without buying any special products and just use what I have lying around.

There are many different ideas floating around the net on how to restore rubber but the one I have decided on is soaking them in brake fluid.

There were two main reasons for this decision, firstly I had some old brake fluid lying around that I was going to depose of anyway so it would be free to do and secondly it required very little work, just drop the part in some brake fluid and wait.

So I will try this in the next few days and post the results good or bad.