Rainy Days

'I love it when a plan comes together', or at least I love it when I try something out and it works. For example, the home made tool for getting the damper out of the fork tube (though I can't take any credit for ingenuity, that all goes to the chaps on the SR500 Forum pages). It has been a great weekend, plenty of time in the garage due to the crappy weather, and whenever I wasn't up to my elbows in grease, there was football to be watched! Lovin' it!

Ahem, for starters...a lovely polished triple clamp



Followed by a side serving of shiny calipers



And a cylinder head.



Midway through dismantling the forks.



Forks completely disembowlled, with special damper tool in the middle.




Stripping the chipped clear coat off of the lower fork legs, ready to be polished and have a new clear coat applied.



My first view of the heart of the beast, a bit nervous at what I might find.



And to my huge relief, everything was intact and the bore was as smooth as a cuban pimp. Now I just need to clean out the carbon deposits and check the gaps on the cylinder wall. Looks like the smoke in the exhaust when I first kicked the bike over was residual oil/old gaskets/or wrong carb/valve settings. The piston looks nice after a good buffing



The next stage...tbc