www.zxrworld.co.uk

Started the rebuild last weekend ..

Bike needs:

Forks, yokes (top and bottom), radiator engine mount (LHS), clip ons, wheels, spindles/spacers, cush drive, sprocket carrier bearing etc.

Basically a bitsa comprised mainly of what we found on my mate's garage floor:



I am reliably informed there are at least FOUR ZXR's or ZX400's in there. See if you can spot em ..!

Since its a shitter, theoretically, we are going to tune the monkey's nuts out of it.

Ported, gas flowed, skimmed head running race system and compression without a base gasket on dual electrode sparks for starters ..

Here's the prelim strip, cleanup and prep for porting.







The engine is unearthed from beneath a mound of debris. Its an H2 from 1990 that was part-exed ages ago and is known to have a blown head gasket.

I ordered a new camchain and head gasket from Cradley Kawasaki for the job.

Staggered by the prices: £11.75 for the gasket and £19 for the cam chain!

The blown gasket means all the oil has turned to toad with coolant. Its then been stood in a garage for months .. possibly years ..

We stripped off the head and found the camchain to be new, the cam journals mint, the rockers spotless and the bore spotless.



Looks like the engine has either had a complete rebuild or was blown, flogged, broken then forgotten about .. The clocks that came with it read 40k kilometers so we can probably assume thats a genuine mileage, on a 17 year old import! Not bad.



^ You can see clearly where its blown the head gasket. Note spotless piston crown. It was because the bore had filled with coolant. Yum.

I stripped out the valves and cleaned the head with paraffin and a jet washer..





















Head nice and clean, I leave it to drip dry in the seasonal afternoon sunshine and go back inside to check out the flywheel and clutch.

The clutch is surprisingly gunk free ..

The flywheel rotor magnets are fecked. Massive crack in them means its got to be pulled and replaced with a spare from downstairs ..



Thats pencilled in for later on when the engine is back in the frame.

I drop the sump in a bid to flush out as much ganky toad as possible before rebuild and to check the internal filter for any blockages ..





Euuuuq. Manky toad!

Even the dog is disgusted!



I nip it downstairs and pressure wash the nuts off it!



Thats better!

I wash the filter out and re-install it .. the rubber has perished with age so we use some RTV silicon sealant to help keep it in situ.



Gear selector drum, dogs, and the gearbox all look spanking! Very clean for a 17 year old ..



Head is drying nicely in the sunshine ..





As it starts to get dark I bring it inside and clean up the workspace ..







Now its over to Zimm to do the porting ..





I slink outside to jet wash the ZZR while all the stuff is out ..



More to come! Including a ton of videos ..!

Thats a real good set of pictures to be honest. i like lookin at things bein taken appart an step by step pics are wicked. how could you tell where the head had gone thoe?

because the piston crown was clean! were as all the others were black

havent striped a 4t down to the level its one of them things some day i know im going to have to learn to do!

once done we want dyno results! what you expecting to push out of her?

why you not using a base gasket ?

rene wrote:once done we want dyno results! what you expecting to push out of her?

Not a lot tbh. There's a glass ceiling in zxr tuning ..

No more than 65hp with a full race system as I won't be splashing the cash on cams or adjustable cam sprockets or ram air.

Dubstar wrote:why you not using a base gasket ?

Increases compression significantly.

You can safely run without a base gasket, using silicon to seal the cases instead and skim 0.5mm off the head of a ZXR.

looking good. Hope you've got some pics of the porting. Will you skim the head yourself?

Needs new exhaust studs lol

Northern ANdy wrote:looking good. Hope you've got some pics of the porting. Will you skim the head yourself?

Needs new exhaust studs lol

I do, I didn't do the porting my mate Zimm did. He's the one turned me on to 400's; he's been riding them personally and professionally as a despatch rider for well over 15 years.

Nothing he doesn't know about these machines and everything you see here is done either by him or under his supervision. I learned a lot from just watching him tinker.

Re: skimming the head, we did it on wet and dry and a piece of glass. Didn't bother with a full on machine shop job as the budget was less than £500 for the entire bike.

Exhaust studs were just bent back into shape with pliars.

OK I got busy with another project and left the re-assemblage to Zimm.

So ladies and erm, ladies I am pleased to present:



Drum roll please ..

... an extremely wet bike.











Its assembled, but it doesnt run ..

It did run. But then it got very, very wet indeed.

Not good.

at least all the engine bolts will be easy to get out

It dried out ..













Right now its not starting properly - might start eventually after a lot of cranking or bumping. One of the spark plugs is threaded, yippee! And the whole thing is manky as fook.

Things to do:

Sort the fuelling.
Sort the electrics.
Clean the entire thing.
Get a fairing for it.
Polish and paint every inch.
+ everything else thats fecked or needs to be serviced.

Budget? £100.

Tops.

More mank close-ups.

























I have about a week to two weeks to get this thing minted up and fixed.

if you mange to get that mint for 10000 pennys then you deserve a badge of some kind...

Oh really, its all cosmetic.

They always look worse than they are you know ..

A lot of people, myself included in the past, let bikes go for peanuts that really only require a strip and clean and a lick of paint to be perfectly saleable.

The important thing about this one is the fact its rust free.

Everything else is just surface muck.