Project XJ650J: Pt1. Girlbike front end rebuild.

Hey all. This is my 1st highway capable streetbike. Started out as a 1982 XJ650J Maxim. Craig's list find, drove to Riverside California to pick it up. When I got it home and Holeshot (my husband) and I started giving it the once over, it was quickly discovered that the front end .. the entire front end .. had been cobbled together from pieces and parts just to get the bike sold. The forks were bent/twisted and the triples were suspect as well. Yes, I got taken. Here I am at the PO's place before we loaded it in the truck ...



Holeshot was sick when the pickup trip came up. So I went with my brother in law to get the bike. I knew the forks looked tweaked a little, but I also had seen Holeshot fix tweaked front ends rather easily in the past by loosening everything and retightening it all. Well, it turns out this PO saw me coming I suppose. Good thing he left me a few parts that are worth more than I think he knew of (such as the $200 Cibie headlight that he tossed into a 1982 Honda CB750 headlight bucket and threw it on the XJ. We discovered the IODE headlight during teardown. Yay me!).

So I located new forks, new triples, and a new front wheel. Total on that pile was about $150.



All of the newly aquired pieces needed reworking. No sweat, that was the idea from the start. I wanted to buy a semi-project and learn to build it, then learn to ride it. Call it a late rite of passage for me. I sandblasted (not bead blasted) that front wheel clean. Then pulled the bearings. After sanding and shaping it, I applied Duplicolor green filling primer for bare metal. I then let it cure for about two days in our 125f shop.



After some more sanding and TLC, I shot a thin coat of primer again, tack ragged it, then set to applying Duplicolor wheel paint. It's an acrylic enamel, so there are recoat windows to deal with. Here's both the front and rear all done ...



They hung in our welding shed for about a week to fully cure. We measured the inside temps of the shed regularly during the day. 145f was about average.

Acrylic enamels don't cure by evaporating their solvents out (like water colors, or laquer based paints). Enamels actually change their molecular chain lengths on the skin of the film. This means that if you reapply paint to it, you must treat the enamel painted surface like it is unpainted. It has to be fully roughed up, primed and painted over. Laquers actually dissolve the old coat beneath the new coat so adhesion is done through solvency. I learned all of that from Duplicolor's site.

... continued ...

 

... onward ..

So here's what the front wheel looks like with the new paint, a new Kenda Challenger tire (100/90/19), and one of the newly aquired fork legs. I have put in a LOT of time on the fork legs to get them looking like this. Just elbow grease and a green 3M pad. A lot of both.



The wheel color is called Graphite....



These three colors really work for me. Tire black, graphite, and brushed aluminum.



Here's a before and after .. sorta. The shiney fork is the one I just did. The ugly one is how they looked when I got them from Fleabay.



Here's both the wheels in their glory. They do look nice!!



Here's what the back one looks like (for the curious). Holeshot stuck it on his Magna just to see what that tire size looks like on his bike. We got in a full set of Kenda Challengers for both bikes and our rear tires are the same size.



He hadn't had his mounted just yet so he used mine to see what the profile looks like. anyhow you can get an idea of how the wheel paint and new tires look like ...



You can at least get an idea of what the graphite looks like against black frames and chrome shocks, etc ..



On to the front brakes ...

 

Great work, Abeja, did the rims suffer any collateral damage when fitting the new skins ?

 

The front brake caliper gave us fits for a few days. That piston was really stuck. Holeshot and I tried every trick he knew for pulling that stubborn piston out of there. 150psi of compressed air didn't even touch it. So we concocted this gizmo up to get it out.



A hacked of hunk of 7/8ths handlebar with a front master from his 1982 Honda Sabre 750 connected to a short brake line, connected to my ailing caliper. After a LOT of pumps the piston finally came out. It took about 500+ pumps to get it out. Then the process os cleaning it up begins ...



We use old stainless steel kitchen bowls for stuff like this. Works great. After I got it cleaned up somewhat, and discovered that the inside bore of the caliper is fine/servicable, I set to the task of getting it naked! I used some of Wal Mart's clear gel paint stripper ($7 bux a quart). It removed the paint nearly instantly. So just a lot of working cleanup involved. Wire brushing, etc.. until I get whatever *look* suits me. I plan on running the caliper unpainted. Should look good with the buffed forks, too.











More to go. I got a great start on the disk. It cleaned up great. We checked it on the lathe and it's nice and straight. Just need to finish up with it, paint it's spokes and such. Waiting on the new brake piston and rebuild kit, seals setc .. too. Oddly the old piston barely had any rust at all on it, and the caliper bore looked much better than expected too. Dunno why that sucker was SO stuck in there. Still, putting all new parts on that caliper. Speed bleeders, the works.

Still have to finish the other fork leg. I got in a set of Progressive Suspension fork springs for it, and a set of Progressive Suspension 412's for the back too ...



(We both got in shocks/fork springs for both bikes.)

Going with DIY brake lines too. So still lots to do and long way to go before the bike is safe. Engine runs, trans works, so those aren't TOO big of issues yet. Whew! I got in new steering head conversion bearings, and new fork seals as well. (All Balls on both accounts). Waiting on Tkat fork brace as well.

Steering head conversion next up ...

THANKS!!

Abeja ...

 

Thank you.

Nope, absolutely none. The shop we use (have for years .. Perfomance Motorsports here in Yuma) knows I'll go out of my way to muster a coco on their heads if they scratch my newly painted wheels when mounting tires!!!

Kidding aside, they're great folks there .. family place .. they did excellent work this time around. It's usually a crap shoot, y'know! Until you find a good shop with the right tire machine. This is *sand duning* territory here, bazillions of mega-high performance quads/atvs. Many/most of which have pricey polished aluminum wheels. Tire shops around here have gotten fairly good at protecting the wheels. Knock on wood (we have four more to go yet so I don't want to tempt the gods!)

Thanks for the compliment,

 

Got a ways to go yet!!!

(my poor bike! Yikes!)



Adios for tonight ... gonna watch us some Lagun Seca races on the tv this evening. Danny Eslick is my hero!

Abeja ...

 

Looking good. Building the bike is half the fun!

 

Great work and super attention to detail.
Love the polished aluminum fork legs. Going that way on my Seca.

 

Great job,looking good.

 

Bummer, looks like you got took for a ride on that front end, just a good thing Holeshot is able to help get er back in good shape.
Otherwise looks like you have a bike with a lot of promise there
Good luck!

 

Thanks everyone. We'll get it hammered out. It's just that there are SO MANY dishonest people/sellers out there that it makes it tough to know ~what~ you are looking at via internet sale.

Holeshot just got into a 1982 Honda Sabre 750cc recently. We knew there'd be problems with it. But the seller assured us of a few things that turned out to be total lies. Since we live so far away from larger cities we usually don't find out about any issues until the bike is 200+ miles from the PO. So it's hard to get in someone's face about .. um .. discrepancies. Or perhaps ~differences of opinion~ as to what "Cherry fuel tank!" means exactly. (pre sale pics below) ....






Looks pretty sweet, right? It even looked that good once home ... until Holeshot spotted something on the tank. I thought he'd gone nuts when he got out sandpaper and started sanding the paint off of the left side of the nicely painted fuel tank .. he then started poking a phillips screwdriver into the very tank itself! Why? Look ...



He said he saw something "odd" about the side of the tank, so he followed through on his instincts and guess what ... tank cancer galore!

Anyhow, my point is that it's difficult to know exactly what you've brought home until you start tearing into it properly. We just figure sellers are *lying* and go from there (it's just easier). You must rely on your own observations and pretty much tune out the seller's BS stories about it. Tough to do over the web.

Thanks again folks. Next up on my Girlbike is the steering head bearing conversion ...

Abeja ..

 

Abeja, you obviously know bikes and how to work on them, but in one post you said you bought speed bleeders. Don't try to bleed a new system with those on the bike.
Use standard bleeders or vacuum system first to get "feel" at the lever, then install the speed bleeders. From what I've read here and on other forums you can't bleed a new system with them as they react to the air in the lines and just won't work. Once you have the lines working properly then switch to the speed bleeders for future fluid changes.
Just sayin'.
Nice looking project so far, looking forward to seeing it finished.

 

That paint on the rims and the polished shock look AWESOME!

 

That tank looks like someone shot it with buckshot. :lol:

 

Never say to the pump attendant in Texas...."I said I wanted LEADED gas"!

 

Was there gas in that tank ? when the PO said cherry perhaps he meant the colour.

 

Maybe when he said cherry, he meant the pits?

 

Looks like your bike has finally made it to a good home. Great work!

 

Thanks tons! I wasn't aware of that. We'll take note of this info and apply it properly.

Thanks again for that good catch!

 

Actually yes there was fuel in it!

Holeshot spotted these tiny little spots in the paint. If you look at the picture closely you can see little circular "swtains" around a few of the holes. Well, those stains were like itsy bitsy on the paint .. it looked like just some teensy bubbles in the paint. Something that might be overlooked. He kept tapping on the tank in places .. some places had a dull thuddish sound. He took a sharpened awl and lightly pushed into one of the little pits and the awl SUNK right into the tank. Sanding the tank revealed more pits. He kept poking the scratch awl into these pits and each time they'd open up to the holes you see in the pictures. You could actually poke your thumbnail into the tank's side, easily unveiling the rusted spots by just digging your thumbnail into the pits a bit. The metal was that soft.

Seems the PO had someone just sand on the tank a little, then Bondo over the pitted areas and the prime/paint over the bondo. The fuel would seep into the bondo over ttime and make these little pitted circles. Holeshot kinda smelled a turd right off and that's when he discovered the rotted tank. He put all of those holes in the tanbk, but it took like nearly nothing to make them .. really .. nearly no pressure was used to poke right through the tank skin. One good "bang" on the tank with one's knee and it would have caved the entire tank in.

Why didn't we know this by simply taking the gas cap off and looking inside it? The PO conveniently "lost" the key "just prior" to our arrival. Clever. As promised he mailed the key to us two weeks later. Asshole.

 

HaaHaa!! :roll:

No kidding, right?

Some people's children!

 

Thank you! Duplicolor "Graphite" wheel paint. It's an enamel, so follow the application directions really good and all comes out fine. Trust me, we are NO KINDA PAINTERS around here so if we pulled it off, then most anyone can.

 

Haa! Gotta do like my dad used to say ... "fill 'er up with ethyl".

 

This is the hope!

Thanks tons, everyone! The encouragement here is really stimulating! Makes me want to work on it even harder now.

Thanks all!

Abeja ...