Also found and bought something I don't have. How unusual for this bike. A clutch lever and choke assembly

Pulled the forks apart this morning. Glad the tubes are straight. It would be easier to pull things apart with a manual. Fingers crossed the manual arrives this week.

Forks ready for cleaning, sand blasting and painting. While at Andy's tool emporium. I borrowed a spoke cutter and spoke tool. Now to chase up some spokes to re lace the wheels.


Also got Andy to press the Triple clamps back together.


I have tried every ebay site and a few NOS Yamaha sites without any luck. Yamaha's 34L Wiring harness part number 49m-82590-00-00 went from 83 to 86 and are not made any more.
I did find a good 2nd one in Italy



Why carn't some things on this bike not be stuffed. Just pulled the tires off to have a look at the rims. The front on has serious cancer and the rear just has bad cancer.


Starting to pull the front wheel apart. Drew my self a mud map of spoke rotation for when I get some new spokes and time for respoking. Now to try find where I can get spokes from?


The front rim is not as bad as I first thought and might be salvaged after all. Only one bad bit corrosion near the valve. A bit of cleaning with a brass brush and some emery paper. Will need painting to seal the aluminium and piece of cloth tape under the rim rubber. Else the rubbing will wear through the tube in time.


Thanks to Andy Gadgets tool emporium. The spoke cutter makes quick work of removing spokes.


Now for today's mystery question. Well every thing on this bike is a mystery. What instruments are these? They were on the bike, but XT600 with red marking at 60 kph (40 mph) an a red line of 9,500 rpm. A DT175 maybe? The headlight bracket looks like a 3TB. The answer is they are Chao Long Brand and not Yamaha.

I have no idea of what is right or not right. With all the parts in boxes. It is hard to get a feel for what is a bodgy or not.

The current headlight.
[

I received my cowling today from South Africa. I got a pic from the micro fiche and it looks like this.


The cowling is very similar or might be the same.


Cannot put it off any longer. Time for some cleaning. Start with the swing arm bits. A few years of caked on dirt and grease.


Time to break the mini Mezo parts cleaner.


After a couple hours and a bit of plastic bag sand blasting.


Shiny, shiny


The list of shiny parts are growing


Happiness is a $50 parts washer.

Another day goes by. Waiting for parts to arrive Grrrr. Ah well might as well do some parts cleaning.

Who would have thought. Some parts on this bike under the mud and grease are 34L parts. Well at least the rear shock is.


Even the sump guard is in not bad nick under 1" of grease.
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Now only, this lot left to get on with.


What is the old saying. It never rains, it pours. I was winging about not having parts to play with. Today I received the wiring loom, head steam bearings, wheel bearings, fork and dust seals.

And one of these.


A couple hours later and 10,000 screws. Almost there. Used silastic on the joins on bolting the unit together.


25kg of soda


Now where to put it. An yes that is a 50 gal parts cleaner in a box. Has to make it to Andy's place.

The joy of chasing air leaks. A full tube of Silastic and it still leaks like a sive. The problem is the massive pressure build up. It needs to relive high amounts of pressure, while containing the salt. The one I have seen set up use and old Holden air cleaner on the side.



Mean while back to the bike building thread. I have the feeling I am going backwards with the Tenere. Something positive today, I pressed on the lower bearing on the triple clamp. I could not get the right bearing here in Hobart. Even though I had a part number. I had to get from Simply bearings in the UK.


Had a bit of a play with the blaster today. To get a feel of what it can do, and what I need to do to get it running better. It creates so much pressure inside. I got an old vacuum cleaner from Andy's and used that to good effect. Clean bag in the vacuum and return overflow of media back to the tank.

Can you see the difference? First play with blaster. Now need a much larger compressor


I rebuilt the front forks this morning. Only waiting on fork springs to arrive this week. Also need new red fork boots.


Yeah. Some success at last. Stopped off at Radum after work and picked up a bag of medium glass beads. Came home and had the glorious job of draining and cleaning out of the soda media and replaced it with the glass beads. It did take a little bit of cleaning of the gun and stuff. Soda just gums up every thing and is very messy compered to the glass. Well what a huge difference that made in changing the media. After wasting about 10 hrs or so trying to get the soda to work.

A pic of the carb after being hit with glass. The carb was caked on with all sorts mud and stuff.


Rocker cover before I started.


After. With being hit with the glass. The dark bits are corrosion colouring in the metal.

Arrrgh... What an afternoon. Fired the new compressor to bead blast the oil tank. Working away or blasting away. What is that smell? Smells, like electrical to me. Walk around the corner and the new compressor is having a heart attack. I could not hear it over the noise of the vacuum cleaner under the cabinet and wearing ear muffs.

Stop the compressor and have look around. All good. Start the compressor and the motor is slowly grinding to a halt. Quickly turn it off and ring K&D. They say, bring it back for a change over. Battle the hectic 5 o'clock traffic into town. To find the person I talked to on the phone had gone home for the day. A bit of talking and I walked out with another one in a box.

Do you think the oil tank has been through the wars?

Cranked up Hyundai Mk II today. A lot quieter than Mk I and builds up pressure faster as well. Shame Mk II leaks air like a sieve and spent and hour sealing up all the leaks. You can not just buy stuff these days, that just works out of the box

I think I need a new one of these.


A few bits in etch prime.


It has been 24 days and counting on waiting on fork springs from Chermany. Better crack on with bits I do have.


I given up on the new fork springs arriving. I am not the only person waiting on DHL to do their thing.
So replaced the 10 wt fork oil. Refitted the old springs with 3 steel washers on top to increase the spring preload of saggy springs. You do the same thing when you buy a new DL650, in putting 3 washers under the fork cap.
I sand blasted and painted the original handlebars. Swing arm has been painted. Awaiting on new bearings this week.

There is a Tenere in there some where.



I came home with goodie bag today of engine bearings an a POR15 tank kit. I have acid washed the inside the tank this arvo and now need to leave to dry for a few days before finishing the inside with tank sealer. Let it sit around for another week. Then I can paint the outside in 2 pak.


Straight from Andy's tool shop. A heat gun makes very quick work of drying out a tank.


I had a spare hour this afternoon. I finished off the inside of the tank with tank sealer. Boy, what a tricky job with the baffles. The small tin of tank liner is just the the perfect size for the Tenere tank without having to drain the excess out of the tank.

With nearly 30 years dirt and bad petrol running around inside the tank. The liner and a new petcock takes away one less fuel problem. The tank liner also fill up any tiny fuel weeps or rust problems and basically gives you a new tank..

If you do go down the road of liner your tank. A couple of pointers. After the acid wash. Don't rush to put the tank liner in. The tank needs to be 120% dry. Most tank liner failures are due to the tank not being dry and moisture being trapped between the liner and the tank and pushes the liner away over a period of time.

Different brands of tank liner has different benefits. Por15 dries rock hard and you can beat it with a ball pain hammer. Kreem stays soft and rubbery and I would not use it. Kreem seems to have a higher failure rate than the other brands. Caswells make a 2 pack epoxy tank liner and is a good product, if you use a lot of ethanol based fuels. Make sure the two parts are mixed together very well before inserting in your tank. If the two parts are not mixed properly the liner will fail.

Another mock up photo with the rear suspension in place. Most of the bolts are missing making it fun to try and put it back together. One of the forks, I rebuilt using Pyramid parts leaking far worse than the original. So like everything else on this build. Every thing is done at least twice.

Got a white bike thing going on'




How do you break a throttle?

Dan, here's a tip I read in Dirt Bike magazine 83,000 years ago for preparing rims especially if they are a bit rough. I've always used it since. Just wrap the inner rim with plastic electrical tape. It puts a cover over the spoke heads, the stickness helps prevent the heads undoing, and it provides a barrier between gnarly inner rims and your soft underbits, namely the tyre. Also prevents any water that gets in through the valve hole getting inside and sitting there (which is what caused your corrosion.)

It's always worked very well. I score it

Locked & loaded Shane.

Mmmbhaaaa.

Mezo.

Shano wrote:Dan, here's a tip I read in Dirt Bike magazine 83,000 years ago for preparing rims especially if they are a bit rough. I've always used it since. Just wrap the inner rim with plastic electrical tape. It puts a cover over the spoke heads, the stickness helps prevent the heads undoing, and it provides a barrier between gnarly inner rims and your soft underbits, namely the tyre. Also prevents any water that gets in through the valve hole getting inside and sitting there (which is what caused your corrosion.)

It's always worked very well. I score it

I have done that now.... I did not help that the bike was left leaning outside Andy's garage for a couple of years

Bugger another rainy day here. Might as well have a quick look at the engine.

Some handy bit of welding. The gear shift will not fall off in a hurry.


A few minutes later with an angle grinder.


Do you think the shaft is stuffed?


While the motor is sitting here, I thought to myself. I just have a quick look under the rocker cover to see just how bad the internals are. I removed all the cap screws and started tapping the rocker cover with a rubber hammer. No movement, heck what's is going here. Another quick look to see I had not missed any cap screws. Keep tapping, not happening. I wonder if there is an internal cap screw. Yep inside the rear rocker cover. Moral is - read the destruction manual first.

I am not holding my breathe, but under the cams, rockers and cam chain look in good nick.


Yeah, my 15 euro mystery bag arrived today of engine parts. Some really good parts. Good oil lines and shift shafts. The part I really needed an oil filter cover is missing. Lots of duplicated sprockets and things.


Some more engine parts arrived today. Selector forks and new shaft for the gear change.

Sharon Jones is blasting of the stereo. Must be engine time. Here are some before shots of the engine.


A little crack on the inside of the cover.

The crack is not a show stopper at all. I have just been side tracked for the last couple of hours. A mate dropped over for a coffee and poke around the garage. Back to stripping down the engine.

Finally a useful purpose for my old trophies.


I now understand why Andy said the last rider mentioned the engine was "knocking" There is a about 3 mm side to side movement in the crank.
Cam chain and big end bearings- Fooked, Piston- fooked, Barrel- most likely, might be saved. Bit of a score at the bottom of the skirt. The rest should hone out.
Looks like one of the exhaust valves has been running hot and most likely be needed to be replaced along with the valve guides.


Piston top looks good.



The scores are deep. Piston would a good ash tray for someone that smokes.


What's a few missing teeth floating around the gearbox...


The engine does not look to bad at all. Clutch plates are about 1/2 worn out.


I removed the rotor this afternoon and carried on splitting the cases. Minor stress fractures in the case.


Smile. You are on cam chain camera.


Not looking to bad at all.


Has been running hot on dirty oil for a long time, by the look of it.


3rd gear and corresponding gears missing teeth or hard facing.


In every project. There comes a time. When you wonder if, it is better throw up the white flag and surrender and part the bike and recover some of the lost cost I have spent so far or carry on with the rebuild. All the bearings need replacing. The main bearing surface on the case is lightly scored and can be repaired. The chain has jumped the sprocket at some stage and has taken out a bit of casing.

The list of parts on this rebuild is really adding up in dollar terms. An could more than the value of the finished bike. A roughie guesstomate would be around $5000 to get the bike back on the road.
I have to admit to being a bit over whelmed yesterday. By the amount of destruction on the inside of this engine. The amount of work required to rebuild the engine to a running unit. I have had to step back and have a bit of a think about why I am half arsed or beastly careless about this Tenere project. I think it is because I have not had the chance to bond or get attached with this bike. I have not ridden this Tenere or any other Tenere. With my BM or Strom. If they blew up. I would not hesitate to delve in and fix the problem.

I have not seen anything on the this Tenere that cannot be fixed. I admit all those cogs on the oil pump side and the gearbox make you step back. I had a good look at the gearbox cogs today and basically. Just about all the cogs need replacing except 1st gear. I emailed some engine internal photos to some friends who restore old bikes.They reckon the engine has been run very hot on bad oil for quite a while. Causing the dark brown staining on the engine cases.

Andy Gadget is floating around in the South China sea until Feb 2011. So the tool shop is closed till next year. Andy Gadget reckons "Yes, I can see why it knocked, but he would preserver with it, not everything can be expressed in monetary terms"

So the question is. Do I look for a second hand gearbox or see if I can get new gears from Boats.net? On there parts list. I need part numbers 3,6,7 13, 14. about $500, if Boats can get them


After a few emails and a phone call to Mike at http://oem-cycle.com/default.aspx Fingers crossed I have just bought a clean non pitted or broken complete gearbox for $120 US


I had a few spare minutes today. I started pushing out some bearings. I don't have a bearing puller. So had to think outside the square. A bolt in a vice will do.


Hook the bolt behind the bearing and tap the casing softly with a rubber hammer. Out pops the bearing.


Always, Always. There is always one bearing that does not want to come out.


Removed the old gearbox and all the gears, except for one has pitting or lost its hard facing. I will asking questions as the engine goes back together. As I have no idea of what I am doing. So please pay attention.
Stopped of at the pub on the way home from work to get some Newcastle finest. Sorry son, ran out of Newcastle, McCaffertys. Will Killkenny do? the barman says. I have a carton of that says I. That will be $73 says the barman On second thoughts I just take 4 pack. I cannot get a carton beer of my choice. How is the Tenere going to get back together?


Back to the garage to pull more things apart. O.K hands up who has a 36mm socket or ring spanner? I don't for crank.
I needed to break out air tools to remove nut off the balancer. Boy, Yamaha use some serious locktite on the and balancer and the crank.
Crank is out and one of the bearings just popped off.


The other bearing and sprocket on the other side are going to be a hassle.


No idea of what I am doing. So I have wire tied parts in order as they come off.

OMG will this engine get back together again?


Back to garage with some heat from a blow torch. Success in removing bearing from the balancer shaft. Stuffed the seal behind the bearing.


No such luck in removing the cog off the crank. The bearing behind is spinning loose. The cog an bearing need a very good bearing puller to remove. Most other XT rebuilds leave this alone.


Something I had not noticed before. Looks like the exhaust valves have been touching the piston at some stage.


Huston. We have a gearbox. A mighty fine one indeed


The piston has made lines on the bore. You can see them, but cannot feel them. Fingers crossed, I might get away with first oversize.

When the shop does the honing. I ask them the exact size of the bore and find a piston and rings to match. Yamaha and Wiesco make over bore pistons and rings.


Before I take the barrel to Gorriinge's http://www.donaldgorringe.com/ I gave the barrel a bit of a clean first. The barrel had an old wasp nest in fins. Lots of oil and grease.

Last bit of cleaning for the day. If only the stories this bike could tell. Every case so far has been welded or JB weld.

What is the black silastic blocking?



Cleaned all the engine bearings to take to the bearing shop next door to work tomorrow. Pulled the piston off the conrod. To find more disaster. The conrod has worn off its hard facing and pitted as well. Now I really have to pull apart the crank and replace the conrod.


Stopped off at Websters bearings on the way home with my bag of engine bearings. Good news is that all XT engine bearings are off the shelf items. A complete set of bearings and not including the wrist pin bearing and the small roller bearing on the shift drum work out to $220 for SKF or FAG.

The crank bearings are $61 each. So that is $120 of the price and $100 for the rest of the bearings. Boats sell the crank bearings for $31 ea. The rest of the prices of the bearings are within a few cents of Boats. It would work out to about the same cost locally or Boats.net.

Pics are of the old engine bearings.


Just how many broken parts can one small engine have?


The head and barrel have returned from the machine shop with a hone for the barrel.


The head has the valves removed and cleaned up before replacing the valves with new seats.

It is time to start a new page and as the title suggests. It time to get on with rebuilding the engine. I started with oil pump screen by pulling it apart to find it is completely blocked with pieces of metal and sealant. Had to use a thin scriber to loosen all that metal from behind the screen.


I then moved onto replacing the gearbox gears and selector forks back into one side of the casings. After about and hour or so, I had to give up and walk away. One of the selector forks would not locate in the selector drum. After a cup of coffee, I figured out, I had one of the outside gears around the wrong way. As soon as I turned the gear a round. The gearbox slipped straight in place and is very smooth with the new bearings.



I don’t think, I will use the this gear selector... Changing gears must have been fun with a missing middle tooth.


Andy arrived home from the Tool Shed with some new tools to remove the cam chain sprocket. The main bearing is stuffed and needs replacing. A little bit heat helps with the loosening of the sprocket.


Dot lines up the centre of the key.Some wear and tear on the bearing surface. I have removed the cam chain sprocket off the crank shaft to replace the
main bearing and taken some measurements of the crankshaft. I have being trying to find out without much luck. If my crank is ok or need repairing.


The crankshaft under the main bearing measures 29.95 mm and crankshaft under the cam chain sprocket measures 30.01mm. The new bearing measures 30.01 mm and the
old bearing is 30.11 mm. The gap between the new bearing and the crankshaft is .06 mm. Do I need
to use a loctite 640 under the bearing to take up the space? I believe the main bearing should not be loose on the crank.

My friend Andy wrote this about loose bearings.

It is a first principle fitters rule of thumb that the rotating part of any bearing set HAS to be tight on its mount, or if assembly requirements mean that this can't be, then some means of locking the bearing to the shaft is required, or we get the wear we are seeing.
The non-rotating element can be transition (sliding fit, not tight).

To show this principle in action, think of a rear wheel drive car, front stub axle bearing arrangement, the rotating part is the hub, in which the bearings are tight.
The non-rotating part is the stub axle shaft, and the bearings are loose.
See http://www.maintenanceresources.com/...ings/rbshf.htm

The source of this problem is the difference in the circumference between the inner surface of the bearing (larger) and the worn shaft, or the unworn but smaller shaft (smaller), and so every rotation has the two surfaces moving relative to each other, with the result of wear, as we see.

If the motor needs movement provision for linear expansion in the bearings, it should be on the bearing outer, not the inner, the engineers at Yamaha know this.
The inner race has very little linear movement available to it anyway as it is constrained by the cam chain sprocket.

Regardless of how many cranks have this bearing loose, it shouldn't be so, and so should be corrected as part of any rebuild.

This can be done many ways, my recommendation to Dan is to use wondersnot such as loctite 640, a high temperature retaining compound, as the bike will not be doing huge k's.
If the bike is destined for a round the world trip, the shaft will need to be restored to the correct interference fit by plating or metal spraying, not cheap.



A goodie bag of new parts arrived today. To help with the engine rebuild, plus a few other bits.


With the new parts. It is time to start putting fitting some parts to the casing. A big thanks to Moritz for a 3AJ oil pump. It is a bit of a guessing game at where all the cogs go.


Still waiting on some steel plates to be cut. Then we can start pressing the crank apart. Fingers crossed the process can be started this week.

The cylinder head and barrel have returned from the machine shop and they did a great job of cleaning up my messy cylinder head.


The barrel has been bored out to the 1st oversize and a new shiny piston to match.


I repainted the barrel and head. I also filed down the fins to bare alloy.
[


I have not updated the engine build for a while. So lets get on with it. Before pulling the crank apart we measured the run out of the crank shaft to find out how out of balance the crankshaft is.


We used a lathe and V blocks with dial gauges to find out the run out.


After measuring we started to push out the crank pin out of the crankshaft. To find the crank pin and con rod wrecked and needing new rod, pin and bearing.


Half way


This would explain the knock from the big end. I already had a new con rod and spacers to go on. I was not prepared for the crank pin to be wrecked as well. New 34L crank pin would be very hard to find, I thought. After market kits are all 35 mm crank pin and the 34L has a 34 mm crank pin. I was down hearted in knowing the crank pin would be hard to find. I phoned the Yamaha dealer and they said they did not have one, but the Yamaha dealer at the other end of the state had a new one in stock. I was stunned. The next day a parcel arrived with the new crank pin.


The old crank pin.


The end of the crank pin has a welsh plug. We pulled the plug out to have a look what inside the crank pin. The crank pin was full of sludge.


We had to drill a hole in the welsh plug to remove the plug. This is the sludge inside the pin.


The needle rollers in the main bearing where worn out as well. I pushed the needles out and bought new ones. The 34 mm big end bearing rollers are 4mm x 15.7mm and can be bought at a bearing shop.

Anew day and clean bench at Andy’s house. With a full day to have a go at putting the engine back together.


Loctite 515 on the cases


And every plain bearing surface coped a dose of this.


I had already placed the gearbox in place before. Balancer shaft in place


Slipped the crankshaft in the case


The original buffer plate had been tampered with the dots in the wrong place and caused the balancer to hit the crank. I had a few spare buffer plates and replaced the buffer.


The next problem was the centre of the sprocket under the clutch basket had moved and caused the clutch basket to lock up. Used the bearing press to push the centre flush with the sprocket.


The clutch basket now moved freely.


Andy made a tool to hold the clutch basket still while tightening the nut.


Next was the clutch plates and cover.


The new 96mm piston was fitted to the con rod and barrel fitted.


Camshaft and timing chain in place.


Rocker cover on and tappets adjusted.


The engine is now complete and ready to go back into the bike.


Used a jack to get the engine into the rear mount.



Tightening the last of the engine bolts.

Latest News
With all the shops and deliveries on hold. I have been cleaning and painting a lot of little bits and pieces. The headlight shell and cover are not 34L but 43F and of course don't fit. Instead of buying a new front cowl. I welded some new brackets to the coke can thin head light shell with overkill large 2.5 mm rods. That was fun in not trying to burn holes in the headlight rim. I still have not found any part on this bike that is broken or smashed in some way. That is a pretty impressive effort by the previous owners.

Hopefully there should be a big truck backing up to my garage this week with some or all the parts I had ordered early in December. I am not counting on the fork springs to arrive though. On the way, I have new gold rims and spokes, decal set, new rubbers for under the tank and rear shock boot, new rear duck tail, throttle/ switch block from Europe , a new conrod and seat cover from the UK, A whole list of tiny small things to rebuild the engine with from Boats.net.

Cleaned off all the rust and repainted the brake hub. And yes, the brake pad are chipped and broken


New looking foot pegs. Looks like the side stand has been broken and re welded at some stage.


Found a brand new one of these.


Also found a new one of these


Over kill on the headlight bracket


Spokes arrived today. I had a bit of a panic moment in a couple of ways. I first thought the front spokes where to small and secondly the plating looked rubbish. The spokes I ordered are the same as stock in a polished mild steel and for $100 delivered for both sets. Turned out the nipples were screwed right down the thread making the spoke look to short in length. Under closer inspection the plating has a dull protective coating and each spoke needs to be cleaned before placing in the hub. A pic of the old spoke and the new ones.


I had high expectations of getting a fair bit of work done this week end. Sadly, no parts arrived except the new spokes. Must be held up with the last of the Christmas rush. I have received a few emails of offering of support in help finding a whole lot of missing parts. All I can say is thank you, thank you very much. I need all the help I can muster as I muddle through this restoration.

I think my carburettor needs some work.


Here is a short movie of the con rod. Would be a lot easier to buy a new a crank. If I could find a crank assembly, that was in good condition. I would buy it. To save the hassle of pulling this one apart.


Today, I sifted through the bins of parts and try and figure what parts I am missing. Still hard to tell. I am missing the triangle engine mount brackets.



Moved on to roughly fitting some small parts like the side stand


Moved on to taking the seat cover off the seat and check how bad the foam would be before refitting the new seat cover that should arrive this week from Dave Lambeth. The person who have recovered the seat before had done a good job.


Back onto my favourite job of cleaning the air box. I can now see why the engine destroyed itself. The amount of dirt inside the inner cambers of the air box was impressive by how much dirt was in there and the intake tubes. Took close to 2 hours to clean the inside of the air box. It looked like that on the inside as well. Must have been used without an air filter for a long time.


A repair to the air box.


Still waiting of parts to arrive. Found out today, that my missing fork springs might have been sent by sea instead of air I can only work on the bits I have. I had the worrying job of placing the decals on tank. I could not figure out why the decals were not lining up at the start. The tank is curved and the decals are cut on a flat surface. I had to manually adjust the lines the best I could to get the decals to line up in a straight line.



Another afternoon in the garage. Fiddling around on little jobs. Fitted the mono cross decals to the swing arm.


Pop riveted the mudflap back on the air box.


I roughly fitted the air box and oil tank to see how it goes together


My NOS con rod arrived in the mail today. Yesterday, I went for a drive with the barrel and head to the machine shop. The barrel is going out to first oversize in 96 mm instead of 95 mm. This will Increase the engine capacity from 595cc to 602cc. The head is going to cleaned up and the shop will let me know if I need new valves or not. New Wiseco piston in standard compression is on the way.


The week end rolls around and time to get the hands dirty. I have been putting off working on the carburettor. My first thoughts were to buy another set as these covered in dirt and grease. The slide and all the mechanicals were frozen solid. The intakes were covered in crap as well.

A before pic to get an idea of what I was facing.


First step was to pull the carbs apart to see how bad they really are and then clean them. One part at a time. Set up a table and turn on the radio.



I don’t know how these carbs worked at all. Not one gasket in whole twin carb. All the slides and needles had a dried up fuel on them as you can see by the float.


After few of hours of cleaning. A set of carbs that might work. Also had find some 2.5 mm fuel line to rejoin the carbs back together.

Almost like a new one.


Next job on the to do list. Is to clean the the engine cases of years of dirt and grease and repaint them. Fingers crossed. I will start on putting the engine back together in the couple of weeks.
Like most jobs. It does take a lot longer to complete than you first think. I have a set of polished stainless steel cap screw set on its way to hight light the satin black case paint.


After a mornings ride on Ms Pearl it was back to the garage and fit some new bearings to the engine casings. I had taken quite a few photos as I was pulling the engine down. In the vain hope I could remember which bearing went where.




Starting to sort through the electrics and got caught out again in thinking the parts in the box actually belong to this bike. I ordered a new ignition switch with 4 wires as the ignition I had, has 4 wires. Doh.. The wiring loom has the standard 6 wires. How did the previous person make 4 into 6 work? Back on the internet to order a 6 wire Ignition switch.


I have never recovered a seat before and thought. What is worse thing that could happen. I would have to buy a new cover and take it to a professional to have it recovered. I came home from the hardware store with a hand held stapler to give it a go. The seat has been re foamed at some stage and is not quite the same shape as the standard seat in being more rounded in shape.


Looks straight forward enough. Stretch the cover over and staple it. The hand stapler is use less as you end up with more reject staples not going in all the way. One in and two rejects.


As much as I tried. I could not get it right. With wrinkles in cover the bottom of the neck. Back to the hard ware store and bought an air stapler. That is a lot better. I could pull the fabric taught and staple away. Still ended up with a couple wrinkles. The tighter I pulled the fabric. The more the horn of the seat keeps on pulling back away from the tank and make bigger wrinkles. The photos look worse than it is. Thinking back about how I would do it again. Instead of starting at either end, like I tried. I would start were the wrinkles are and move both directions toward the front and the back of the seat at the same time.

I think, I will call this bike two times. I seem to have to do every thing at least twice to get the job done right. If I cannot live with the wrinkles. I have the seat recovered



Slow going in the building front. The parts I ordered last year are still no where to be seen. It is looking like they won’t arrive until March.
I have been looking at how parts fit on this bike. I did not pull the bike apart and have never owned a XT600 before. It is a bit of a guessing game in which order parts go together.


Back to priming parts for the bike. Let the parts dry. Then paint the side covers and cowl with the same clear white as the tank and allow to dry again. Mask up the parts for the black sections


Add a bit of clear white to match the colour of the tank. I will allow the parts to harden up over a few days and mask up the parts. For the stain black sections and add the decals to the side covers.



Masked up the panels and painted the black using a stain black.


I had another try at taking off and recovering the seat with the new cover. Not perfect, but a lot better than before. This time I used a lot of contact adhesive spray on the inside of the cover to try and stop it from rippling at the neck.


I would say a big hello to fellow Tenere owners of Switzerland, Germany an Italy Many thanks for all your encouragement. My fork springs finally arrived a couple of days ago and was a quick job of installing the springs. I did not realise just how soft the old springs were. Now I will have to find a new rear shock to match the front.

A new ignition switch arrived today. Old vs New. I now have a key to start the bike.......


Also a carburettor repair kit arrived. Back to the table and finish off rebuilding the carburettor. Like the rest of this bike, I have never seen a carburettor in such poor condition. The carburettor could not have worked very well, if at all. There were no rubber gaskets any where. The seat of the needle and seat was glued in place. As was the pin that holds on the float.


All back together and working as far as I can tell.


Arrived home to parcels that arrived while I had been away. I now have a lot of parts to carry on with and start moving on the Tenere. Including the rims that had been missing for 62 days.


Yippee. I can start building some wheels and make a rolling chassis.


After 4 hours, I was back at the start. The spoke kit I bought a few months ago is wrong for the XT600. The head of the spokes are at the wrong angle and make impossible to get the hub in the right place. After a few hours of trying to get the hub to sit right. I found out all the spokes are of slightly different length........


I gave up on the wheels and moved onto the bike. Fitted the new fork boots. Fitted the instruments. Repainted and fitted the headlight bracket. Fitted the headlight, indicators and front cowl.



Front end is starting to look good and now it is time to clean up the rear of the bike.


I ordered some more new spokes and this set is a lot better than the other set at a cost of 3 times of the overseas spokes.

18 spokes done and 18 to go


All spokes in place and awaiting truing.


I don’t have a truing stand. I used the front axle in the vice.


Repeated the same for the rear wheel. 18 inside first and then the 18 outside. Used the vice as a truing stand.


A pair of new wheels.


I had Michelin Sirac’s tires fitted to the rims.


I wonder what the bike looks like with the wheels on? There is a big hole in the middle...


Thats better. The engine is back in the frame. Starting to look like a bike now.


I have not been the garage very much of late. Our short summer has arrived and have been out riding my other bikes. A big box arrived while I was away riding.


A new Wilbers rear mono shock was in the box.


And fitted in to the motorcycle


A rainy day. Means a good day to be fiddling around on the tenere. Fitted the Carbs to bike and fitted the throttle and cables. Only to notice I don't have a choke Maybe I can fit one that does not need a cable. Not really into too many cables.



New 2nd hand throttle


Fitted the new fender and 2nd hand mud guard.


And back together

Well that was a bit of an effort to put all that up. The resto is now up to date. A couple of weeks ago. One of my eclectic mates drops around with a cardbord box. Saying that he noticed the bolts on the Tenere looked a bit crap and I need one these plating kits to jazz up the bolts.



Random photo from my drive way yesterday.To see if any body is checking in.

Third time reading this & it gets better every time Dan, serious.

If i could have my dream workshop, with my dream builders you would be in there along with (in alphabetical order) Andy, Danny, Distech, Geoff, John Boston, Les, Lucas, Luke, MXRob, Nord`s, Ron Seida, and the list goes on & ive missed heaps.

Imagine that crew with a mountain of cash & you said "lets build some bikes"

Now that would be a TV show id watch.

Forget that bullshit Monster Garage, with Jesse suck my gonads James
Or the American Chopper crap with "im on roids do as i say" bullshit, keep it fucking real.

Mezo.