Si Quieres Hacer Reír a Dios, Dile Tus Planes

The Spanish have a proverb that literally translates to If you wish to make God laugh, tell him your plans... which has turned out to be quite apt today.

This morning I returned to Cornwall Kawasaki in Lanner to pick up my freshly cleaned and rebuilt carbs. Martin has done a fantastic job upon them rebuilding using a mix of the original parts after a lot of cleaning, a few from the Chinese rebuild kit, namely the diaphragms and a fair few bits out of his personal stash. For all this I was charged nothing more than the cost of the cleaning fluid, for which I'm incredibly grateful for, especially knowing that Martin took the carbs home with him and worked upon them in his own time over the weekend.

I'll keep the spares for now, but I think they're fit for little more than the bin unfortunately. I reassembled the now clean airbox and oiled the filter. It was lose in the the airbox when I got the bike so although not new it's had little air sucked through it so point nibbling biting further into the budget...

I then fitted the carbs to the bike making sure the throttle and choke cables were correctly tensioned and adjusted. When removing the carbs I had made a couple of videos on my phone to remind me of where each hose attached and it's route which I would have been seriously stuck without. Even so I had to take them off a number of times to get everything right.

At this point I rigged up a dummy tank with a cupful of petrol in and after plugging the vacuum tube to the tap it started up merrily and settled into a fast idle. Blipping the throttle meant both CV slides did what they were supposed to do and slid up allowing more air into the engine. That means the carbs are good. Very good.

The next thing to do it to get the airbox in place and securely attached to the carb inlets, which is where I hit a wall. It's almost as thought the carbs are artificially angled downwards on their inlet manifold rubbers or that the airbox isn't able to go down far enough in the bikes frame. On the underside of the airbox is a moulded recess to which it fits into a cross-member on the frame. There is some bracing around the top shock mount that isn't replicated in the airbox and so won't sit as far down as it needs to. I'm wondering if this is the original airbox or is one from a slightly earlier GPZ or an ER-5?

I was really starting to lose my patience with the airbox, not lease because time was ticking and I've obviously got the MoT booked for tomorrow. I've got to pick up Sam from school and my mother is coming to stay this week too and needs collecting from the train station. I assumed I'd be able to have the bike back together before school kick out time but clearly someone had other plans for me.

Despite it being a warm day the carb to airbox rubbers were being incredibly reluctant to fit around the inlets so out came the garage hairdryer to put a bit more malleability into the old rubber.

I finally managed to figure out how to get the rubbers on, it involved having the carb to manifold rubber clamps on as lose as possible, opening up the tiny lid of the airbox and removing the filter so I could get my hand inside and push the rubbers from the inside onto the carbs whilst wiggling the carbs themselves up and down. I also ended up removing half of the luggage rack and both side panels completely which is what I should have done in the first place if I'm being honest. 

After a lot of swearing, some internal manoeuvring more often seen on an Obs & Gynae ward and the removal of a significant amount of skin and hair off my arms from the sharp edges of the filter housing I finally got everything in the right place and sealed up properly.

 

I do not want to have to go through that again. But at least I know how and that it can be done. I'll have to keep and eye on it to make sure that the rubbers are not under too much stress and pop off like it was when I received the bike. Something clearly isn't quite right, possibly a part mismatch but I can't be throwing new bits at the bike to find out what works as I have neither the time nor the budget for that. The three hoses that connect to the underside of the airbox are all in place and secure, as are the vacuum hoses and the overflow. The coolant hoses for the carb heater circuit was back in place so my final thing to do was to top up the radiator to replace the coolant that had been lost.

And that's when He/She started to laugh.

The radiator cap was thickly covered in what looks like mayonnaise with more blobs of the stuff in the expansion bottle. Or more accurately emulsified oil, and the leading cause of oil in the cooling system? Our survey says; a blown head gasket.

Suboptimal

If you're reading this and amused by my many failures yet heartened by the successes may I please ask you dig down the back of the sofa and pop whatever you find it in the Cancer Research fund-raising page at:

https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/spikesldu

Thank you, I really appreciate it.