Up and Down and Up and Down and Up and...

So the last couple of days have been a bit of a roller-coaster emotionally. I went back into the garage late on the evening that I found the head gasket might have blown, ostensibly to tidy up and move the bikes around in the garage but in the end I just had a few beers, listened to the KLF's White Room on repeat and glared looked at the bike resentfully. The idea of getting this far with the bike and then to find it could be terminally borked (or at least beyond repair for me in the time left) was pretty frustrating.

Earlier that evening, to say thank you to Martin and the rest of the people at Cornwall Kawasaki, Jayne baked them a chocolate cake which I dropped off the next day.

 

Fun Fact: There's not enough green M&M's in a large packet to do two letters on a large chocolate, so we had to use some viagra blue too. Either way, the cake went down a treat, Martin was very happy and shared it between the others in the shop. Talking to the owner Mark about the head gasket he mentioned they'd just taken a Divvy 900 as a trade in that would be in budget if I needed it, or that if I could drop the engine out of the bike, they might be able to change the head gasket for me before the 21st. Hopefully it won't come to that, but it was really nice of him to offer it. I went for a walk and lunch with my mum at Tehidy Woods afterwards and tried to forget about the bike for a day.

Which was going quite well until I nipped into the garage late that evening to again tidy up and ended up working on it into the wee hours. The evening before I noticed that applying the front brake only sometimes makes the brake light go on. Whilst the tank was off I figured I'd clean the connector block and see if that helps. Occasionally when you press the starter button absolutely nothing happens, which is always unpleasant. Press it once or twice more and suddenly the starter motor will fire so I'm thinking corroded electrics in a connector somewhere. I found the obvious one and although it looked good it got a good clean but that didn't help the brake light issue. The two connectors to the microswitch on the master cylinder got a clean and that didn't help either so I figured it was the microswitch. I turned the master cylinder upside down and worked some contact cleaner in where the lever of the microswitch enters the body, then activated it a dozen times with a screwdriver. The screw that holds the microswitch onto these Nissin master-cylinders are always made of the cheapest cheese that Kawasaki have swept off some defunct dairy's floor and they are always rusted. This one was worse than average and I didn't even bother to think about trying to undo it. KHI want £25 for the switch too, and I know I've got one knocking around in a box of spares somewhere. Spent an hour searching and unearthed an ER6 master cylinder, but no microswitch to be found. Once I bolted the master-cylinder back to the bar I found that I'd solved the intermittent brake light problem, but I must have let an air bubble from the internal reservoir into the piston or brake lines as now the lever would come back to the bar and give virtually no brake pressure.

I removed a caliper and pushed the pistons back in thinking that would force the air bubble back into the m/c piston and hopefully up into the reservoir. That didn't work, so I found the bleed kit that was still covered in brake fluid from the journey back from Portimao and thought rats to it, I'm off to bed. Which, at long gone midnight was the right decision.

This morning after the school run I bled the brakes but got no bubbles from the m/c banjo or the higher side (when on the sidestand) of the splitter just below the lower yoke. No bubbles either from the calipers themselves and lastly when I bled some fluid out of the final banjo at the splitter I suddenly got lever pressure. No idea why air should have ended up there but it did and I was happy as my next job would have been to think about changing to the ER6 master cylinder and work out how to move the microswitch across with it's rusted on money metal bolt. I also found out around this point that I must have left the ignition on somehow and that the battery was down to 2.6v.

So out came the big but almost new battery and onto the charger. Out came the little lithium from the ZX6r and plugged in so I could get on with the next job.

I pushed the bike out of the garage, drained the coolant into a milk bottle, filled it up again and drained that too into the bottle before sticking the hose into the top of the radiator and giving the system a flush. There's obviously been oil in the system at one point, possibly quite a lot too. The expansion bottle was absolutely filthy, to the point where I had to pour in some brake cleaner with a couple of washers and give it a shake for a few minutes. Weirdly it was the bottom of the expansion bottle, I thought the congealed oil would float at the top, unless it's run dry in the past?

Anyway, this is the old stuff and it was grim. I've filled the system with some cheap diluted Comma ethylene glycol that is allegedly safe for alu engines and will run the bike for a tankful of petrol at least and see if the coolant system fills with oil. If it does, well we'll cross that bridge when we get to it but I suspect the ZXR400 will get dragged out of the garage to be honest.

I had fight to get the bodywork on, last night I'd found one of the repaired lugs had snapped off the upper fairing so I'd epoxied it back on. Evidently not quite in the right place so out came the drill but that was a simple fix. All the lights worked when it was back on so it was time I took it for a ride, and specifically to go to the petrol station for some E5 fuel.

It made it to Lanner and Cornwall Kawasaki quite happily. It runs well, tamping quickly up to 60 mph and beyond where beforehand it would asthmatically begrudgingly get to 40mph eventually. It's loud though, too loud for 1000 miles in one go so the baffles will be going back in. It pops and bangs a little on the overrun but it doesn't smell like its running too rich and the revs fall nicely rather than hanging when shutting the throttle so I don't think there's an air leak anywhere. I'm not going to mess with the carbs, it is what it is and I've not go the budget to take it to the dyno and get it set up perfectly.

For now I'm just going to ride it for a hundred miles or so and see what else breaks/falls off/seizes. I'll change the coolant again, with any luck there will be no more oil arriving unexpectedly but we'll see.

MoT next Tuesday. I'm not going to say I feel confident but...