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Some of you may have seen a few posts about my 1982 Katana which I purchased nearly a year ago (in August of 2013)
I'd had my eye on this local bike for a couple of years but the owner was torn between restoring it himself and putting it up for auction. The owner operates a motorcycle / small engine repair and in the 80's was one of the best big Japanese four mechanics in the city (his specialty the GS1100) It was in very nice shape mechanically but cosmetically quite rough. The paint was peeling badly and rust was beginning to show in the usual places. It had an awful looking MAC header on it and sounded dreadful. The guy knew I was hot for the bike and agreed to sell it to me if was to also buy a 1983 Yamaha Seca Turbo. Begrudgingly, I bought both and I cleaned up the Yamaha and quickly sold it this spring.
Initially I was planning on just a wholesale clean-up and one thing led to another and I ended up doing a full cosmetic restoration. Stripped to the bone, engine of the bench, powder-coated the frame and frame parts and all the black bits. Took a while but I found the perfect powder coat match in BMW silver from a local wheel restoration company. The paint was done to perfection by Mint Autobody who have done bike jobs for me in the past. They hate doing them because of how much work they are.
Sourced a ton of NOS parts from Bike Bandit and my local dealer. The picture of the parts below is not all of them by a long shot, that was just the initial pile.
Unlike some people I did not photograph every step but took a few here, snapped when I got the urge.
The engine was very fresh and a strong runner and needed very little (I put about 1,000 k's on it last fall and was super-happy with how it performed) and other than valves and and some carb work, internal clean-up, gaskets etc the engine was untouched. The previous owner was fanatical abut service (not so much on aesthetics)
Anyhow, it came off the lift today and I took the first blast on it in about 10 months. I am thrilled with how nice it feels with the new rubber, shocks, bearings, fork seals (the works. even replaced the rear wheel isolator rubbers)
Here are some pics:
I knew from the get-go I would be going with one of Chris Redpath's Moto GPWerks pipes. My friend Tony Bucci (Toronto Katana expert) handles these pipes and some other cool custom parts. He got me the pipe and a gorgeous set of 4 billet aluminum flanges (sadly I lost one and had to use the standard ones that came with the pipe but I have a replacement on the way and will pop 'em on next week)
The parts list is too long to mention... This is by no means everything but pretty much everything in my initial Bike Bandit and Suzuki orders. The OEM seat and shocks were the priciest individual parts. The new seat is a different color than the original but I took the original to an upholstery dye expert and I have the light grey one if I want to go "retro". The shocks for the '82 are discontinued but the '83's are much nicer looking in my opinion. The Ballistic Li-ion batter seen here was returned when I found a better fitting and better looking Phantom Li-I unit.
Oh, the white-lettered tire fiasco... In another post we were talking about doing bike tires. I found an amazing painter to do mine using a hard to source vinyl paint. Long story short; it looked great for a few days and then began to yellow and get brittle. The lettering did not survive the tire mounting and I had to scrub them clean. The paint would not bond to the rubber and I wrote that one off to experience.
Bought 2 sets of SS Allen bolt "Dress kits" (one for case / one for the carbs) also still had almost another full set from my Z-1R resto so I had lots of spares for other places (purists may cringe that I did not go with original screw-head bolts but I love the look of SS and have them on most of my bikes) Cases were good (only had to replace a scraped up breaker cover) stripped the rest and polished them. Did not clear coat. I did however clear coat he fork legs after stripping them.
Gold EK 530 chain, GS550 rear sprocket (perfect match) and used one of Katman's front sprockets. I figure with the chain, pipe, Lithium Ion battery and losing the center-stand I have shed around 30lbs or more off the bike.
To be continued...
I'd had my eye on this local bike for a couple of years but the owner was torn between restoring it himself and putting it up for auction. The owner operates a motorcycle / small engine repair and in the 80's was one of the best big Japanese four mechanics in the city (his specialty the GS1100) It was in very nice shape mechanically but cosmetically quite rough. The paint was peeling badly and rust was beginning to show in the usual places. It had an awful looking MAC header on it and sounded dreadful. The guy knew I was hot for the bike and agreed to sell it to me if was to also buy a 1983 Yamaha Seca Turbo. Begrudgingly, I bought both and I cleaned up the Yamaha and quickly sold it this spring.
Initially I was planning on just a wholesale clean-up and one thing led to another and I ended up doing a full cosmetic restoration. Stripped to the bone, engine of the bench, powder-coated the frame and frame parts and all the black bits. Took a while but I found the perfect powder coat match in BMW silver from a local wheel restoration company. The paint was done to perfection by Mint Autobody who have done bike jobs for me in the past. They hate doing them because of how much work they are.
Sourced a ton of NOS parts from Bike Bandit and my local dealer. The picture of the parts below is not all of them by a long shot, that was just the initial pile.
Unlike some people I did not photograph every step but took a few here, snapped when I got the urge.
The engine was very fresh and a strong runner and needed very little (I put about 1,000 k's on it last fall and was super-happy with how it performed) and other than valves and and some carb work, internal clean-up, gaskets etc the engine was untouched. The previous owner was fanatical abut service (not so much on aesthetics)
Anyhow, it came off the lift today and I took the first blast on it in about 10 months. I am thrilled with how nice it feels with the new rubber, shocks, bearings, fork seals (the works. even replaced the rear wheel isolator rubbers)
Here are some pics:
I knew from the get-go I would be going with one of Chris Redpath's Moto GPWerks pipes. My friend Tony Bucci (Toronto Katana expert) handles these pipes and some other cool custom parts. He got me the pipe and a gorgeous set of 4 billet aluminum flanges (sadly I lost one and had to use the standard ones that came with the pipe but I have a replacement on the way and will pop 'em on next week)
The parts list is too long to mention... This is by no means everything but pretty much everything in my initial Bike Bandit and Suzuki orders. The OEM seat and shocks were the priciest individual parts. The new seat is a different color than the original but I took the original to an upholstery dye expert and I have the light grey one if I want to go "retro". The shocks for the '82 are discontinued but the '83's are much nicer looking in my opinion. The Ballistic Li-ion batter seen here was returned when I found a better fitting and better looking Phantom Li-I unit.
Oh, the white-lettered tire fiasco... In another post we were talking about doing bike tires. I found an amazing painter to do mine using a hard to source vinyl paint. Long story short; it looked great for a few days and then began to yellow and get brittle. The lettering did not survive the tire mounting and I had to scrub them clean. The paint would not bond to the rubber and I wrote that one off to experience.
Bought 2 sets of SS Allen bolt "Dress kits" (one for case / one for the carbs) also still had almost another full set from my Z-1R resto so I had lots of spares for other places (purists may cringe that I did not go with original screw-head bolts but I love the look of SS and have them on most of my bikes) Cases were good (only had to replace a scraped up breaker cover) stripped the rest and polished them. Did not clear coat. I did however clear coat he fork legs after stripping them.
Gold EK 530 chain, GS550 rear sprocket (perfect match) and used one of Katman's front sprockets. I figure with the chain, pipe, Lithium Ion battery and losing the center-stand I have shed around 30lbs or more off the bike.
To be continued...
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