Bit of Elbow Greece!

Today Ive been to my local motor store to buy some Gunk Engine Cleaner to get all the dirt and grime off. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked to because I didn’t start it till about 3pm, and it gets dark for about 4:30pm. But I did manage to get the right side of the engine cover cleaned up. It still looks messy as I found out that it has previously been painted over before. Now the side casing is clean, the next step will be to get it sand blasted ready for me to paint gold. Same goes with the rocker cover top, there must have been about 20 years worth of muck, greece, oil etc on there. I managed to get most of it off but still it could do with doing another one or two times just to bring it up more.

Below is some photos of the after math and what I used to clean it with:

This is an excelent cleaning product. It gets rid of any oil, paint, greece, grit, muck. As you can see from the pic this is the “Brush On” version, you can buy spray on Gunk  but due to the thickness of the grime my decision was to use the brush on Gunk.

“To clean my covers I poured about just below half a cup full of Gunk into a cup and used a stiff tooth bruth to scrape away the grime. Don’t wipe it off though!. Cover the entier cover and leave for about 10 minutes. I left it for about 20 – 25 minutes because the grime was thicker. After I washed off the Gunk chemical with hot water, gave it a quick wipe with a clean dry cloth and left it look much better.”

As you can see from the picture above it looks a hell of alot cleaner. There is major scratches on and around the Yamaha logo. and some big paint chips. I realised this engine has been painted before so next week I will be getting it sand-blasted ready to repaint a gold colour.

Engine Colour Ideas:

Just a quick thought, I have put below a quick colour chart for you to see my idea’s of what colours i’ll be painting my engine.

When I took the right side of the engine casing off I noticed that inside the engine, or where the clutch plates are etc, the engine looked in mint condition on the inside. I think with some Engine Flush mixed in with the oil when the bikes done will give the insde of the bike a good clean.

As you can see from the picture above the inside looks in great shape, which is very good news to me as I only have to deal with the external parts.

Engine Specifications

Ok just a quick up-date for you guys. So ive been doing alot of research on the net and came across this web site www.motorcyclespecs.co.za.

It basically tells you all about the engine of all the bikes made from different years etc.

The link below is to match my engine, just incase you would like to know abit more about the engine its self.

http://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/model/yamaha/yamaha_xs400%2077.htm

The Engine: Part 1

The bike I decided to build was origionaly going to be a Yamaha XS650 Bobber, with a slight look to the 1950’s gangsta bobber with their thick white wall tyres, and loud popping engines. But as my grandad already had an old XS400 engine, which he so kindly gave to me free of charge, I decided this would be a great start to my first bobber build. Helping me do this project is my old man and my grandad … Simply because I know nothing about engines, which is another reason for this build, I will be learning about bike engines, how they work, and how to build them.

I hope you will enjoy my blogs, I will keep them up to date as much as I can. If you are someone like me who is interested in building a project bike of your dreams, then I hope my blogs will help you as there will be lots of detail and photos of what we did etc.

Cleaning The Engine: Pt.1

As you will see from the photo’s below, the engine is in a terrible state! Infact I think alot of people would just throw away the engine if they saw how bad it looked. But! I am a man of faith and I can promise you this engine will be cleaned up, inside and out side, and fully refurbished and working again!. There is bits of the engine missing but to be honnest, I really couldn’t care less because not only do I get to clean the engine, but also when we refurbish and re-build it I should know alot about the XS400.

At this present stage all I can do at the minute, is clean the out side of the engine due to no funds in the bank!. But never the less I will do a detailed description on what utensils, cleaning products and any other relevant information you might like to know.

One Dirty Engine: As you can see from the photo’s below how bad the engine looks, also the parts that are missing.

“These are all the photo’s I have at the minute, The next lot of photos will be mainly of the after look of the engine once it’s been cleaned. Also I will take a picture of some cleaning products I will have used”