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Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 3:03 am Post subject: A100-3 Rebuild
[I posted this on another thread, but thought I'd start a new one for the rebuild]
It's good to know I'm not the only one with this particular malfunction.
Just got this A100 below. Not sure of the year. Frame tag says A100-III, Frame # 70319. Has the key switch on the headlight, but also on the left cover. Has the round rear taillight. The pictures are very flattering. All the chrome and paint are badly pitted. It has the original key and the key-tag with the owners address and phone number. The phone number is from a beach area about 200km from me, which would explain all the surface rust. I'd like to call the number one day and see if the original owner is still at that address.
It sort-of ran when I got it. Plenty of smoke, clutch slipped badly, if it had valves I'd swear they were doing the cha-cha on the top of the piston. Just this strange bop-pop-rattle sound. I took my 7yo daughter for a hoon around the paddock and ka-poot, she was gone...(not the daughter).
Rebuild time..hehehehe...
On Order. Should arrive in about 2-3 weeks. This all cost $140, $US120. All NOS.
Full Gasket Kit -$US9
1.00 Oversize piston,rings,gudgeon pin $US40
RH brake/indicator assembly - $US40 - that hurt. Had no choice. Brake lever pivot point had snapped.
LH Inspection Cover over points. Brand shiny new - $US20
Clutch friction plates - $US25
This weekend is pull-down time. All the painted stuff gets a rub down and put in primer. Small chrome bits will get a bit of polish. Front and rear fenders are too far gone to save, so will sand and primer, then a soft silver poly finish. New shiny chrome fenders cost me $A200 - they can wait 6 months.
Also got me some polishing gear. Not sure if you have seen this thread , How to polish Aluminium
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 3:34 am Post subject:
Day 1 :
This is going to be a complete rebuild/repaint. I'd like to get the bike to a stage so that I can potter about on the road when the mood takes me. The reason I bought it was to get to learn about 2-stroke motors.
The first day is break-down day.
These are some pics showing how bad everything looks:
Biggest problem is the rear guard. Thought I'd be able to just sand and paint. Looks like someone tried that before [and did a crap welding job]. That's afternoon sunlight blazing thru the metal.
Looks like I have no choice but to go for the new guards.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:06 am Post subject:
End of Day 1.
Not much left:
Getting everything off the frame took longer than I expected, of course. All the 40 year old screws turned to butter as soon as I looked at them. I think I'll replace all the screws with stainless hex bolts when I do the rebuild. Normally this would be very expensive, but these small engines have very few fixing points.
Goods news is that all the electrics are like brand-new. Nice and easy to re-wire on the rebuild.
Only welding to be done is the fixing points on the foot pegs to the frame. The pegs on both sides are on a cradle that passes under the motor and are fixed to an engine mount. Both fixing points failed because the kickstarter hits the right peg. 40 yrs of tortion have taken their toll.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 2:35 am Post subject:
I'm waiting for the engine parts and still need to sort out the paint colour, so I got started on some metal polishing. The results below are on the first pass of the polishing. This is the result after 5-10 mins on each piece.
Fuel Cap:
Rear Brake drum - This was a real surprise. I thought it was too far gone to save and was going to paint it. This was about 10mins on the section on the right.
Right-hand throttle control. I've included the left-hand choke control just to show what they looked like before the polishing
Rear control arm - partial polish. Another surprise. Spent about 3mins on the part you can see polished. It looks even better this afternoon after I pulled it out of the "soup" - cooking vinegar I buy from the supermarket for $1 for 2 litres. Eats rust and oxidised aluminium and alloy better than anything that cost 10 times as much.
Joined: Oct 30, 2009 Posts: 536 Location: Parker, CO
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 7:23 am Post subject:
Looks like an extreme cleaning project! I would like further info on your methods. I've used white vinegar for light rust removal in fuel tanks with great success (even being able to prevent any flash rust), but thought it was bad for any aluminum such as petcocks, brake drums, engine covers, handle bar controls etc. Let us know what other rubbing compounds or products you are also using if any. Are you actually boiling parts in cooking vinegar, and is that the same as white vinegar? Whatever, it seems like your making progress and will be following your posts closely.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 2:15 am Post subject:
I just use white or brown vinegar, just depends on what they have on special at the time. I dont heat it. In fact it gets to 0 degrees Celsius here at the moment overnight and only gets to 5-10C during the day. I've thought about dropping in some electrodes to run a current thru it to see if that helps, but haven't done it yet.
I only drop in aluminium/alloys that have a lot of surface corrosion that have accumulated from nearby metal parts. I check then every afternoon, clean with wire brush and take them out as soon as all the iron oxide is gone. The aluminium ends up quite tarished, but the polishing brings it all off. The heat generated by the polishing should also burnish the metal so that any "pores" opened up by the acid are closed up to stop pitting in the future.
Al the heavily rusted parts I leave in for as long as it takes. I've had old exhaust parts from a Honda trail bike in the soup for months, comes out like new. But you need to paint them straight away , or surface rust will be back within an hour.
I've been using "blue" polishing compound on the aluminium. Doesn't work so well on some of the alloy parts on the triple-tree. Seems like it heats up too much and goes sticky. Have to try some different compounds. This is a really good polishing resource http://choppercharles.com/cs/forums/46509/ShowPost.aspx
Got the piston today from Thailand. Geez it's tiny - I'm used to 250/500 Thumpers!. The engine will wait until I've done the rest of the bike.
Found foot pegs cradle ($44) in great condition at a wrecker in Sydney. The guy used to wreck bikes until his bike mechanic business took off. He hasn't wrecked a bike for about 10 yrs. So....he has 300,000 parts in a badly-lit space above his workshop. He lets me take a torch and root around for what I want. Everything is really well organised on racks.. He charges about twice what you want to pay, but, hey if you want it, you'll buy it. Found a 8/10 rear wheel ($80) - Might save me cleaning and polishing the one off the bike. He wants $60 each for front and rear guards (5/10), so the brand new shiny's from Thailand are getting more attractive.
On the way out we were chatting and he said "Oh yeah, got a complete A100 in that room over there" . Had to climb over 8 bikes to get to, with the torch. Turns out it's a late '70s model that belongs to one of his customers. It's had a nose first into something solid, so front end is cactus. It's road-registered so has all the lights/mirrors etc. He's had it for 6 months while the customer decides what to do with it. He called her while I was there and left her a message asking if she wanted to sell. Same model sold here 2 weeks ago in good condition for $A500, so I'll offer $150. It will get me all the chrome bits I need, plus a spare motor.
Joined: Oct 30, 2009 Posts: 536 Location: Parker, CO
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 5:58 am Post subject:
Remove the tank badges and you should find a screw holding the chrome panel to the tank, if I remember right there is also a screw under the knee grips also, so the rubber will need to be removed by carefully stretching it outward over the clips first. I'm not sure if the chrome side panel will need to be slid either frontward or backward after the 2 screws are removed.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 1:18 am Post subject:
Had some time this afternoon, so I thought tackle a few of the parts that were worrying me.
The rear shocks have been soaking in the soup for the last week. I pull them out every afternoon and clean off them with a wire brush. I wasn't worried about the painted top section since I was going to paint it anyway. The lower chrome section was the problem. The rust was under the chrome and was badly pitted. Since I'm not going to pay to have them re-chromed, I thought I'd just de-chrome them, give them a polish and see how they look. First, took to them with a 60 grit sanding wheel. De-chromed in 10mins., 150 grit on a belt sander to take out some sanding marks, then 5mins on the polishing wheel. The sanding mops are pretty dirty now, so I'll give another good go before I put them back on. Hit the paint with a 40 grit palm sander. Took a pic showing a cleaned shock together with it's original brother.
The exhaust header had some really thick carbon deposits. Nearly 30mins on the 60 grit wheel. Good news that all chrome survived. Still need to do some polishing on the bend in the pipe.
2 hours work:
Also pulled the top of the motor so I can send the cylinder to get re-bored for the new piston. New and old pistons.
I'm going to try to put in a few hours tomorrow to clean and sand all the painted bits so I can get them in primer. I know once things start getting painted, motivation levels increase markedly.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 1:32 am Post subject:
Pulled the front-end apart. The front shocks had been painted with silver metallic, badly. Just wanted to get to the covers so I could prep them for painting. In the end I couldn't get the two nuts off the top of steering stem, so :
Before:
After 1hr 30min and 2 beers:
This is the sanding wheel I use. I'm about 2/3rds the way thru the first pass to get off the silver paint.
The painted stuff has gone into the soup to work on the surface rust. I'll only pull them out just before I paint - hopefully this week. I'll take the frame with me when I go to the machine shop to drop of the cylinder and piston and ask him to get the steering stem off for me.
Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Posts: 89 Location: Australia
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:18 am Post subject:
I'm going away for the weekend, so I snuck in a few hours this afternoon.
The cylinder is at the machine shop for the re-bore. Should get it back next week. I also left the frame with him to do some welding repairs around the foot peg cradle.
The paint has been colour matched and is ready to pickup. Colour is "Maui Blue Metallic". Suzuki paint code 797. I've never sprayed metallic before, so it should be interesting. It's a 2-pack paint, but apparently you use thinners(reducer) for the 2nd part, not hardener. It's will flash dry in about 30 minutes. You then put a 2-pack clear over the top. The paint is expensive $60 for 500ml = 1/4 gallon (??). I've got the clear already.
Time to address the fuel tank. Took me ages to get the first knee guard off. Just couldn't stretch it over the clips, and the clips were starting to bend. Then it came to me...heat gun...off in a jiffy. The shiny was in bad shape. You can see how it used to be in the section that was under the vinyl.
After about an hour, and I was really pushing hard with the 60grit wheel. Also, this is after about 10mins on the polishing mop. [just realised it's upside down in the pic. The other piece hasn't been touched]
A close up of the pitting:
To be honest I would have liked it to come up a bit better,but I've satisfied myself that it's a 40+ year old bike and the pitting tells a story about the bike. I could have bought new covers from Thailand - but whats the point. I'm content.
I'm going to try to take a day off work next week and get stuck into it. I need to see NEW PAINT!!
I've got a bit of momentum going at the moment and dont want to lose it.
Joined: Mar 27, 2010 Posts: 116 Location: Robbinsville, NC
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 2:47 am Post subject:
Congrats! Tremendous amount and work and progress toward your restoration.
Since I'm in the middle of a slightly different restoration, (Suzuki T500), thought I share one observation with you that might be helpful. Get that motor running and checked out before you finish the paint. You'd really hate to scratch up a fine paint job later on because you had to remove the motor a second time for crankshaft/transmission work.
I'm very glad I've waited on painting because since rebuilding my top-end, I just found out the lower end needs rebuilding, i.e., engine removal and subsequent installation. My T500 is going to be wearing primer grey paint for quite awhile yet.
Just a suggestion but I thought it might be useful in your planning.
CaptCatFish _________________ Old and ugly (but say it ain´t so)
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