Graham's Blog

Well, got my exhaust gaskets to repair what sounded like blown ones and taking off the rad on this and exposing the damage of rain and neglect by who ever owned this machine was a eye opener!

After leaving overnight with a good squirting of wd40, I tried undoing the nuts on the exhaust studs. These bolts were corroded and a pig to undo, one sheered clean off to the casing and the other one broke in half leaving half the nut still on tight. Now I can see the only way to get this exhaust off and access to the studs is to cut away the corroded on nut and I will have to use a screw extractor to hopefully remove the one that sheered off.

So I got 4 off, but leaves these 1 to remove and 1 broken stub.

As you can see in the pics, this is going to need a lot of cleaning up and painting as there is a lot of rust etc behind the rad, and no surprise really with a design that sits the rad right behind the exhaust headers and all the bolts etc.

I would imagine loads are going to have or had this problem on this model.

There is no space to get a nut splitter in on the half stuck bolt and as its rusted on , I think I will have to drill or grind it off, the one thats sheered off, I shall have to drill a small hole in it and then get a scew extractor into it. I just hope the screw extractor tip dont break off on the hole as that is a worse case sernario of using that tool.

Still untill the new tools arrive I will set about taking apart and cleaning up the rad and fan which looks like its been through a war;-)

Well into my next bike I bought a couple of months back and one only 9 years old this time 😉 It looks like it was left out in all weathers and never cleaned once. Hence it has a lot of rust, which I have started to try and remove and also the paint from the wheels has started to fall off. So this needs a lot of tlc to get back to a decent condition, as always in pics, it dont look too bad, it looks rather more tatty in the flesh though. The exhaust gaskets have all blown and thats my next job to replace those and give it a really good clear up and spray the wheels.

Also with this bike, it dont come with a center stand, how much did that really bring the price down? So its either get a paddock stand or a main stand add on for this model, either a must or you cant tension the chain, remove the wheel etc.

Also just got insurance sorted and it seems these days you cant put more than 1 bike on the same policy, so had to take out 2 seperate insurance policys , which is a bummer and expensive for riding both of these during any summer weather we get. Still hopefully aftter some work, I can still get to try this one out this year if weather does get better. And also I can see why the insurance on this was £150 pounds dearer than my other CX500. Where the CX has 50 bhp, this one has almost 100 bhp. Nice 😉