thought i'd start a thread about my very very gradual progress bringing my crm to a fit state after being left in a family members garage for some time. i bought it off of my cousin because i was itching to start hare and hounding and i knew that he had one sitting not doing a lot, i only had this photo to go on.

not too bad i thought at first but then we got chatting and it turned out it was a non runner and was in dire need of a chain, sprockets, tyres etc the list seemed to go on. realising how much needed doing to it he made a very kind gesture and just gave me the bike for nothing to get it out of his way. having dabbled with the internals of a couple of CBRs and suzuki two strokes before i was keen to know more and thought this would also now be an ideal project/first full strip down. got it home and gave it a clean then began to pull it apart.

the more i took off, the more i realised a) how much of a clean up job this was going to be and b) that this might not have been as well looked after by all of the previous owners as i hoped.

once i'd got in amongst the cases i found that 2 rings had gone, the piston had cracked and the barrel had been badly scored. this i was expecting because there was no compression. what i wasn't expecting however was to find the inside of the cases full of mud, water and poo. here are the gear shafts and inside of the casings (this is after i've tipped out the floating mess in the casing).

check out the bearings it was safe to say none of them even turned.

It's a bike not a submarine . Looks like it was test run in a cess pit .

after hours and hours cleaning the insides with a toothbrush and spending time on the phone to leisure trail i'm now up and running internally. still pleanty to tweak though. new nobblies (mitas ef08 and c02) and chain/sprocket set (13/45), next step is to do my forks and give it a proper run off road to see what leaks/breaks/falls off etc.

knackeredMk1 wrote:It's a bike not a submarine . Looks like it was test run in a cess pit .

it was hard to even tell where it had all come in from because the whole thing was so covered in it. the crank was also swimming in a few litres of gunky 'oil'. safe to say i've learnt a fair bit about the importance of regular oil changes now

WHAT HEADLIGHT BULB DO YOU USE? lOOKS VERY BRIGHT!!

Halogen bulbs tend to melt the lens .

it's not actually that bright in the flesh, i think my camera phone just makes it look a lot more epic than it is in those pictures.

If yo use an AR light you can put what bulbs you like in as it is GLASS.

The AR lens won't fit straight into the Mk1/2 surround. I looked into it and it can be done but it would not look good as far as I was concerned. Also you can buy a new Trailtech complete headlight for ~ the price of a new AR lens and this gives much better lighting though you have to be very ruthless in removing unwanted wiring around the headstock and you would have to change the speedo panel.

i'll save that mod for when i prang the front end and end up buying a trail tech vapor

first ride out = motocross practice day in april = two broken ankles (one in the morning session and one in the afternoon, naturally ). which means that the poor thing has been stuck in a garage all summer so i decided to spend my time getting it roadworthy and it passed it's MOT yesterday. look out green lanes.