Finally I’ve bought a 500...

[JonW]

Thanks guys!

Mark, I also liked those back in the day, they did a 250 twin and a 400F with that styling as well which looked great back then. I think they really were 'on trend' with that great styling and the packaging of the v four in that as like in this nc30, it makes for a nice slim engine. Actually thinking about it, if mine was a 750 it'd be more powerful and more in keeping with what I'd like... but then at the age of this machine it'd be an RC30 and that would mean 'unaffordable' to me in today's world lol Since my NC30 is a baby RC30... perhaps I could shove it into the back of the garage and let it grow up a bit! haha.

I will say that the more i look at it the more i like it so I'm defo loving having it here, its a bit rough round the edges and it has distracted me from what I should be doing (other bikes and my holiday planing lol) and I'm still in two minds what to do with it. This week my friend is coming over, if he isnt keen then I've no problem keeping it I think.

It has to be said that deep down I'd really like a nice push button bike that i could just go ride when I felt like it. Two strokes always seem to need more work than 4Ts. Another friend of mine raced an NC30 like this alongside his Kawa 125 2T about 10 years back. The 2T needed a rebuild most weeks, yet the Honda just needed more fuel adding to the tank before race day. The 2T needed rollers to start it, the VFR... push the button and go race. He raced it for a few years like that doing minimal work and it just kept going and going. This floored me, could life really be so easy LOL!

[silverstrom]

It has to be said that deep down I'd really like a nice push button bike that i could just go ride when I felt like it.

Funny you say that. When I saw the photo you posted I found myself thinking how nice it is to have a 4 stroke (x3) where I can push a button and ride. No worrying about overheating and seizing, no worrying about my autolube pump failing, no worrying about the many other things that happen to 2 strokes for no good reason. Just open the garage door, hit the starter button and go ride; all while getting double the gas mileage of my 2 strokes. Last week I found myself considering a change and buying an expensive and rare German car I have been lusting after for 30 years. I would sell all of the 2 strokes and keep all of the 4 strokes. For me, my 2 strokes are all toys. The 4 strokes are tools. It is not a subtle difference for me.

[Speed Freak]

Don't buy a Ducati 4 stroke otherwise you will change your opinion about 4 strokes

[2manyprjx]

Jon.

There's a good reason they call the bikes of the mid 80's to the early 90's the golden era. Those bikes had something special. I love spending the winters in my shop doing complete tear downs/rebuilds for myself. I just picked up a CBR400RR that'll be a fun one to do. Honda was building incredible bikes back then. The NC30 is a special bike. Enjoy it! Building up my collection has been such a blast as each bike has a personality. My RZ350 is probably the most fun to take for a quick spin. I'm in the process of painting the 500 to finish it up so it'll be on the road soon. I've ridden my buddy's after I worked on his so I can't wait to see how mine feels. Then there's the CBR250RR. What a Swiss watch that engine is. Not fast compared to the others but the sound of that engine at 19,000rpm just makes you grin. So I come back to the NC30. I probably spent 700+ hours on mine a few winters back. I love all my bikes but it's my favorite. The look, the sounds, the feel, the engineering. So spend some time getting yours set up right and you will be rewarded!

[JonW]

Well, the distraction is no longer be a problem; a mate of mine (on the other forum) has told me he will be taking the VFR off my hands. Im half sad (cos it'd have been a good project) and also half relieved (as I can get back to what I should be doing).

Now that my ankle is improved my trip is back on and I'll be in the USA in the next month, so Im sorting out OEM parts orders for my projects (including this one) and will order some cranks as well. Even more exciting news is that Im dropping in to visit twostrokebrit from this very forum while Im there. Looking forward to that.

[two-stroke-brit]

me too buddy.
cheers mark

[rz500guytexas]

Come up and visit. I am not far from him. Come see the scooter and see how a properly set up bike runs.

[JonW]

Oh cool, I'll drop you a pm in case we can make it work (and my mrs not totally kill me for making this holiday all about bikes and cars lol).

[JonW]

Ordered my cranks... my wallet is feeling the RZ500 today. Colin Chapman would have approved of this added lightness to my steps this arvo lol

[silverstrom]

Ordered my cranks... my wallet is feeling the RZ500 today.

A lot of us have felt that pain Jon. If I think about the $$ I have tied up in parts and bikes and projects it can be frightening. Then again, it's cheaper than therapy.

[JonW]

haha, so very true John. I know we talked about this before on email and i reckon these bike projects exist only to keep us sane

[JonW]

Im back now from a very long 5 week trip across multiple US states and along the way managed to meet up with two forum friends and pick up a bunch of parts for this build.

I was all excited to take a photo of them and put it up and then I realised it would look just like any other 500 project build parts haul as it contains the two special boxes of cranks from Driveline/Gus. LOL.

I spent a very large wedge of coin in parts for my projects with the US suppliers and in the OEM parts haul I got a new front master cylinder (I'll use the old lid) and full rebuild kits for the calipers and rear master along with a bunch of other small fixings including the missing or trashed fairing screws and nut plates and while I was away a delivery showed up with a couple more parts like rear indicators and some grommets as well.

Anyway, suffice to say, Im inching closer to having all the parts needed to restore this bike. That wont happen any time soon as its not actually next in line in my build schedule as while I was away a mate of mine has been managing having two frames powdercoated for me; an LC (will have the OEM Boysen ported 51L 250 YPVS engine fitted to it) and an LC2 resto bike which I will probably end up selling to fund the painting of the 500 and the LC. The powdercoating wasnt without its problems due to rust issues but he valiantly sorted those for me, and im very grateful to him. I picked up the LC frame yesterday and the LC2 will be ready next month I suspect. All in a very productive holiday! haha.

[JonW]

I’ve been working on other projects recently but the 500s brakes were part done and clogging up my bench space when a easy hour of work would see them off the bench and into the boxes of cleaned parts now that I had the parts all ready to fit with bodies cleaned/painted, fixings re-zinc plates and new OEM piston kits. I have to say I do quite like restoring brakes, it’s not only relaxing but as a nice small assembly project it’s nice to get to finish something and put it away, always a good feeling.

I should say that for once I started with actual working brakes mostly here. I live on a steep driveway and the PO actually coasted the roller down the driveway as his ‘last ride’ and didn’t end up in a heap against my house using just the fronts. Not bad for brakes that had never been apart in almost 35years! They did drag a bit and werent perfect, but hey the fronts worked ok for an old bike, the rear was part seized, but we knew that would be the case.

I decided not to restore the paint/decals on the bodies of the fronts, they were pretty nice still and while they don’t look ‘new’ they don’t look ‘restored’ either. Its worth noting that the Sumitomo units are much nicer quality than the rear which is a cheap and nasty thing. The paint drops off and the alloy furs up and goes nasty as a feature of the unit it seems. The same calipers are fitted to the 2/350 bikes as fronts and rears in the later years and one thing I’ve noticed as well is that you never get a reusable piston from one of these units, you might from a Sumitomo (similar caliper was also used on the early YPVS rears as well). In fact I almost did with my 500 fonts, but after cleaning and inspecting them microscopically every one had a single nick in the chrome part way down the body. Ahh well, Yamaha still sell kits for these, tho they’re not cheap, which are comprehensive.



I did repaint the rear caliper’s body and spent a lot of time on the caliper halves removing the corrosion in the seal lands with a dremel brass brush and a pick and then dunking in Alumibrite which eats oxidisation. Never the less after a few months of sitting I got the pick and brush back on these again before building up.

All the fixings were re-zinc’d and everything was meticulously cleaned again and we were ready for the seals and pistons to go in and the halves to be mated back up with new half-seals. I used new seals from Yambits for this and while they seem ok, theyre not very nicely finished on the edges. Let’s hope they hold up. We’ll see. The rear unit got the OEM Kawasaki half seal as Kawa supply this seal, tho Yamaha do not. Same caliper is used on plenty of other bikes and we scored with that seal for once, Kawasaki realising that any owner was going to have to rebuild those calipers each Spring lol.



And here they are done and ready to fit with new pads and go on the bike. Im pretty sure the banjos are not the right ones but are really just here to hold the washers in place until I do the build, I reckon the correct Banjos are in a bag in the boxes of 500 parts lol.

[JonW]

Pulled out my exhausts. Cleaned up the lower silencers which thankfully have no damage. I ground out some damage on the lower pipes and they now look undamaged which is a result. I then grabbed the uppers and pulled the baffles, I dont think they have ever been out and there was quite a bit of carbon on them. Lets hope they clean up, I reckon they will.

To be honest, these will all get a lick of paint to refresh them, though the only damaged paint is on the lowers where they had gouges that Ive now ground out. However, in all truth compared to what I'm used to with pipes, they really arent terrible and should come up very presentable in the end.

I know on here it sounds like very gentle progress, but I have been busy with my 51LC project and also some garage art.

For those interested...

2'51L'C is here: http://rdlccrazy.proboards.com/thread/48702/251lc



and the garage art is here: http://rdlccrazy.proboards.com/thread/4 ... t-on-cheap

[JonW]

It's said that time flies like a banana, but I wouldn't know as I don't go anywhere near the zinc laden fruit myself, however I find it does march on at a great rate. The Garage Art project now has a headlight fitted running off an old Ikea transformer so using mains power which is cool and Ive started a Gart2 project to repurpose an old LC2 GRP fairing as well. Tho as no one has commented on my efforts with the initial art project since the post I made in October, I fear my excitement at building it was one sided. Anyway, heres a pic with the headlight fitted and working:



The 51LC also proceeds apace, and I briefly mention that a bit later (don't worry you can skip past its reference to more actual 500 stuff if you feel 'dirty' reading about a bastardised LC two fiddy lol). Anyway the thread about that on Norbos forum has the latest if anyone is keen to know more... link in the above post etc.

However, my 500 has not been forgotten... far from it! And... I have a bit of gentle progress. I was doing some other powder coating and figured I should do something for the 500 build as well and as the bird cage was under my bench looking a bit shabby, tho to be honest it was pretty good still consider its age. To make it look great again I blasted and coated it satin black. I then ran a tap through the threads and added back in the grommets and bolts I took off (including the now sourced correct mirror bolts) and this is now in the box ready for the rebuild. Another piece of the puzzle ready to refit. I should add that this birdcage is the largest thing you can fit in a standard sized domestic oven for powdercoating and even then it needs hanging cleverly and very gently placing and pulling out of the oven so as not to touch the sides. Nerve wracking stuff but nice to be able to do yourself, I know am very lucky my mate Nick allows me to use his powder coating rig. Cheers mate!



While the 500 isn’t really a project that’s ‘ongoing’ for me (I’m currently deep into the building of an LC with a 51L 250 YPVS motor - that’s the one Yam fitted with an extra Boysen port - and an LC2 is scheduled to be built after that) I still keep falling over sub assemblies that I’ve stashed around my garage ‘to be done’. Y’see what I do with my builds is strip a bike and then try to restore small parts and sub assemblies while Im doing the same parts on something else (saves time and also lumps tasks together if outsourcing etc) and then box them up ready for when I’m building up later. I also try to source all the parts I know that I need to replace or are missing. This means that when I start building I am able to bolt these items on without resorting to spending ages refurbishing parts and worse still, since I live in Aus, looking for and then waiting for parts to arrive which can take weeks, assuming I can locate them at all at that time. This is why I’ve refurbished the brakes and zinc’d and powder coated parts along the way, all that work will pay dividends when I start the build up as its just a kit of ‘new’ parts.

Anyway, next on my hit list was the carbs. These have been languishing on a bench in my garage for about 10 months! I had big plans to get them done and filed away, but in the meantime I trashed my Achilles and other projects needed to be done, so these have literally gathered dust (it is super dusty here!) for almost a year.



These were definitely overdue for a clean up. I started with a toothbrush and some penetrating oil to get the (minimal) grub off the outside (something had leaked at some point for sure on two of them) and then stripped them apart and Ultrasonically cleaned all the parts. Of course, I noted which carb has the P1-1 bowl before I set to work and still did these one at a time to be sure I’d not muddle the parts. I was amazed by these carbs, they were so clean inside. Every jet (even the needle jet) had clean holes and nothing was bunged up at all. I did get some dirt out of one carb and some dust in one bowl. I think they would perhaps have been fine to reuse as they were, not that I would do that... why chance it etc. I think the fact this bike hasn’t been run in so long has helped as when it was last run the fuel we had in Aus had no Ethanol etc. Anyway, they cleaned up very well in the US cleaner and look amazing.





I had already Zinc plated some of the parts that had faded and really the rest of the parts were more than good enough to go back on so were left. The only things I should have done were the screws from the carb tops which somehow I missed, they will be done in the next Zinc run. I know some people will shake their heads and wonder why I bother to rezinc and clean up parts like this as they are hidden once the bike is built, but I was the kid that painted the seat the pilot sat on in the small scale Airfix models... I would know if it wasn’t done and why not restore things to the best of your ability? I’d only be cheating myself so try to do things right.





I did replace the O rings on the fuel inlet needle valve seats as they had all gone hard. In fact the needle valve seats just fell out if you inverted the carbs with the screw undone. Defo no sealing there then! I did wonder about replacing the seals on the linkages but they felt ‘ok’ and not totally hardened up. Have these caused a problem for anyone if they fail and let any air in I wonder?

I did clean up the fuel shut off needles and also polish the seats with a earbud in a drill and some metal polish. Worth a try. If these pass then I’ll replace them, but they worked before so should now.


So this is them all done... Well ‘for now’ as they do need the lid screws back from Zinc but I reckon they came up beautifully. More like 2 year old carbs than 35!




The only thing I couldn’t find was my pics from when I stripped the bowl screws off. Does anyone know which of the screws has the vent tube holders? Or even if the 500 has them... I’m starting to suspect that isn’t the case and these were from another project... Can anyone confirm?