Project Kawsaki: Tear Down

I have spent some time working on the Kawasaki over the last few evenings and one thing I discovered is how shockingly bad the wiring is on the bike. Over its 27 year life the wiring has been hacked to bits and badly fixed. I managed to find a used wiring loom on ebay from a 1989 KH125 so I should be receiving that soon. This poor bike has had a really hard life from it's 21 previous owners (yes, 21). Here is how the bike currently looks,

Now for the good part, I had a parcel waiting for me when I got in from work today and it had these inside,

A set of genuine KH125 handle bars and a good condition bottom yoke for the front forks. I started stripping down the rear of the bike and besides snapping bolts in half and realising that 99% of them will need replacing I have managed to start reviving some of the parts. The plastic rear mudguard was washed and then had a session with back to black bumper polish.

I then used some wire wool on the chrome rear mudguard.

The underside still needs a bit of work but this was very heavily corroded.

I cleaned up the rubber end piece that screws into the tail of the chrome mudguard while I had the back to black out as well.

I removed the front wheel a few days ago and started masking it up as I want to paint the wheels. I went to Halfords today and bought some satin paint and gave the wheel its first coat of paint.

This was after the first coat.

I used various grit sand paper on the metal ridges to remove any paint that got underneath the masking tape.

The other side of the wheel still needs to be sprayed, but you can really tell the difference between the old and new paint now.

Stay tuned for more updates and progress.