I picked up a basket case 78 about 3 years ago, and never got around to doing much with it.
It was mostly all there, but the engine had been disassembled due to spun bearing. Found another 78 engine on Craislist a couple years ago, and picked it up for $60. Bottom end wound up being sound, but had water in a couple cylinders. Both heads were pretty torn up and needed new valve guides. (77/78 F models were prone to eating guides). The one with water had rusty pitted seats.
Took the best head to my local shop and had all the guides replaced/valve job and had to replace a couple valves as well. Put the head on the shelf and that's pretty much all I have done till now...
Got an itch and pulled it back out to reevaluate what I wanted to do with it and decided to go in the route of a resto mod with some modern running gear and the like.
Planning on running YZF 600 front end, Bandit Rear with a 4.5 wheel.
Fully dissasembled with bandit arm mocked up. Top hat reducer bushings made for the 14mm pivot. with about 7.5mm hats to bring the width of the pivot to right around 235mm.
Local machine shop helped me out once I came up with drawings with the top hat spacers and these:
Went ahead and made two sets. Should have had them chamfer the bases for welding purposes but will do that later.
Planning on bracing and welding the downtubes from the kneck. Will look something like this:
Nic
It was mostly all there, but the engine had been disassembled due to spun bearing. Found another 78 engine on Craislist a couple years ago, and picked it up for $60. Bottom end wound up being sound, but had water in a couple cylinders. Both heads were pretty torn up and needed new valve guides. (77/78 F models were prone to eating guides). The one with water had rusty pitted seats.
Took the best head to my local shop and had all the guides replaced/valve job and had to replace a couple valves as well. Put the head on the shelf and that's pretty much all I have done till now...
Got an itch and pulled it back out to reevaluate what I wanted to do with it and decided to go in the route of a resto mod with some modern running gear and the like.
Planning on running YZF 600 front end, Bandit Rear with a 4.5 wheel.
Fully dissasembled with bandit arm mocked up. Top hat reducer bushings made for the 14mm pivot. with about 7.5mm hats to bring the width of the pivot to right around 235mm.
Local machine shop helped me out once I came up with drawings with the top hat spacers and these:
Went ahead and made two sets. Should have had them chamfer the bases for welding purposes but will do that later.
Planning on bracing and welding the downtubes from the kneck. Will look something like this:
Nic