Progress of the T

Post date: Jan 03, 2016 10:20:12 PM

Hi again everybody. Time for an update on what’s been going on in my garage over winter. When we left it last I was satisfied that I had a good useable frame that only needs a couple of small welds. Fortunately I also have a rather large stock of both used and NOS Suzuki T spares.

Next on the list was to get a good rolling chassis together with a painted frame so that it doesn’t have to come fully apart again. I don’t like powder coating frames. With painting thickness can be varied between areas depending on wear and tear that area receives, or the need to keep the area dimensionally correct, plus it is easy to repair. Laugh if want but I have previously had great results with rattle cans. As its been some time since I last painted one, the products I used to turn to are no longer available and that’s a good thing as the latest quick dry enamels are great. They are touch dry in an hour, even in mid winter. After the weld repairs I stripped and wire buffed the frame and swing arm to get good paint adhesion. I also cleaned of all the factory welding splatter. Then the coats were etch primer, sanding primer for the worst areas, followed by satin black, then finished with gloss clear. I am pleased with the results. Paints I tried and recommend are CRC etch primer and black top coat, Spraycoat super primer for sanding, and Rustoleum crystal clear.

To refurbish the pivots I fitted taper roller bearings in the steering head and bronze bushes in the swing arm.

I used Pyramid Parts for the bearings. Their product is excellent and fits correctly to standard dimensions. Unfortunately as with most sellers of steering head kits they thought that the Suzuki T and GT series use the same bearings, and this is what they supplied. As they have a New Zealand branch sorting the exchange out was easy. If you order off them for a T be sure they supply kit BR12, not BR21 which is for GT’s..

The bronze swing arm bushes came from Diablo Cycle in Canada. I use them for other stuff and their products are usually great, but not in this case. They are the right length but wouldn’t press into the swing arm. I measured the fit interference at 0.3mm, which is huge. It should be less than 0.1 mm and preferably 0.05mm. It was off to Two Wheels Engineering to have them turned down then pressed in and reamed to correct internal fit. I didn’t expect to have to pay the extra cost of this and next time will try HVC Cycle bushes which they claim as correctly sized to not shrink when pressed in.

The running gear was fairly straight forward. Shocks were rooted and I had no good spares. I bought new made in Thailand YSS shocks. They are reasonably priced, reportedly work well, and look trick as hell. They look like a knock off of German Willbers shocks, so it was no surprise to read that YSS poached their development engineers from Willbers.

Forks are made up of the original bike ones plus the best spare parts in stock, flushed and fitted with new seals. Suzuki never did T350 seals as spares but the old bonded in ones can be cut out of the top nuts and T500 seals pressed in instead. They will be improved as the project progresses

Wheels on the bike were not original. The front 19 inch off a GT 380 was sold on. The rear GT wheel has a cracked brake drum. Wheels fitted are the best from stock fitted with new sealed bearings, from Saeco. The rear wheel appears to have had new bearings fitted a time or two before, and non too gently. The hubs now have no interference fit with the bearings. Time for the good old Loctite 660 retaining compound. I can’t speak highly enough of this stuff when working on old bikes. Before they went on the hubs were blast cleaned and spokes and rims tidied up as best as possible. I have spent a lot of time over winter figuring out how to do vapour blasting at home and the results are starting to look good. I will go into this a bit further when I do a write up on the motor. New brake shoes have been fitted. The wheels are also to be altered later in the project.

I have done most of the necessary work on the motor for reassembly and will do a write up on this soon.

Meanwhile enjoy your summer riding and keep the wheels pointing downward.

Cheers Rich