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So I had a customer call me up back in the summer asking if I could restore his 1998 ZX6-R.
Back then I was booking about 2 months ahead so it wasn't going to come in anytime soon, but I agreed to go over and have a look over it and discuss what the customers ideas were and where he wanted it to be at the end of it all.
He explained that he'd had the bike for a good number of years, loved it, missed it and wanted it back in the condition it was before moving house, family and work got in the way.
Apparently it had sat in the back garden for a good while since moving house, prior to that it had been relegated to the garage under a sheet.
Sounds familiar that bit.........
Horribly from my side, I had to keep putting him off and putting him off because I had THE TRIKE (look in the gallery) stuck on the top ramp, which is where I needed his bike to go. Once it's on there it doesn't come off again until it's done. But that bloody trike............................
Anyway, I finally managed to get his bike in, 2 weeks ago! 5 months of him waiting, sorry.
So this is how it was when I finally got it on the ramp. First look over and it seems not so bad for a '98.......
Nearside fairing is cracked around the mirror mount, but fixable, and not unusual really. Top yoke is typically scratched from keys
Bit of a scrape to the fairing.
You can see that the paint on the frame and foot hanger is going. Typical corrosion starting on the brake arm and footrest.
Fork lowers and calipers are bloody good condition really, but they'll still get stripped and powder coated
Time to get stuck in then.
Now the fun starts.
Lets get this thing stripped
Bodywork off
More Stuff off
AHA! Now we're moving.......
The sum of it's parts............
Not so bad, I've had worse, however...............
So, everything stripped off the bike, right down to the last nut and bolt. I'd already made a list of the parts going in for powder coating, then added to it, because, well, you know....
In total 27 parts ended up at the powder coaters well before the Christmas break. Which gave me time to work on the engine. Get that all cleaned, rubbed down, primed and painted, ready to go back in when the coating was done.
Well, 3 weeks passed and no word from the powder coaters, and it's getting close to Christmas, so made a call only to be told that nothing had been touched yet due to their workload, and I was looking into January before I could get them back. Yikes!
Oh well, nothing I can do about it so suck it up and sulk.
Roll into January and YEAH, parts are ready.
First things first, engine into the frame
Looks so clean
Lower yoke in, forks in, swingarm back in
Getting a few more bits in place loosely, checking for the fit and finish, see how they look
Right then, shock upgrade, what a mare! Bloody swingarm was in and out like a fiddlers elbow. But got there eventually.
Now it's starting to look like a bike again
Ooh the OCD took over, they just had to be polished, it was crying out for it.......
Caliper time. Strip out, new seals, polish the pistons
Yeah......they ain't going back in.......
That's a nice blue
Looking good
Nice new stainless braided pipes and fittings
On to the bodywork then. This is the original graphics before it got stripped. Now I couldn't find anyone who could do these Ninja parts at the proper size. Loads around who copied them, but all too small, or the quality standard was not up to scratch. And the cost was daylight robbery.
500 euros for the set?????
Yeah, do one mate.......
So I have a large graphics cutter/plotter, and I'm not too bad at recreating things. So I grabbed a ruler and got stuck in. Hours of work later I had managed to recreate the original graphic in a single colur and very close to the original size. All I had to do now was cut it into the two different colours and overlay them. Yes I was going to see the overlay joins, but there was no other way given the poor quality of what I had found before. Turned out quite nice I think. And of course these can be lacquered over to seal the decal.
Recreate the other graphics and lacquer over to seal them
Sometime in the past the rear tray had been butchered, having had the number plate section chopped off. So a good tail tidy was sourced, this was for a Yamaha R1.
Wiring sins fixed with new connections for the lights and indicators
Eh voila!
The bike was repainted in the original Galaxy Silver. Graphics done to the seat panels and tank decals and of course the ZX6R sticker to the front fairing.
Clutch and front brake levers replaced, clips ons polished, new mirrors, new Black Widow downpipes and link pipe, plus loads of other work to bring this back to the beauty it was
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