Just a reminder, I bought the K75 a few years ago as a second bike, a hack to use when I didn't want to ride around on the GS (set-up as it is for longer distance stuff) and it has fulfilled that role perfectly.
It looks almost decent in this photo but then it's just washed (a tip for you. Take photos when the bike is wet, they always look better. Handy if it's for sale).
I've put a lot more miles on it in the intervening time than I have on the GS and apart from a second-hand rear shock-absorber, a pair of tyres and a battery, all I've done to it is to change the oils regularly.
The bike has had bit of a rough life. At some time it's suffered a front-end incident of some kind. The front wheel should be black (like the rear), the front section of the mudguard has a distinct kink in it and I'm the discs have been replaced with original but second-hand items.
The paint has been renewed at some time, it doesn't quite match from panel to panel and generally the bike doesn't appear to have been looked after, cosmetically.
It's all there and most importantly, it all works - without fuss too.
While investigating the kinked front mudguard, I thought that perhaps some gentle heat would soften the plastic enough to get rid of the crease. The trouble is that one of the bolts was seized solid.
It's no surprise that after 94,000 miles and 18 or so years, the electrolytic reaction between the elements, the alloy fork slider and the steel bolt had welded the two together.
Well now having a garage, I decided that I'd strip the front off the bike and rebuild it. The fork internals can be inspected, new seals fitted and I'd have a look at the steering-head bearings.
This is all part of my plan to carry out a rolling restoration. I'd start at the front and work my way back, ending-up with a respray of the painted parts.
Taking the plunge, the first thing that happened, as expected, the seized mudguard bolt sheared. Apart from that, the forks were soon removed without any problems.
Before doing anything else, I cleaned what remained of the original coating (and the accrued gunge) and then stuck the complete unit in the vice,
before drilling-out the broken bolt.
Then it was a simple task to separate the stanchion from the slider and prise out the old fork seals.
The seals are retained by a steel spring-clip. These had rusted quite badly and although they'd clean-up easily, they're not expensive so I added two new ones to my shopping list along with the new seals.
With the forks out, it made sense to check the headstock steering bearings. They stood up well to the normal tests of gripping the lower forks and pull-pushing without any obvious free-play. The handlebars didn't flop to either side in favour of one side or the other and there seemed to be no discernible notchiness when moving the steering from lock to lock.
Still, it's bad house-keeping to not visually inspect such things when the opportunity presents itself and it only really meant removal of the headlamp and screen to pull apart the top and bottom yokes.
The front brake pipe passes through the centre of the steering tube on this model, so that meant disconnecting it and removing the front brakes on their flexible and steel pipes.
The upper and lower yokes can then be removed to inspect the bearings and their seats.
The bearings looked okay but the upper seat has very obvious signs of brinnelling (due to incorrect adjustment).
More additions to the shopping list.
Removing the bearing seats is very simple, it's just a case of tapping them out. The manual states that a slide-hammer is the tool best used but as long as they are not too tight, a long bar passed through the steering tube (being careful not to damage the fluid-bloc steering damper inside the tube) and gently tapped out.
Getting the upper bearing off the top-yoke is easy too. With the adjuster removed (a 32mm socket is required), there's two holes in the adjuster to tap the bearing off with a drift.
The top-yoke, adjuster, bearing and dust cap (the dust cap is destroyed in the removal process. More on the shopping list).
The bottom bearing removal is a bit more involved. As it's on the base of the steering stem, it's an interference-fit.
The best way to remove it (well the simplest) is to snip the roller-bearing cage apart and then cut the bearing sleeve with a grinder.
The bike's frame has a lot of surface rust in places and I thought that I'd attend to each section as it becomes exposed during the rolling-restoration. The only real problem with this approach is that it will mean a lot of fiddly wire-brush work. I certainly wont be able to attack much of the exposed sections with this:
It will also entail much masking before paint can be applied.
Stood looking at the bike I realised that these K-Series frames, once devoid of the steering, don't actually have much attached to them. Looking around the bike on the table, it looked as though a few cable-ties being clipped and some judicious cable re-routing would allow me to remove the frame and do it all in one go.
About an hour after the thought struck me, I had this:
I've yet to start cleaning the frame properly but an experimental swipe or two with the cup-brush shows that it won't take much to clean it back to bare metal.
I'll sort out the cleaning and re-spraying soon. I'll clean-up the bits of the power-train that will be impossible to reach with the frame in place, then put it back together. Once this is done, I can clean-up and polish/paint the bits that are off and re-assemble the front-end.
I really don't want to strip the whole bike and then re-build it. Running it in various stages of re-build is okay with me.
More to follow as and when I have progressed.
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