So Dear Readers, What’s going on with the daily I hear you all scream! is she dead? is she fixable? hath beelzebub squeezed his graspy grasp?
Well in short, dear readers, no. Well probably,but I’m going to fix it!
I probably shouldn’t though, it’s probably not worth the time or the money to fix it and any normal, sane person would cut they’re loses and say thanks for the memories ole girl, but, we are not normal sane people! if we were we would have much cheaper and warmer hobbies, like knitting or stamp collecting. No, I will fix it, the decision is made!
One week on from that decision and I’m weighing up my options, I’ve contacted a fella I know up north and he just so happens to have an engine for sale! belter! what are the chances of that! “£60 and it’s your’s”, excellent, I’ll be up Monday night to get it.
Now that gives me a day to strip the Div and get the motor out, it’s relatively straight forward on the xj600s the only pain is on the newer ones (98< my one) is they have an inter-cooler and the pipes for that get right in the way, but I’ve whipped a few motors out in my time so I wasn’t particularly phased, here is how I do it: First, get some WD and empty that bastard on every nut you can think of that is exposed to mother nature and the roads, most importantly exhaust studs (you don’t want to break these!) and engine mounts (same goes for these) Second, off comes everything, take out the battery (your gunna be playing with wires) tank off, carbs and inlets off, fuel pumps and lines off, exhaust manifolds off, unplug everything electrical and label it if your unsure, HT leads off, chain off, I think that’s it off the top of my head, but use your loaf, have a look at the bike see if you can see anything that will potential stop your engine sliding gracefully out. Third, unload the engine, what that means is take a jack (I use a flat piece of wood too to spread the weight) put that under your engine, lift until it just touches then give it a little tweak, you just want it to take the weight not lift the bike up. undo the engine mounts and viola, it should be loose in the frame. Fourth, carefully manoeuvre the motor out, some people like to lay the bike down and lift the frame off, letting gravity do it’s thing, but I’ve never had much luck this way, I just moved it as far forward as it would go, lifted it so the sump cleared the frame and pushed, out it came piece of cake. So off I pop for a jolly up the M1 to go and fetch the new engine for the Div, at this point I’m thinking “I’ve got a couple of hours tomorrow evening, I could have this in, at least tomorrow maybe even running,” when my phone rings, it’s the seller, now I should explain that the seller is not a bike guy, he uses these parts for boats and such, so he is fairly mechanically minded but not all that clued up when it comes to bikes, “I can’t get the rear engine mount bolt out mate”, Right so the motor I’m on my way to pick up is still in a bike, perfect. “you need to take the weight of it bud, it’s the main load bearing bolt” After a little back and forth, I tell him to hold fire I have a friend with me and we’ll get it out, “just dowse it in WD and leave it for me”, it’s not a big job I explain to my mate, I’ve already done it today, “it’ll be half hour tops getting it out from there” famous last words. So me and my buddy mat rock up at the seller’s house and get to it, I must say too that this guys has a serious garage attached to his house, all the gear, floor mats, awesome lights, the works so it could be worse, we could be having to do it on someone’s drive way in the dark. After the pleasantries we get to it, only to find that said bolt had been hacked and chopped to pieces, Grrrrreat! None of these hacks however had managed to go all the way through, it was an absolute mess, after a while of trying to figure out how to back peddle the other guys mistakes, we concluded it was hopeless, we were on a time crunch, it was getting late and we still had a couple of hours to drive to get home, neither of us were planning to be out this late on a school night! So the only option was to chop it out and figure it out with fresh eyes, after talking that through with the seller and getting the green light to chop his frame up (he did try to sell me said frame that i was about to take a grinder to!) it was in the car and we were on the way home. The next day we got to have a proper look, the chopped bolt was a mess, after finishing chopping it out we discovered it had seized in one side, the other side slide straight out to reveal a nice hole in the crank case where they had tried levering against it, not to worry though, mat is a cracking welder and can patch that up no drama, then the bombshell, we discover a hair line crack running right up the block, from the sump right up the side of the seized up mount right to the top, bummer….. The block is useless, even if you weld that up (presuming you can) you would throw the mounts out of line, the work that would involve to save that block is incredible, no easy fix here then, the devil bike strikes again! Back to square one I’m starting to think this bike doesn’t want to be fixed!
