I've just recently aquired a 1996 K75RT Ultima.

The previous owner had not ridden it a lot, due to work commitments - but neitheer had he cleaned it much, either!!
So into my workshop it went to try to inprove it's appearence - and to do a service, including spline lube.
The guy was actually very nice - and offered to actually deliver the bike to me, as he was coming down to my neck of the woods for a "final ride" on it!!
Unfortunately he chose a day when the heavens opened, and there were storms and generally bad weather forecast. The forcast was right for a change!!

Anyway - the upshot of all this riding in the rain was that the neutral light and gear indicator had started playing up - neutral light on with every other gear selected - and gear indicator only showing 0 or 1 in any gear - a classic sign of water in the switch, which you will know is tucked in behind the swing arm - well out of reach. He was very genuine about it - and we agreed a new price to reflect this fault - and he even insisted on paying his own trainfare home!!

So - off came the final drive and drive shaft - not a bad job at all, really. However, I was a little leary about removing the swing arm - but by this time the bike was no longer rideable - so I decided to give it a whirl. Piece of cake job, actually - and at least it gave me a chance to clean all around the transmission, and spray the complete final drive unit before putting it all back again. This now looked like a million dollars compared to when I got the bike - and I decided it showed up the pitted front forks and calipers, so I decided to rejuvinate them also. Obviously, to do the job half decent required the front split mudguard to come off - and thus the nightmare began!!

I assume nobody had removed the mudguard since the bike was new - only 26,000 miles and 14 years ago - but it would not budge. Every single bolt was seized!! The is a long bolt on the top which connects the two halves together - accessed by a little fold-down plastic flap on the fork brace. Brilliant - but if you were designing this arrangement, would you put the bolt head in the dry behind this plastic cover - and the nut UNDER the mudguard to catch all the crud from the elements? No - neither would I - but somebody decided that was how it should be - no way would that nut undo - I had to resort to cutting through the fork brace and bolt to be able to part the mudguards!! Lickily I had managed to source a nearly perfect s/h brace on fleabay, as the top of mine had started to corrode, and looked a mess - so I was intending to dump the old one anyway.

OK - the mudguards were now able to be removed - BUT - there are two bolts that go through each fork leg that hold the lugs of the front mudguard that were manky, and I wanted to replace with stainless - once again, no way would they move - turning - hammering -heating - they wouldn't budge!!
You could see that they had been assembled dry - and the years of wet weather had badly corroded them into their drilled spigots on each fork leg.
So - in for a penny, in for a pound, I reached for my electric drill - and carefully drilled them out!! One hole started to go off-centre a bit - but the heat from the drill has started to loosen them, so I was able to punch them out without really damaging a fork leg!! What a nightmare of a job - sufficient to say, the new bolts went in covered in anti-sieze paste - and that long top bolt now has the nut safely behind the little plastic cover, out of the elements!!

Mike

Hi Mike,
One day you might meet the person who made the value judgement about how to design that part's fixing and you can give them some advice.

Joking aside once it is off consider putting some of the lowest strength Loctite on each nut and bolt to keep the water out. Don't use stainless where they go into alloy tapped screw holes or you can have electrolysis problems, also I am cautious about SS when they are heavily loaded (which does not apply to what you are doing here.
Regards,
K-BIKE

Your comments about stainless bolts noted - strangely, the bolts through the fork lugs aren't tapped - they're clearance holes - so you can imagine how much corrosion there was on the bolts that they couldn't even be hammered out, even after several good overnight soakings with WD40!!

It certainly looks nice now with the resprayed forks and the stainless bolts - as we tend to be fair-weather bikers now we are getting on a bit, the bike shouldn't get used in the wet much, so the problem shouldn't reoccur.

Whilst I have the bike stripped down, I also took the advantage of fitting a relay to allow the redundant choke light to show when the cooling fan is running.

Today's job was making a blanking plate to fit a radio/CD unit into the LH fairing pocket. I was planning how to alter the standard pocket cover to accommodate the taller stereo - and discovered that Motorworks sold the radio cover for £12 odd - whereas the standard flat replacement cover would have cost £22 odd!!
I also bought a pair of Pioneer 100mm speakes which fit nicely behind the fairing speaker louvres - so we should soon be able to enjoy a bit of Quo on the move!!

Mike

Quo on the move sounds great! I think i had a spare box lid or 2 off an 84 RT! which i still have bits n bobs for if you need summit. only in Ilfracombe N Devon. if your not in a desparate rush it may pay to post on the buy n sell bit, there seems to be quite a few K riders in the sou' west of sunny england.

Ian

Mike -

No worries, sad you had to sell her on, i do have a similar prob with mine at times with the knees, thats life tho'. see you somewhere else on the forum no doubt..

cheers ian